The screen door of Gilbert’s house opened with a familiar creak. The old man spun sideways, surprised at the unexpected noise. He looked up, his old reflexes straining to get the muzzle of his rifle up, but he stopped when he saw the face of his one love in the doorway. His wife.
“Dinner is about ready. Do you want to come in?” His wife asked him, clearly oblivious that her presence meant that this was all over.
He was thankful for her lack of awareness of the events of the world. Gilbert felt a rumbling deep inside that he hadn't experienced in a very long time. It warned him his emotions were about to be set loose. His lower lip trembled as he thought of everything that had happened, and everything that Adrian had just accomplished. He started to shake with happiness mixed with pride.
“I’ll be right in,” he told his wife.
His wife opened the creaky door and went inside. Gilbert heard the tweeting of birds in the trees for the first time since arriving here, in this strange place. Although Gilbert felt he was no longer where he’d been spending time.
He took the magazine out of his weapon, removed the round from the chamber, and put it in the rocking chair where he hoped it’d remain for the rest of time. He leaned his AK against the house, and promptly forgot about it. Gilbert opened the creaky screen door and went inside to see his wife again. Dinner smelled wonderful. She always could cook.
Retirement would be good.
*****
Kevin, Abby and Hal were running literally as fast as their legs would carry them. They’d heard nothing in the direction Adrian and Michelle had headed, and that seemed bad. Kevin wondered if the lack of gunfire was a sign of their death. Adrian wouldn't go down without taking something with him.
“Adrian? Adrian? Do you copy? Give me a sign motherfucker,” Kevin stammered as he ran. The three warriors running to their friend’s aid came to a sudden stop as they rounded a corner. The world was filled with undead on this street. Each was facing away, their attention fixed on events Kevin Hal and Abby couldn’t see. All three of their weapons were up, ready to fire, though no one pulled a trigger; the undead were too silent, too organized for this to be mundane. None would risk a shot and ruin whatever was happening. This was beyond the pale.
Kevin looked to the sidewalk and launched himself up on top the concrete stanchion that supported a traffic light. He shimmied up several feet until he could see over the hundred rank deep crowd of undead. In the center of the intersection a few hundred feet away Kevin could see Adrian and Michelle, her arm around him as Adrian pointed his prized Kimber pistol at the face of a zombie on its knees in front of him. The zombie was a woman, and had red hair. Kevin knew exactly who she was. He faintly heard Adrian say something softly, and then pull the trigger.
The single pistol shot rang out like the sound of a great door shutting. The report of the weapon went beyond vibration through the air. It was on every level imaginable and many levels unimaginable. Kevin watched the force of the gunshot pass through the world like a nearly invisible wave, watching it hit the rows and rows of gathered dead like a tidal wave, pulling out the reanimating force that made them so wrong, and so deadly. They collapsed to the ground, bodies finally with freed souls. Kevin felt it hit his body as well as his soul as if it were immersive, purifying energy. As this nearly imperceptible wave of energy passed along the world, the zombies continued to fall to the ground, sapped of the evil that powered their existence.
As the moment passed further and further out more and more undead fell, all across the city, all across the towns and countryside surrounding Adrian and his people, all across the state, across the country, and the continent.
Adrian had, with a single pull of one trigger, with the weight of one difficult decision made, and with the belief that all could be well, that all would be well, seen to it that judgment day had come, and passed.
Humanity’s second chance had been assured.
March 5th
I’m having a hard time imaging this being over.
Or, depending on how you want to look at it, maybe this is really all just the beginning? I’m not tired at all. I should be exhausted, weary, ready to rest, but I’m not. I think that’s fortunate, though I know that attitude will change as I actually get down to work.
Where to begin? Do I tell this in dramatic fashion, dragging out all the details in sinful fashion? Or do I cut straight to the chase and drop the biggest of all bombs?
I suppose as the Scribe I should record history. History tends to start at the beginning, so I guess I’ll follow suit and do the same.
