Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 10): The Last Resort [Adrian's March, Part 2]

by Philbrook, Chris

  “These zombies are faster than Afghanistan. Maybe it’s the healthier diet, but stay sharp.”

  “As a knife.”

  The two SEALs marched through the crowd of nervous soldiers, airmen, marines and the odd civilian heading towards the starboard side paratroop exit door. That door put them facing the hangars they wanted to secure. Opposite them on the port side of the craft six Marines did the same, and in the far front of the plane, eight soldiers were about to exit through the crew door.

  “On my count, three, two, one,” Tommy said, and all the doors opened.

  Fresh summer air—humid, unlike the dry air they’d had in Kandahar for so long-streamed in like a tidal wave. Tommy poked his head outside the aircraft and bright sun smacked the SEAL in the face. He squinted even through the dark lenses of the glasses protected him. Tommy’s weapon went to semi-auto and he shouldered it as he jumped to the ground a few feet below. Glen was right on his booted heels and the two SEALs started to scour the perimeter for anything moving.

  “Contact left,” Glen said softly before firing a single shot.

  Tommy looked over just in time to see a body collapse face first to the tarmac. No blood streamed from the fresh headshot. It had been a zombie. The warrior returned his attention to his side of the plane and watched as three—no, four—undead slipped out from between the two massive aircraft warehouses. Two were women of varied age, and two were young men. College aged. All four were deceased based on the amount of blood they were covered in. They were walking when they left the shade between the two buildings, but when they got into the open; they picked up speed to an awkward, tilted jog. They gnashed their teeth, and breathlessly hissed at him with dead lungs. Arms shot out, grasping at the two men from a hundred yards away.

  “Contact,” Tommy said. “They’re quick man… Up close this place is gonna be a fucking nightmare.” Tommy lined up his first shot and dropped the closest man. His second shot missed, but his third shot put the undead college kid down for good.

  Glen didn’t use words to reply. He found more things to shoot at and let his rifle do the talking. Tommy sighed, and shot the two women before they got to a quarter of the way to the plane. In the distance, on the other side of the Globemaster he could hear the Marines and soldiers firing their weapons.

  “Volume of fire is steady over there,” Glen said, taking the words from Tommy’s mind. “Push out, get a larger perimeter?”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. He pinched the mic on his neck to broadcast to the larger group. “We’re pushing out ten yards. Have a couple people step out to fill the void.”

  “Good copy,” Captain Allen replied.

  Without waiting, Thomas and Glen walked forward on measured feet, keeping stable and firing a shot every few paces as zombies stood up in the overgrown grass, or appeared from behind buildings or vehicles arrayed around them. In their ears they heard the soldiers and Marines calling out clear, and pushing away from the plane, eating away a circle of safety from the dangerous undead.

  Tommy saw no threats emerging, and stole a glance over his shoulder. Three Polish soldiers had stepped out of the plane to cover their six. He felt a rush of confidence and smiled. Glen shot again.

  “Punisher One,” Thomas heard. The voice belonged to Captain Allen. “Do you feel comfortable clearing out the larger central hangar ahead of you?”

  “Roger that. Punisher pushing forward to breach,” Tommy replied. “Glen?”

  “I got you,” Glen said, and the two SEALs started forward without hesitation.

  Tommy headed straight towards the small office door tucked in the corner of the giant, featureless metal building. The main hangar doors were closed, and would require a forklift or humvee with a tow chain to get open, so they had to enter that way. The two men strode ahead, shooting at targets in the distance, making sure nothing got close to them, The Polish men behind them picked up their fire as well, providing them with time to think and breach the office.

  Tommy went to the window and looked inside.

  SLAM-something hit the glass just opposite his face and he reeled back, almost tripping. He brought the muzzle of his weapon up to fire but checked himself. He wanted to save the glass. On the other side of the window, banging its emaciated, bandana covered face against the glass was a dead man wearing coveralls and a yellow safety helmet.

  “Fuck that scared me,” he blurted. “Asshole.”

  “Shoot him,” Glen said as he covered Tommy.

