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

by Philbrook, Chris

  “You have my attention,” Tommy said and leaned forward.

  “There is a tunnel that exits the fortress and surfaces beneath an old church about halfway to here. We could more easily ferry your people to that entrance, and not risk the full trip,” Stephanie said to him.

  “How would we get to this entrance?” Fallon asked the ‘retired’ tour guide. “Vehicles? On foot?”

  “I do not make plans for the military,” she answered him. “But I can show you the way.”

  Outside, against the wall of the hangar that faced the street, the bodies pressed in, and began to beat on the building. Within a few minutes, the noise irritated, and within an hour, it deafened.

  April 2014

  April 7th

  Michele and I made camp at Spring Meadow for almost a full week. We just got back. I feel like a missionary in Africa after helping all these people. Well, add snow and rain, but Africa, really.

  Holy shit, what an experience. Humanitarian work on a scale we’ve never accomplished before. I mean, humanitarian work, period. Actual altruistic assistance to strangers.

  I wish I’d brought you along Mr. Journal. I would’ve written more while it was fresh in my head. Names, places, people, all that. I’ll try and catch up, and try to remember as best I can. Let me set the stage…

  Europe, is a nightmare.

  I can’t figure out if that’s shocking or not. I mean, everything here was a shit storm for so long, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Europe is all fucked up too. What I guess does surprise me, is that they are still struggling with undead there.

  As recently as their day of departure, zombies roam, just as they roamed here for so long. Of course… there are more of them there than there were here. As they describe the countryside and cities, there are still millions of them, hungry and endless as far as the eye can see at times. The people we have talked to claim that there are so many because there were fewer armed police, and far fewer weapons in the public sector. I can’t say if that’s true or not, but it sounds like it could be true. A single person in a safe shooting position, armed with a decent rifle and a hundred rounds here could conceivably kill fifty or more undead before succumbing or displacing to find more ammo. Do the math on that. If we have a million armed citizens, and they each kill… let’s say 20 undead each with their firearms, that evens things out considerably. What’re you going to do with a cricket bat? What are your chances against the horde with a kitchen knife, or if you’re lucky, a wood splitting axe? What’s the math on that?

  I guess little Sylvia was right; me defeating Cassie and forgiving myself with Michelle and Kevin’s help didn’t save the world. It only saved here. Whatever here means. Not Europe. Sylvia (in her creepy fucking little girl lost in the woods way) said that the three of us were only one part of nine. Three Trinities.

  Three groups of people to judge the world by, not just one. And to think of the weight I put on myself… it turns out I was only responsible for a fraction of the world’s success or failure. Granted that fraction is one third.

  Easy peasy. Nailed it. One third done. Gimme my fucking beer.

  So zombies in the millions or billions roam the English countryside, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, etc, and according to some of the people who migrated to Europe from points beyond, Russia, Iran, and Algiers too. So pretty much the rest of the world. Totally fucked. Great news.

  They’re also still unable to dream of the living, and some of them have dreamt of our Trinity, though they say their dreams have changed since they’ve arrived here in America. Some are able to dream of the living, though most of those people report of being able to dream only of the Trinity here; Michelle, Kevin and I.

  Most of what we learned came from three people, all English (British, whatever). Get this; they were members of a punk rock band back in northern England that were on tour that day down in Brighton, on the southern coast near the English channel. The band called themselves ‘Wine Glass Apocalypse’ and the band members are Beatrice Smith (lead singer, think Velma), Gerald Lee (rhythm guitar, think Lurch), and Parvati Sandeep (drums and backup vocals, think Bend it Like Beckham). They’re an eclectic bunch, and get this; they made their way through the shit over there by traveling at night from settlement to settlement, trading entertainment, mail delivery and news for food, drink, shelter and clothing.

  They’re bards.

  They’re fucking bards.

  Unreal, right? True story, swear on Gilbert’s grave. Anyhoo, Beatrice, Gerald and Parvati are flush with information about the southern area of England. They traveled from London to Wales and Brighton and back, and when the ship departed under extreme duress from a Brighton dock two weeks ago they begged borrowed and stole to get the fuck outta Dodge.