Abby, Michelle, Kevin, Harold and I all went into the city to find Cassie on March 3rd. I woke up early, shockingly at 3:33 am that morning in one of the houses in Spring Meadow that the locals gifted to us as a home away from home. Kevin and I joked that it was our “embassy.” Sort of funny, but also pretty accurate.
After staying in bed, thinking the day to come over, and eating an early morning MRI with my brother Kev, we got our gear packed up, checked, double checked, and we loaded into the HRT. We coordinated with Ethan and Quan’s group as they started out towards the western parking garage at the apartments. Our plan was to reach detonator range at roughly the same time so the explosions were more or less simultaneous. All went well up to that point.
We heard Quan blow the other garage before we tried to blow ours. Operative word there is tried. The explosion towards the Factory was incredibly loud, even over all those miles with all those buildings in between. We saw some plumes of dust and debris rising up into the sky and we knew the explosion was successful beyond the shadow of a doubt. Very exciting shit for sure. We were in detonator range on our own garage, and Kevin hit the switch.
The Jinx Fairy struck.
Clicky clicky went the detonator, but no boomy boomy went the bombs. We had a minor, spirited debate as to whether or not to scrap the mission, but I put my foot down, and with the support of the others, we opted to move forward. Everyone else was onboard, though I know Kevin was skeptical. We were watching undead shuffle off towards the location of the explosion, even with us in the HRT right there moving, so I felt pretty confident we would be okay. One downed building would have to be enough of a diversion for us.
I don’t necessarily want to say I was wrong… but my judgment could’ve been better. It was a “grab your heels and brace for anal impact” kind of day that day, and I think no matter what my call would’ve been, things would’ve been bad, or worse. The third day of the third month was the when this had to happen, and I’m glad I pushed forward.
I think we made it fifteen more minutes before the roads started to close up on us. We were engaging undead from the windows on a constant basis and the HRT’s plow blade was seeing some robust work smashing walkers from the road in front of us. It got to the point where we were pissing through ammunition fast enough, and there were enough bodies in the road ahead of us, I made the call to change our route to something safer. We'd reach where we were going, but we'd be out of ammo when we got there.
We knew we had the car alarms as well as the fires in the garage making noise to help us, and despite it not blowing up, I had a good feeling the undead would still be inside the garage. That creates a bit of a vacuum right? A few thousand undead from the city packed into a single structure means a few thousand undead off the street in that area.
I was right. Sadly, the route we took to head us towards the hospital we hadn’t been on yet, and there was a nasty surprise waiting for us. To be honest I don’t remember what happened. I have no recollection of the moment itself. The first thing I remember was coming to, hanging on my side in the driver’s seat. The HRT hit something explosive, and we were tossed on our side IED style. Thankfully I was wearing my seat belt, otherwise I would’ve been tossed around like a goddamn ragdoll. Kevin got chucked from his seat, and as it turns out, he’s got a sprained wrist and has so many bruises he looks spotted like a fucking leopard today. Tough kid.
Michelle woke me up, and
after shitting a bit of a brick I got myself under control, and undid my seatbelt to get out of the seat. We discovered later on that the entire street we had been driving on was covered with both exploded as well as unexploded cluster munitions. Michelle told me after the fact yesterday that I’d taken my eyes off the road for just a few seconds to crack some dumb joke about Kevin or something, and that was long enough for me to hit one or five with the HRT.
Abby and Hal were shaken up, banged and bruised but alive and still in the fight. Michelle had her bell rung, and I already told you about Kevin. At that point the Jinx Fairy was balls deep inside us. We had no vehicle, we were out of radio contact with Ethan and Quan’s group, we were all alone, and utterly, and completely surrounded by the dead.
