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

by Philbrook, Chris

  Two new plans put into action; One goat, one sheep, four chickens and one cow are going on the butcher’s block tomorrow morning to make sure we have enough protein for a few more days of hunting. We’ve also opted to send another four hunters out, leaving the wall insufficiently defended. We’re that worried about food and morale.

  Summed up; if we starve, there’s no reason to guard a wall at all.

  Second level of plan; the NVC garrison led by Dana Lemanowicz immediately offered up their guys to either hunt, or to man the wall. It’s their job to protect us, and they stepped up. Kudos to Dana for being good about it, and realizing that it’s not only about being ready for a fight. Kevin asked them to supply four people to the wall, and to send out two hunters. The rest will remain in place as usual, in the event something goes awry and we need a QRF.

  As well, Michelle asked Kevin to hold off on his trip to the airport to build up our aviation capabilities. It had been a priority, but we can’t afford the loss of personnel right now for a non-essential trip. Again, there’s no point trying to fly on an empty stomach. He agreed.

  I won’t say we’re in panic mode, but that’s only because I won’t say it.

  I’m headed back into the woods in the early morning. I’m cashing out here and heading up into Michelle and I’s room so we can spend some time together. We haven’t seen each other much the past week, and I feel strained, and more than a little empty. When we do see each other, all we talk about is logistics, and plans, other people and their needs, and rarely about us. There’s always one more thing to plan for, or to do before we take time for ourselves. Then we’re exhausted, and sleeping with the cat. At least Otis replenishes both of us. He’s a font of energy we can tap into.

  That changes tonight. Even if all we get is twenty minutes of peace and quiet together, I’m fighting for it. I miss looking at her talk.

  -Adrian

  April 30th

  Weirdest thing happened today. Set me on edge. Due to timing on shift changes, and someone having to take a shit, I was on the wall with the leader of the NVC guys, Lt. Dana, when one of his guys yells up from the base of the wall to him. The hour was early. 7 or 8 am I think.

  Guy says, “Lieutenant, do you want me to make the call for today?”

  Dana says back, “Yeah go ahead. Tell them all is well.”

  After the younger kid heads off and we keep walking, I called Dana out. “What’s the deal with that? What call is he talking about?”

  “Well, uh, we check in with Calendar Mountain so they know we’re okay. There’s still worry that things could get complicated,” he said back.

  “I think you mean to say violent. Where’s the trust, bro?” I joked, but I was miffed.

  “You’re not a stupid man, Adrian. It’s a precaution. If we fail to check in, they send the cavalry to investigate.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how do they know it’s really you making the call? They can’t know everyone’s voice. What’s stopping us from taking you out and just making the calls?”

  “No, they don’t know all our voices. We have codes. When we check in we use the day’s code and they reference it. If someone were to radio in and use the wrong code, or not use a code at all, they’d send help. It’s for our safety. I hope you understand.”

  I did. It didn’t make me feel any better about it. I did feel better knowing Dana was loose lipped enough to tell me more than he should’ve. I guess it could be trust, and not him being careless. I’ll take it either way.

  We walked the rest of the morning in the decent weather until the right people came to relieve us, and I pretended like I didn’t want to throw him in the river with each step. All I could think about was; where are the codes kept?

  In other news; food is doing… okay. We got a smallish moose and five deer since my last entry, plus Becca and her boyfriend have been able to yield out some fast growing crops in all their new bays, and with the repurposed generators we moved over to juice the joint. The very first bits of spinach are coming off now, and we’ll get more everyday from here on out. I guess spinach and kale grow fast, so they swapped in and amped up production for us. My sister is a bright one…

  I can’t speak for stoner Ryan in the same way, but he gets a pass today. He’s yet to let me down and that’s saying something.

  We’ll still be hungry for another week, maybe two, but people are doing okay with the meat we took down, and Abby’s using her newsletter to spin the good news, not just report the bad.

  I find it funny that she’s willing to alter the way she reports news to guide our people in the direction that suits our community best, in her opinion. When she thought telling everyone my operational secrets was in their best interests, she did. When she thinks that telling them about the ‘awesome spinach harvest’ is best, she does that. She could of course report that we had two boxes of pasta ruined in the kitchen yesterday because someone overcooked them…

  But that wouldn’t help people be positive about life, and our progress… would it? It’s far better to report that spinach and kale are just days away.

  I should be angry about her being a hypocrite, but she’s helping maintain the status quo, as well as at our other locations. (Still on the fence about calling the Factory one of our locations.)

  Bah, I’m pissy for no good reason. Check that. I’ve got plenty of good reasons to be pissy.

  In other news, the NVC sent half a dozen armed bodies to Spring Meadow to help with security and construction. They continue to claim that they cannot spare food for the new people, and Michelle compromised with having them send bodies. Ryan is heading over to the development tomorrow to start collecting materials from buildings to construct a series of hydroponics bays over that way. They don’t have any substantial space inside the brick walls of the community, but there’s an apartment building a block away they’re gutting to turn into a food generation facility. Might be a month to get rolling, but that additional urban food supply will be solid gold. We should’ve done this months ago. We spend too much time putting out fires instead of clearing away the flammable shit and building for the future.