  Can’t blame ‘em.

  The captain of the freighter fell off the side of the boat during a big storm, but the first mate led them to the east coast safely. They traveled with the people who got off the boat, heading inland and asking the locals who weren’t afraid to talk about the Trinity, and where to find us. They’ve been walking since Portland Maine, and that’s no short jaunt. They laughed it off, happy that they could travel during both the day and night without fear of being eaten alive.

  Though they did voice some concern over the number of firearms they’ve come across, and the amount of people who have no qualms about pointing them at traveling foreigners. (Or locals, for that matter.) Also the amount of people that believe a warning shot has replaced the traditional greeting of a wave and a pleasant hello.

  But they made it here. 130 souls across the rough seas of the Atlantic Ocean, straight to our doorstep.

  Give me your tired, give me your poor…

  Though as cool as it has been to feed them, clothe them, and hear their stories, it worries the living shit out of me that zombies are still everywhere, somewhere. Can you imagine it? The great cities of Europe, overrun with undead? Can you envision Tower Bridge teeming over with undead? Can you see the feet of the Eiffel Tower planted in a crowd of endless bodies? What about Berlin, shoulder to shoulder with the dead? What about the canals of Venice, blocked up with floating corpses that just won’t die? Or the wilds of Africa with herds of gazelle and wildebeests trampling over errant undead tribesman. That might be neat. But seriously. It also means that my brother Thomas experienced in Afghanistan what happened here, and he hasn’t gotten a reprieve from it, if he’s still alive.

  I hope he’s still alive. I hope William is too, wherever he is.

  Wine Glass Apocalypse reports that most days traveling the British countryside or even urban areas, you’d encounter no survivors. Not one soul. Five hundred undead, but not a single person to say hi to. Only the most robust fortifications held, and most of those were elevated. Think the top floors of apartment buildings, government offices, or the fortified castles that litter the countryside. Remember; moats and walls work against mindless undead.

  It also speaks to the reality that whoever is in the Trinity over there… isn’t getting shit done. Assuming of course Sylvia’s bizarre visions about there being three trinities is right. Either they haven’t figured out who they are yet, or they haven’t done anything with that knowledge. Maybe they died already, and the whole of Europe, Africa, Asia, whatever is straight bent over and fucked dry.

  What would’ve happened here if I had been shot and killed that day in the orchard? What might’ve become had Sunderman been a better shot by a quarter of an inch?

  My neck still aches when it rains.

  Well, that’s not my problem. I did what I was supposed to do. I held my end of the bargain that was thrust upon me. The others have to do what they have to do.

  I’m a little bummed about the NVC. While our relations are good, when we pushed them to get aid for the foreigners they pushed back. They said they didn’t have adequate food stores to give much, and that the new people needed to start working to earn their keep before they gave up anything to them, and Michelle wasn’t hav
ing it. You gotta see these people Mr. Journal. They’re emaciated and frozen solid. Most of them don’t have winter clothes nearly adequate enough to survive our kind of cold snaps. Some of them had frostbite on their hands, toes and feet when we got to them, and Ethan, Joel, and Fletcher are going to be working on amputations for days.

  Thank God the weather is changing. We’ve had heavy snows this winter with regular cold, and it seems to be breaking. We haven’t had snow in a few days, and the temps have crept up high enough that the ice in the gutters of buildings is dripping. Maybe we’ll get a break and spring will come quick.

  Sad that we had to explain NEED to the NVC. Mizaki was a prick over it, but Michelle swayed him. Get the people operational, then put them to work. You don’t ask someone who can’t walk to get a job before selling them a wheelchair.

  Mizaki is a dipped turd in my humble opinion right now.

  Dipped in what, I don’t know, but he’s a shit stick with a kernel of corn on the side in my book for the foreseeable future. But, I must say, the asshole did come through in the clutch, and sent us a humvee loaded with fresh-ish produce, some canned goods and winter clothes from their ski resort stores to give the people. A little bit of medical supplies too, but thankfully we didn’t need much. Toe and finger amputations are apparently something we are able to do a lot of.