I radioed back to Spring Meadow and told Agnes or Anders to pass along the message to the other group that our vehicle was down. I gave our approximate position, and went back to unfucking our lives. We debated a plan, and decided we needed to try and blow the garage to create a powerful diversion to not only pull undead away from Cassie’s work so I could get there, but also to try and kill a bunch of these dead motherfuckers. One of them tripped a cluster bomb right near us, and we watched as the damn thing got launched in the air like Wile E. Coyote. Not good for the zombies, not good for us either.
Kevin, Abby and Hal took the detonator and an AT4 anti tank weapon and went to the garage. I gave Kevin mad shit for having brought the armor piercing weapon (it seemed like overkill, plus the fucker didn't tell me he brought it), but it turned out to be a good decision on his part. More on that later. When we exited the now ruined HRT (and I mean ruined. The entire right front of the vehicle was blown to smithereens. I think the only reason we survived is that it looked to me that the charge blew on the plow blade, and not under the tire where Kevin was sitting.) there was forty or so undead in all directions. We laid down fire to clear the streets, and we split up.
Michelle and I headed northwest to the center of town, and Abby, Hal and Kevin headed southeast to the hospital garage.
Here’s the story I pieced together from the trio that went thattaway;
Because of the relative vacuum created with the zombies in the garage, the run to the garage was fairly good for them. They reached the garage with minimal contact, and made a plan to suppress their weapons and head into the still fairly empty bottom level to try and find out what was wrong with the explosives.
I don’t know SHIT about explosives, but I guess Quan had some central detonation system on the bottom floor that all the different charges were slaved to. When they entered the bottom floor of the garage and cleared it, Abby found some loose wires that had been disconnected from the box, thus breaking the circuit I imagine.
Kevin switches with Abby, Abby and Hal lay cover for Kevin. At that point Michelle and I were getting gang raped by an army of the dead. I’d pissed through three magazines just moving down a street and a half and I had at least that much further to go again. By that point I would've had five magazines tops left. I cried like a bitch to them to start making noise to get us some breathing room. They dropped their suppressors, and within seconds the gunfire started to distract the undead for us.
Back to them.
So like, two minutes into their louder shooting, they reported feeling a cold wind pick up. Like, creepy cold wind. I can remember the same feeling somewhat, but not quite to the level they described. I guess just seconds after... the entire parking garage filled with undead starts coming down at them, right on their head. All three shit enough bricks to build a new parking garage, and they take off running literally for their lives.
They make it to cover out of blast range (read: theoretically out of blast range) and Kevin hits the switch. Kamotherfuckingboom. All the Semtex goes off, thankfully. Quan’s fear of the stuff being unstable turned out to be unfounded, which is clearly awesome for us.
So anyway, this garage was the one Quan didn’t like. It was squat, with thicker floors and columns, and the bottom floor was half sunk into the ground as well. When the explosive blew, they didn’t take out enough support columns to topple the building immediately. Kevin said it was well on its way to collapsing, but with all those undead marching right the fuck out, he needed to bring the building down right then and there.
Enter the AT4.
Kevin jacks that pig up, lines up a shot straight into the center of the parking garage, and threads the fucking needle. The projectile goes right through a four foot gap at three hundred feet, and hits a pillar dead fucking nuts. Luckily the explosion took the entire pillar out, and like a flick from the finger of fucking God, down went the garage.
I heard the building shit the bed where we were, and wow did that buy us some time. Michelle and I had ducked into a pizza shop that I knew Cassie ate at every once in awhile for lunch. We’d gone in there to take cover and let the noise pull the undead in our area away. My hope was to slip out the back exit into a street or alley and then weave our way to Cassie’s work while the undead went to the sounds of the explosion.
Of course as Michelle and I were getting up from taking cover, I get tackled by a fat undead prick. Michelle warned me just in time, and I sort of launched myself forward as he hit my lower back and legs. When I landed I sort of spun sideways, trying to get to my feet quickly, but he was literally in my junk and grabbing at me. My first thought was Kimber, but I gave the pistol to Michelle to use, and I also realized I wanted to be quiet. I snatched my knife off my belt and stabbed him in his fat head, managing to hit something grey inside there, killing him.