  We’ll see how it goes.

  I’m guardedly optimistic about our near future. This year’s early crops are going into the ground now and we’ve shifted manpower to help Ollie. He’s going hard on peas, beets, onions, corn, cukes and some other shit. He claims if it goes well, we can have beets in a month. I hope he’s right. He’s also sourcing new fields nearby we can till and get in process.

  I’m tired. Otis is acting strange again, rubbing up on my calves and trying to jump into my lap as I write here at the kitchen table. He hasn’t done that in a long time. Maybe I’ll head over to the recliner and give the little guy some lap time before I retire. Michelle is over at the Factory tonight, meeting with them over something, so it’s just me, the cat, and some laptop porn.

  I guess it’s not all bad.

  -Adrian

  May 2014

  May 5th

  Taco day, bitch. Happy Cinco de Mayo, Mr. Journal.

  I think Mexican food was a critically underappreciated culinary delight before the apocalypse. Can we talk about how almost an entire culture’s cuisine is essentially the same six ingredients combined in slightly different ways, and presented in slightly different fashions? I mean… tacos and burritos are like one degree of separation from each other in terms of what goes inside them. And let’s be honest… they’re both brilliant and delicious.

  Can you tell I’m hungry? Jesus I’m so hungry.

  I’ve lost twelve pounds that I couldn’t afford to lose the last two and a half weeks. I feel like ass despite mainlining vitamins like they’re breath mints. I think the shelf life on these multi’s has been reached, and breached. I mean that’s based on the expiration date being like a year ago, but who gives a shit? Even if they’re like 20% effective, it’s better than nothing at all. I might not be getting any calories, but at least I’m getting that.

>   Right?

  We’re pushing through. Weather has officially turned for the better for several days now, and everything is turning green as it ought to. Spirits are improved from that alone. Pretty crap winter all things considered. A lot of snow.

  I’m tired. I’ve straddled here and Spring Meadow with Hal and Peter White from MGR for days again. Old man Peter has been insistent on meeting the ship people. He wants to help, and I think he’s excited to talk to people with different accents.

  For a break I took a single ‘day off’ to head out into the woods with my old Tac-22 hunting for rabbits. I did excellent, and took down 14 over the course of yesterday. With all the neighborhoods overgrown with grasses and saplings all you have to do is find a ladder and climb up on a roof to see fresh small game moving everywhere. I need to get the guys and gals on it with shotguns too. There’s enough quail, duck and pheasant to feed us for a few weeks, just in the neighborhood I went to. Stevie Wonder could rack up a high score right now. I wonder how Stevie fared with the undead? Not all that well, I imagine. I haven’t met any blind people since the end, and there’s got to be something to that.

  Admittedly, it’s a little dumb to go hunting by myself, but I need to get away. There’s no place for me to escape to here.

  I’ve been back and forth to Spring Meadow to help with some triage needs. As you might imagine with two disparate peoples coming together there’s been a fair amount of sickness swapping. The Brits have come down with a case of our flu it would appear, and a mess of the Spring Meadow locals have come down with some stomach bug too. Not as bad as the foreigners, but still. The collective level of need has had Fletcher and his wife Annie shift over there full time temporarily to help care for everyone. Because they’ve had so many people knocked out with the ninja shits, they’ve asked for more bodies to fill the gaps, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m covering the gate as anonymously as I can to avoid being fawned over by the Brits, though they all know me now.

  Wine Glass Apocalypse has seen to it that I am well known amongst their people.

  Fuckers.

  Speaking of the bards, the big motherfucker who plays rhythm guitar for them, Gerald, is one of the sickest of them all. He looked like a card-carrying member of the Addams Family before and now… man. It’s eerie. I stopped in to say hi to him and the other women in the band before I crashed and he’s looking like shit. Sunken face, yellowed eyes and covered in sweat. Gerald lost a toe to frostbite and it still hasn’t healed right. You can see the red, angry flesh of his foot that Fletcher is fighting with our dwindling supply of antibiotics. I keep thinking of the time that dog tried to eat my balls, and the infection I got that nearly did me in. I’m not a doctor, but I think the wound on his foot is dragging him down worse than the others who are sick. Hard to fight a battle on two fronts. Hitler figured that out the hard way.

  Credit to Velma and Bend it Like Beckham; they’re taking good care of him. A band in more ways than one. They’ve been through a lot together. More than we have, arguably. Their apocalypse started when ours did, and it kept going after ours came to an end.

  I’m sleeping in Spring Meadow tonight by the way. Adam was kind enough to offer me a room in he and his son’s house any time I need it. Michelle was back at the Factory tonight until late, sorting out some kind of legal/moral argument between Celeste and a few of the people there. Rights of possession as it pertains to common spaces or something. They couldn’t sort it out on their own, and they called her for help. She’ll help.

  So here I am. Hal is sleeping downstairs on the couch in the living room snoring away. It’s nice to give him a few days of rest away from the responsibility of the infant. Tough on Abby though. The old man White is sleeping on the floor near the back door of the house, and I think he’s sleeping with his small Beretta in his hand. Creepy old guy.