  One of the weirdest things I’ve ever written. Easily.

  Spring Meadow has opened their gates for most of the people for care, and they’re actively working to bring the nearby homes and buildings up to speed to house them as weather, materials and energy permits. The houses aren’t inside their brick walled compound, but they’re close enough, and once a day they bring folks in for care, food, and whatnot. The immigrants are happy to do all they can to earn what they’re being given.

  Totally worth it to help them.

  And, it’s nice to hear more about the rest of the world. I mean, I wish it were better news, but news is news.

  Abby’s going to have a field day doing interviews with these people. Not sure how Bastion will take news of the dead still roaming the world.

  -Adrian

  April 18th

  Mr. Journal… Super busy. Sorry it took me eleven days to sit down and write something.

  People are a lot freaked out. News of the presence of undead in Europe has put people on their heels here. Safety is a relative idea, you see. What once was unthinkably dangerous becomes very safe after you’ve experienced something worse. For example, after you’ve been shot at while standing in the open, getting shot at when you’re in cover doesn’t feel nearly as dangerous as it did before you were first shot at.

  This is what we’re experiencing. People thought they were safe in a post-zombie world filled with armed assholes with low moral standing. Now that they know the undead are still somewhere, and we still have assholes with low moral standings, paranoia is off the charts.

  I’m really pissed, but Michelle responded to people’s fears and asked the NVC to station a few more people here. They agreed, and sent down four more soldiers to bolster their garrison. We didn’t need it. Not in the least, but they’re here now, and in the couple days they’ve been moving about, people do seem to have settled.

  We told everyone the news of Spring Meadow at a town hall meeting in our multi-purpose cafeteria. Skipping the dialogue verbatim, it was a ruckus, but we survived. Michelle managed everyone’s fears so capably with her calm tone and patience, while Kevin, myself, and Abby stood at her side. Melissa spoke up several times to quell someone yelling while she held her new baby Barbara Ann with little Martha clinging to her leg, red hair wild and bouncing. There’s a fierceness in our women with babies. The women here in general. I see in Abby’s face and I saw it in Melissa’s. I love it, even though it scares the shit out of me.

  I’ve been moving back and forth from Spring Meadow on the regular with Hal and a rotating third body. I’ve been helping renovate houses and listening to the stories of the travelers. Hal has been a new man reconnecting with his fellow countrymen. It’s easy to forget he’s not from around here, even though he has an accent. When I’m not doing work over there with him, I’m managing Kevin’s anxiety about the four new NVC guys at Bastion, and the better weather we’re getting and how spring will bring more threats to us.

  I’m not sleeping well. Between baby Gavin struggling to rest at night and the general level of fucked up dreams I’m having, it’s been work to get rest. I should be sleeping like a log, but I’m not. I talk about sleep a lot. I realize that suddenly.

  I’m still really worried about food. Like, I spend a lot of my free time talking to an equally exhausted Ollie, and my sister Becca trying to find a way to make food grow faster. As meaningful and important as it was to help the ship of refugees, feeding an additional 130 people has strained our stores to the breaking point.

  I hate to say this, so I’ll whisper it; Mizaki may have been right to hesitate on feeding them.

  I will never admit that in public. Not even to Michelle. Us head-motherfuckers-in-charge had the ration-cutting talk this morning. Meal sizes are being trimmed starting tomorrow, and we’re pulling four guards from the wall rotation to send out hunting. Ollie got real happy, and Kevin got real not happy.

  James Halwitz is going out into the woods (he’s our best hunter, by far) as is Texas Rich, Hawaii Dave, and Bud and his wife Donna. They’re going on horseback. We’re hoping each of them can pull down a deer, or bear, or moose within a week. The wildlife has come back to a degree that could happen. Five average sized whitetail deer should yield something around 200 to 250 pounds of meat for us. We can also use the bones for broth, the hide for clothing/blankets/rugs, and someone somewhere will find a way to use the other shit. I’m told if each person eats a half pound of venison each day for protein, that’s 400 to 500 servings. I forget exactly how many people we have now, but the number is well over 350 if you count the new people.