Talk about a close fucking call. My lower back is sore as hell, and bruised something fierce, but I'm not dead, and that's good.
Michelle and I caught our breath, had a nice moment where I built up the nerve to thank her for being there for me (whereupon she touched my cheek, giving me a thrill), and we scooted out into the alley in the back of the pizza shop.
The alley was clear. We made it all the way down to the street that Casse’s work was actually on, and that’s when things went to shit. Well... went to shit isn’t the right expression. Went to weird is more apt.
Standing to one side of the intersection we walked into were... thousands of dead. Tens of thousands, all shoulder to shoulder, standing in foul rank and file. Just a bit ahead of them was Alan, some asshole VP that Cassie hated. He was standing there, missing an arm and had this… malicious look about him. Normally the dead don’t have facial expressions, they don’t show emotion, but I swear to you Mr. Journal that bitch had contempt on his face for me. There was an intelligence there I'd only seen in the worst of moments, like when that fucking zombie was tapping his watch. Creepy fucker.
I looked right, and the other directions had an equal amount of undead. Cassie’s direct boss, a woman named Melanie was standing in front of a wall of the dead. Her and Alan were there like… well, they were like sergeants or lieutenants.
In front of Melanie was Cassie.
She was dead. Very dead. Emaciated, drawn, bony, pale, sunken. She looked horrible. Her eyes had lost all the green intensity I’d loved to look at. There instead was that filthy, milky, pus like white.
I won’t lie, nor will I posture like a tough guy here. I lost it. I straight up dropped to my knees in a whole different place in my head and started to apologize over and over and over. I couldn’t say it enough or say it fast enough. I begged for forgiveness. I utterly and completely lost my shit.
Then Cassie spoke. Out loud. I… can’t remember all of the conversation, but I do remember feeling so strange about it. I remember being cold, very cold when she spoke. I remember the clouds coming in, and feeling like I’d finally gotten a chance to make things right by her. I remember her asking me to join her, to go to her in… the afterlife or something, and I remember hearing Michelle there. I remember Cassie seeing Michelle too, and I remember feeling so torn and confused and ashamed. I wasn’t in my right mind. I was lost. Blowing back and forth in the wind.
Luckily Mi
chelle kept it together. If it wasn't for her…
I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember when she started talking, the air became warmer, and sweeter. I remember looking down at my hands and seeing my knife resting on my wrist, starting to dent the skin from pressure, leaving a red mark on me. I was moments away from trying to kill myself to join Cassie. Moments from actually killing myself.
I remember Michelle saying one thing before the world got turned around on me. She said something to Cassie about, “Letting slip the strings of evil.”
Next thing I know I’m back on the other side. Teleported, transported, whatever you want to call it. All the undead are gone, and it’s just Cassie and I standing in an empty intersection in the frozen world of June 23rd. The sky is sparkling blue and sun is warm. It’s like the last nineteen months of guilt never happened. It’s like I went to her that day, instead of taking care of just myself like a coward.
We embrace. We kiss. It’s beautiful. It’s everything I’ve wanted. But it’s fleeting. I can feel it no different than watching the sun set on a beautiful summer day. It must come to an end. I know it, she knows it.
She tells me to move on. She tells me all the same things she told me in that dream a year ago. She tells me I am a good man, and that I deserve to live, and I deserve to love. She tells me she can see and feel the connection Michelle and I have, and that embarrasses me. I feel very… guilty about how I feel about Michelle. I want to love Cassie, to still be in love with her, as well as fall in love with Michelle, but that’s not possible. Nor is it healthy, or what the world needs.
I know then, in that moment what I needed to do. I need to give Cassie peace, to set her free from the constraints of whatever hell that’s holding her, and give myself fully to someone who I want to love, that wants to love me back. I'm crying at that point. The whole time really. I close my eyes, and when I open them again, I’m facing her dead body.
Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8) Page 29