  Adam crashed an hour ago and his son a couple hours before that. Single dad killing it here in the post-zombie world. His son is polite and funny, and he’s a good man. I envy him. One day I hope I can be as consistently as good a man as Adam. You know, Adam reminds me of a slightly less angry version of my brother Caleb. I blame the marines for fostering that aggression in him. He’s still a great man and a great father, I won’t take that from him. Anyway, Adam is a good dude. Tad bit religious for me (he was a pastor in Longview Texas before heading here) but he’s mellowed on that. His word choice in my presence has been distinctly different the past few months. As in, less ‘God’ references and more vague uses of ‘divinity.’ It’s hard to describe. Less Jesus talk, but no less talk of faith. Maybe nearly losing the whole world causes a pastor to revaluate their semantics.

  I’m bugging out to bed. Actually, no I’m not. I’m really hungry, and I can’t sleep in a weird place without at least a little something to eat. I know they don’t have much spare here (Adam’s kitchen supplies here are just as pathetic as ours back at Bastion) but I do have an MRE in the humvee we came in earlier. I’ll spoil myself and go get it. Eat and sleep, like the good old days.

  Status quo everywhere else, Mr. Journal. Once we get over this flu bug here, summer will be upon us and the crops will be catching up to our food needs as we plant even more food than ever before.

  Turning the corner, Mr. Journal, turning the corner. I miss Michelle. And Otis.

  -Adrian

  May 7th

  I can’t…

  It’s all different now. Or the same, again? Everything. The whole game just changed, and in a way we had no idea it could. Just like that. Should’ve expected it.

  I’m going to be sick.

  It’s been a shit show of proportions I can’t even grasp. Bigger than any problem we’ve faced since the dead were here. You know why?

  Because the undead are back. They’re fucking back.

  The other night when I left Adam’s place to get that meal I took my sweet ass time wandering through the gated neighborhood here, looking for a nice place to sit and eat. The night was crisp; a warm spring day had given way to a night that winter hadn’t quite relinquished. I love that weather.

  Sigh.

  Spring Meadow had been storing the majority of the ill outside of the walls in a nearby rug and flooring store that they’d repurposed into a clinic. The building had worked well, but with the locals getting sick too, it became overwhelmed and they moved a handful of ill back into one of the first houses from the road in the development. Same house Kevin and I stayed in the night before we headed into the city on March 3rd of 2012. The day I found Cassie, and set us both free from our torments. Appropriate that it all seems to be starting again, right there.

  For no reason I can remember I put my ass onto a stone bench in the front yard of the house across the street and got my chili with Mexican style rice ready to eat. That it was Cinco de Mayo and I got that meal randomly struck me as funny, and I was chuckling, thinking about my silly bullshit on the 5th as I ate. I had just finished the bulk of my meal with the crescent moon far above when I heard a muffled noise from across the street.

  I’d heard that noise before, and everything in my body dialed up. A primal, animal response. I had heard a scream. From fear or pain I didn’t know, but no one screams like that unless they’re being hurt, or they’re about to be hurt. I dropped my last cracker with cheese on the bench and drew my 10mm Kimber. I had left my M4A1 in the back of the humvee for the sake of keeping it out of the eyes of the NVC people. We’re still trying to keep those upper echelon guns under wraps when we can. Not sure how long that secret can be held now.

  Like I said I drew the pistol and snapped the thumb safety off. I had my walkie on my left hip and radioed out to whoever was working the night guard shift that screams were coming from the house I was walking to. A few unfamiliar voices responded that they were on the way, and I moved to within ten feet of the front door of the house. Big house with a lot of windows, if you recall. All of them in Spring Meadow are. Big, that is.

  I kept my distance from the windows but mo
ved side to side trying to get a look at what might’ve let slip that scream.. I knew the sick people were immediately inside the front door in the large entry foyer, and I knew the friends and family were in the bedrooms and the common living spaces just off the center passage. Inside the house I couldn’t see anything; the lights were off, and the way the moon illuminated the world, it put just enough shine on the glass to keep my vision hampered. I went for the small flashlight in my cargo pants pocket, but didn’t get it out before I heard another scream, then another one, deeper in tone. First female, second male. My ears didn’t need to see.

  You always wait for backup, right? Always. Because going into a dark, scary place alone is stupid. But with my flashlight handy, it wouldn’t be dark. I made the impulsive call to go in. I had to help. I couldn’t sit there waiting for people I didn’t know to come help when people were screaming, and something bad was happening. Besides… it couldn’t be the undead, right? That had to make rushing in far safer.

  I’m Adrian Ring right? Scribe and Soul, savior of the Americas, survivor of a headshot and vicious dog bite.

  I’m bulletproof.

  I went at the front door with hell on my mind, both hands up and wrists crossed, one with pistol, one with flashlight. With the flashlight hand I tried the front door and found it locked. I took a step back and got ready to kick the fucking thing off its hinges. As I stepped forward, boot going forward with all the strength I could muster, the door opened. I tried to stop, but it was too late, everything had uncoiled.