  So basically five deer and the chicken eggs from our coop covers our protein needs across our entire population for a single day. Maybe a day and a half. Two if the deer are chubby and we eat light. A moose or large bear would add to that, but we can’t assume anything.

  Fuck me.

  If we’re lucky, they’ll pull down more than one deer each a week for the next few weeks, but again… that’s optimism. MGR is in the same boat, as is the Factory and Spring Meadow. Spring Meadow is worse off actually. They depleted to almost zero feeding the new people.

  To cover the needs of our empty bellies, the elderly are sitting in the cold at Auburn Lake and by the river to fish, we’re sending kids out to forage for berries and wild shit we can pick, and we’re breaking into our canned goods stores. Becca and Ryan have asked for even more hydro bays, and a couple people they can train to help manage them. The shit thing is that no matter how fast we build the units the food still has to grow. There’s only so much people can do to make plants grow faster. We have the gear for new units around here already, but space might be an issue too. The old gymnasium is already pretty much full and structures on Bastion are filling up or full up already. Never mind that bays need lights, and lights need electricity, and to make electricity we need diesel, and we’re pissing through that like there’s no tomorrow. Not only is the candle lit at both ends, but the fucking Jinx Fairy is taking a blowtorch to it.

  Michelle is reaching out to the NVC to see what they can offer us. I feel like the asshole friend who always shows up asking for money or a couch to crash on.

  I’m eating light for the next few days. Shit. Maybe I’ll dig a deer rifle out of the armory and head over to where the Farm was. I know the deer used to be thick over there, and I don’t mind the cold much. Another hunter is what we need right now.

  Yeah. I’ll do that. I’ll check in when I can.

  -Adrian

  April 23rd

  It took less than a week for the food situation to get worse, as you can imagine it would’ve. Fucking Jinx Fairy. That’s what I
get for assuming anything. The power of positive thinking can eat my asshole with syrup.

  I just got back in from a third straight day in the woods, hunting, and I’m tired and colder than I’ve been in a long time. Spring got a little sidetracked on the trip getting here, and the mornings have been brutally cold with frost and dampness in the air. Rain has been steady, and it sucks. Hours spent sitting or laying in the woods is normally an enjoyable way to pass the time for me, but when it’s like that, I’ll take a pass. Hot cocoa, recliner, a warm blanket, and television please.

  Sadly, none of those things feeds my people.

  Our canned goods stores were lower than expected, and our hunters (myself included) haven’t pulled down shit. Two rabbits and a couple turkeys, which is better than nothing but not good enough. The NVC hasn’t been able to send us any food either, so right now we’re on 50% rations across the board. We have to last for a few weeks to make it to the next batch of hydro crops, and to buy us time for the hunters to bring something down. Anything. Rabbits, fucking squirrels. We’re about to start digging up slugs and chewing on leaves. At least the sugar maples are producing sap for us to boil down into syrup.

  I don’t get how we have come up so short on food so fast. I thought we had this winter in the bag as it related to food.

  I’m forgetting about the Brits. We didn’t anticipate feeding an extra 130 mouths. Not to mention we’re now feeding 14 extra mouths from up north. They brought food to supplement, but it’s MRE/canned goods and to the best of my knowledge, they aren’t using it yet. I need to talk to Michelle and get her to push that idea. Eat your own food, strangers.

  People are starting to look unhealthy and worse yet, they’re acting angry and lashing out against one another from frustration. Kevin and the shooters have had to break up more than one fight here the past few days. One of our teenagers (a kid named Adam MacDonald) had his arm broken in a shoving match with one of the older ladies here. She lost her mind after she realized what she did to the kid, but still. Hungry people do crazy shit, and we have to do something before it gets worse. I don’t think we’re anywhere near true desperation, but it won’t take long for things to go real south for us. In truth, I have no way of knowing.