  “Can’t. I want to save the glass if we hole up in here. It’s not much, but any additional barrier is good,” Tommy said as he slid the rifle to his side and went to the steel door that led into the office. He grabbed the handle and applied downward pressure—the handle budged, and the lock released. He put the side of his foot against the bottom of the door to keep it shut, and drew his sidearm.

  “Ready when you are,” Glen said.

  “Breaching,” Tommy said, and stepped back to yank the door open.

  Before he could, the steel door erupted outward, shoved forward by two more of the grease-coated, coverall wearing undead workers.

  “Fuck!” Tommy yelled as the impact of the door blasted him on his heels. One of the undead collapsed directly on top of him as he snapped off two rounds from the hip. The shots hit home—piercing the chest of the monster—but failing to strike the only spot that mattered.

  From where he stood beside him, Glen ripped off a fast burst of shots, shattering the window to kill the zombie inside the office and the zombie that stumbled forward.

  “Save the bullet,” Glen barked.

  As Tommy jammed the barrel of the pistol upwards into the face of the bandana-obscured zombie Glen slid his weapon to the side and reached down to grab the worker by the back. With his Nomex-gloved hands Glen grabbed the man around the neck and ripped him off of his friend. He tossed him against the building with a resounding metal bang and the two SEALs stepped back or crawled back as appropriate.

  As the worker tried to get to his feet on unstable, panicked legs, Glen unsheathed his knife and punched it into the man’s ear. He crumpled to the pavement so fast Glen lost hold of the knife. The SEAL leaned down to retrieve the tool, but Tommy stopped him.

  “Leave it. We need to clear the building. We’ll come back for it.”

  “Okay Dad. Jesus,” Glen replied. “Sorry I saved your life.”

  Tommy chuckled, but never took his eyes or his pistol off the open steel door that led into the office.

  The hangar was stuffed with the massive aircraft. The entire wall of the warehouse had to be shuttered open to fit it in, and even then, the wingtips had mere inches of space on each side. The Globemaster was a gargantuan flying machine and this storage facility struggled to contain it.

  The ground crew for the plane used abandoned airport equipment retrieved under heavy protection to tow it inside the building, and now that the refugee’s means of aerial escape was safe inside, they could collapse into the hangar and fortify it with the supplies part of the group peeled off to collect.

  Sheets of steel, rebar, concrete blocks, several civilian vehicles that still managed to start and drive, plywood, lumber, even several barricades and rolls of plastic fencing were all collected and transported back—again, under the protection of soldiers, marines, and two very tired SEALs.

  No one had died in the landing and storage of the plane, and considering the frightening foot pace the undead in Germany managed, that was no small feat.

  As the frenetic activity on the tarmac died down the officers gathered in the shadows near the hangar door. Tommy and Glen were invited again.

  “What do we think,” Colonel Fallon posed to the group. “Safe here for now? This building ready to withstand a night or two?”

  “For now,” Captain Allen said as he wiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead and face. “Hangars are sturdy steel, the doors are good. We’ve got the windows barricaded with plywood, and we parked three cars around the entrance there so we can exit
with breathing room if we get swamped. Two other side exits are blocked by salvaged cars too. Tomorrow we can scout out the hotel on the other side of the hangar row here.”

  “The fucking German Hilton? Won’t be enough,” Glen said, mimicking the sweat removal. “There are ten thousand undead marching their asses this way from the downtown area we flew over. They’ll be on top of us within an hour. We’ll never get out.”

  “We’ll get out,” Allen countered. “Blast a hole through the crowd and drive on out. And hey, we already know the fence surrounding the airport is intact, so that’s a solid perimeter.”

  “It’s a fucking chain link fence,” Glen said then laughed. “Solid is not the word you wanted.”

  “I dunno,” Tommy said. “Look, you’re both probably right; we will get surrounded, and we probably could blast our way out, but we can’t afford to. We’d go Winchester just getting on surface streets, then what?”

  “Is this where you propose a genius solution, Petty Officer?” Fallon posed.

  “Did you guys see that fort we flew over?” They all shook their heads no. “Well we did. It’s old, but it looked solid. Like really solid with stone walls, and an elevated interior. I saw hundreds of survivors waving up at us, so I think we can say the place is fortified. I think that’s what we need to head for.”

  “Take a humvee and go?” Sergeant Mikey offered. “Grab some infantry boys and scout it out?”

  Allen started to open his mouth to say something, but a glare from Glen stopped him. Fallon smiled.

  Tommy produced a paper map from his back pocket and motioned for the men to gather in.

  “We’re here,” he pointed at the hangar they stood inside. “And right here, is the fort.” Tommy slid his finger over to the irregular star shaped area that he saw from the air. In German, the map labeled the area as Zitadelle Petersberg.

  “My German is shit,” Sergeant Mikey said, “But that says Citadel Petersberg.”

  “Right,” Tommy said. “I think. Anyway, it’s a castle, or a base, or something, and it’s keeping people safe, and that means if we can get inside it without killing ourselves, or getting them killed, we could have a real stable place to hang our hats.”

  Fallon spit on the ground and nodded in agreement. “How far away is it?”

  “Few miles. Surface roads lead right to it.”

  “I don’t like it,” Glen said. “By now the streets will be asshole to elbow with those fucking corpses. We’d get cut off, guaranteed, then what? Anyone ever driven around here before? I don’t want to get lost without a local to navigate.”

  “I don’t see us as having a choice,” Fallon replied. “The fences will fail. The cars and these steel prefab walls won’t last forever either. All Band-Aids. We need to find a place, and that place looks real good.”

  The noise of a grinding vehicle engine grew in the distance. Something diesel whined closer, and came to an abrupt end with a groaning metal crash. A pair of slow, heavy shots rang out on the outside of the building opposite the airfield where the men stood, near where the crash happened.

  “That wasn’t an M4,” Tommy said and grabbed his helmet off his belt. He bolted away with Glen on his heels.

  The two men rounded the edge of the hangar and sprinted around to its street side, toward the airport main entrance, and the hotel Captain Allen had referred to. They halted at the fence where it met the edge of the hangar, right at the hood of a Mercedes they had parked against building and fortification. The vehicle had been intended to bolster the fence, but instead it’d become a victim of a car accident.

  A soldier rolled around on the ground between the two hangars. Glen went to provide aid as Tommy jumped on the hood of the black vehicle to assess the vehicle that had crashed into it.

  This was a silver Volkswagen sedan, and as he aimed his weapon down at the windshield, two women spilled out of the front seats. A third person—a man with a bolt-action rifle—stood near the car’s trunk, aiming the rifle into the distant, thickening crowd of monsters approaching.

  “Entshuldigen sie!” the short haired driver called out to him. She stumbled into the metal wall of the hangar and her temple careened off the surface with a comically loud bang.

  “English!” Tommy barked as he moved his weapon to the women with the ponytail getting out of the passenger side. “Hands up, show me hands!”

  The woman snapped her flat palms up and looked at the SEAL with fear and irritation.

  “You are American?” she asked him in clean, slightly accented English.

  “Yes. Do you need aid? Is she bitten?” Tommy replied. Below and behind him he felt Glen sliding into cover with the injured soldier.

  “Nein,” she said back to him. “We saw your plane. We had to come.”

  “Locals?” Tommy asked, letting his gaze drift from her for a second to assess the encroaching army of dead. There had to be two hundred just in the streets he could see.

  “Yes. Can we… get out of the car? Come inside? We’d like to talk,” she pleaded, throwing a thumb over her shoulder at the very same horde of undead. “We haven’t long.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Tommy leapt from the hood of the Mercedes onto its roof, and leaned over to help the woman up.

  As the bloody masses closed in Tommy got her, the unconscious driver, and the rifle-wielding man with a scar on his forehead up and over the crashed vehicles, and to safety inside the hangar.

  “That solid fence of yours,” Glen said to Captain Allen as the Marine walked by to assess the damage, “is already fucked.”

  “Secure your opinion,” Allen replied with a snarl, and continued on to fix the issue.

  “I sense animosity,” the woman with the dark ponytail said to Thomas.

  “You ain’t kidding,” he replied, and ushered the crew into the hangar.

  “My name is Katrin, and our crash driver is Stephanie. The man with the rifle who keeps us safe is Dennis,” Katrin explained as they all sat down in a secluded break room with a claustrophobia-inducing ceiling, and lack of windows.

  With them were the Colonel, and the two SEALs. They introduced themselves by name and rank to the locals, and after getting them each bottles of water, they conversed.

  “How bad is it?” Fallon asked.

  “Worst possible,” Dennis blurted. “Almost everyone is dead and dangerous.”

  “Military and police?”

  “Annihilated during the early days of the outbreak,” Katrin said. “There weren’t enough guns to protect everyone and the military wouldn’t use bombs. The loss of life has been… catastrophic.”

  “What about American military bases? Any idea if they’re still operational?” Tommy asked.

  “Before the internet and television went out, we heard they were sending planes home or shoring up defenses. That was almost a year ago,” she said. “No idea what is happening now.”

  “No soldiers moving in the streets? No tanks, helicopters?” Fallon pressed.

  She shook her head. The others did as well.

  “Shit,” the colonel muttered.

  “Did you come from the citadel down the way?” Tommy asked her.

  She nodded. “Yes. They opened it up for shelter early in July, when the death toll climbed and peaked. We have repelled all the dead with no issues. A few violent groups of brigands have grown inside our number, but they have been expelled.”

  “Brigands?” Tommy asked her, confused. “Like pirates?”

  She searched her mind for the words. “A… thugs? Mean people? Selfish men and women who would not sacrifice for the greater good. They stole, intimidated. They were asked to leave. Forced in some cases.”

  “Savages,” Glen added. “Is your head okay? Can we look at it for you?” he asked the woman identified as Stephanie.

  She shook her head. “I’ll have Katrin look at it later. Danke.”

  “You’re a doctor? Nurse?” Fallon asked Katrin.

  “Yes. Neurological nurse.”

  “Jackpo
t,” Fallon said with a chuckle. “You must be real popular back at your citadel.”

  “I am,” she said with a soft laugh. “Some professions are of tremendous use right now. Jobs like, ‘men who know how to shoot guns really well,’ and nurses are very high on the list.”

  “That why you jetted to come say hi?” Tommy asked her.

  “We had to see who you were, and offer help,” Dennis answered him. “And we hoped you might want to come to the citadel to help make it safe.”

  “Thought you said you’d repelled all attacks?” Glen asked them.

  “I do not worry about our past successes,” Katrin said to him. “I worry about our future failures. And if you turned out to be willing to help us, I would worry less about that.”

  “I like her,” Fallon said with a grin as he stood. “I’m glad we’ve made your acquaintance, though I fear getting back to your castle might be a bit of a journey, based on the reality outside this building.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Your shooting has drawn in thousands of the undead. By morning, there will be no leaving here.”

  “Fuck,” Glen said with a chuckle.

  “Unless you know how to get around,” Stephanie said with more clarity than she’d had thus far.

  “You’re gonna get us around?” Glen asked her, eyebrows launched to the sky. He laughed out loud. “No offense, but I’d rather not get led around by a crash test dummy over here? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m hurt,” Stephanie said, letting her chin drop. “But I understand your skepticism. My most recent performance was underwhelming.”

  “You got that right,” Glen agreed.

  “Stephanie was a tour guide here in Erfurt before the end. She knows the city better than anyone,” Katrin explained. “And most importantly, she knows all about the citadel’s tunnel system.”

  “Say again,” all three Americans said in unison.

  Stephanie’s chin came up, revealing a grin any Cheshire cat would approve of. “The fortress has a labyrinth of tunnels beneath it. Originally built so soldiers could move anywhere inside it without having to walk on the surface, exposed to bombs, or arrows, or whatever. But there are a few tunnels we didn’t give tours of.”