“That’s not what it’s about, man. You’re a fucking icon, bro. You three do shit people write comic books about like it’s your job. Because it is. Stop trying to be humble about it,” Jason challenged. Murmurs agreed with him across the room.
Michelle broke in. “Jason, if you could give us a few minutes. Tim, I hear your concern, and we need to make sure we are all aware of the consequences of our decision here today. The way we make decisions here is… strange on a good day, and I need us all to be present for this. While we don’t vote normally, I am suggesting that perhaps we do just that.”
“Vote for what?” Kevin asked her.
“Vote for a plan to make peace, or perhaps to go to war,” she said, somber.
Kevin looked at Adrian, then back to her. “There aren’t enough people here to go to war. We could hamstring them maybe. Do some damage to buy us time and get them to forget about attacking us, but there’s no winning a war against them. Not without a lot more than what we got. We still need to figure out how to get past their ‘all safe’ radio check, which is coming up soon. Hours away.”
Michelle showed him her palms and a shrug. “Maybe I should rephrase it. Let’s say we must decide on whether or not to pursue a diplomatic solution, or whether we pursue a course of confrontation? I’m working out of my element, Kevin, help me.”
He laughed again, and nodded.
“So. With that said, I’ve brought this cardboard box here, and a few hundred slips of paper. I’m going to ask you all to write down whether or not you want to fight the NVC, or whether or not you want us to try and make peace.” Michelle lifted the stale brown box up from the floor and looked around for a place to set up her impromptu voting booth.
“No,” Adrian said, stepping to her. “No voting.”
She looked at him, confused. “What? Why not? I would think people would want their voice heard. A fair way to make such an important decision would be to vote democratically.”
“Yeah that’s a great idea. It’d be a greater idea if we were actually a democracy, but we aren’t. We’re a benevolent dictatorship that pretends to be a democracy most days. Today is not the day to pretend to be what we aren’t anymore. Today, you, as our leader, get to make the decision. You know the facts better than everyone around us. You know the stakes. You know what’s to be gained, and what can be lost. Time to not be humble, right? I say… you tell us what’s going to happen. Is this the last resort?”
The room remained silent, save for a few nervous coughs.
“Adrian… I don’t know. I’m uncomfortable with sending people to fight. What if there’s a way for us to make peace with them? What if we-“
“I know,” he said, interrupting her. “That’s why I think you need to make the decision. Because you know what can be said. You know them. You’ve met them. You’ve been happy with them, and you’ve been angry with them. Because you have a horse in that race whether you run it or not, and because if you decide to do it, you know you have to. You’ll know there’s no other choice.”
“If we fight, it would mean you’d go, wouldn’t it?” she asked him, already knowing the answer.
“I wouldn’t ask anyone to go in my place,” he said back to her. “I’m your horse, my dear.”
“I don’t know if I’m prepared for that.” She sighed and turned from him. Michelle wiped a lock of blonde hair from her eyes and looked at the people of Bastion. Tired, scared and hungry they watched as the Trinity stood before them, human and fragile, scared and still there, still strong. “They stole from us. They sent assassins here. They could’ve been diplomatic. They could’ve asked us to do something differently, but they didn’t. They’ve sent more and more power here to ‘help’ us, but clearly now, it’s a ruse to gain greater power over us. They aren’t even being honest with the people they’ve sent here,” she thought out loud into a room filled with silence.
“Right,” Adrian said. “So what would you say to them to make them give up the idea that they still need to handle Hal, Becky, Shelby, and maybe Gavin and Chloe? What would we say to them to make them move beyond the fact that we just slaughtered two dozen of their best?”
“They’ll never trust us again,” she said.
“No,” Kevin replied. “They never trusted us, and we never really trusted them in the first place either. We allowed them in because we thought we couldn’t beat them if it came to violence. We capitulated to avoid a fight.”
“Can you beat them?” she asked Adrian.
“In a fair fight, hell no. But I don’t know. I know that if we don’t do something to them before they do something to us, we won’t be able to beat them. And by beat them, I mean do enough strategic damage immediately to make attacking us seem impossible.”
“Are you willing to do it?”
“They tried to kill my Abby. I’m only in this cafeteria because you asked me to be here. Abby and I would be halfway up Calendar Mountain with chainsaws and hand grenades right now if I had my way.”
The room laughed, but neither Adrian nor Abby did.
“Will you do it?” Michelle asked him directly.
“I can’t do it alone. I’ll need some help.”
“Who? How many people?” she asked him.
“Kevin. Maybe a few other shooters. Small numbers so if we’re taken out the rest can still make a stand here. That or feign ignorance and you can throw us under the bus after we die. We’re just a bunch of rogue operatives if we fail. But we can hurt them bad if we’re clever. We’ll come at them sideways.”
“Sideways? What will you do?” she asked him.
Adrian started to say something but stopped. He looked to a slate-faced Kevin, then into the crowd. He sought out familiar faces, the faces of friends who he had gone to battle with before, faces he trusted. He saw old faces like Quan, and Ethan and Joel, and new faces, like Hawaii Dave, and the odd old man Mr. White, and his crew of policemen family. The old man from Virginia matched Adrian’s gaze, and Adrian felt a flush of confidence come towards him.
“Adrian? What will you do?”
He sighed, and spoke with deliberate words, chosen with pain.
“I will do terrible things Michelle. I will kill, I will murder, I will blow shit up, and I will do all of it in the name of the people of Bastion. For a better chance at a future for our people, and the way of life we are trying to rebuild here. But make no mistake; I will do awful, awful things in your name. In our name. I don’t want to do it, but I’ll do it because I’m good at it, and because if I do it, others won’t have to bear the burdens that come with it.”
Michelle looked to the floor, overcome with a flood of emotions. In the crowd, multiple people suffered the same fate. Crying came, then sobbing as the crushing weight of Adrian’s words pressed down on them.
“Just tell me it’s what you think we need to survive, and I’ll see it done, or die trying,” the big man said without fanfare.
“I… I don’t know.”
He stepped to her, and put his broad hands on her shoulders. “This is the way it should be. For far too long, old men sent kids to war—to die—without ever meeting them, and without having to pay the price. You can make this decision knowing full well it is what must be done, and knowing that you could also share in the burden of the cost that could be paid. This is the way, and these are the reasons to go to war.”
She looked up with wet eyes that turned angry after she blinked the tears away.
“Enough is enough. Do it. They’ll never listen to us, and they’ll just attack us with their tanks and that damned helicopter until we’re all dead. We’re not running, and we’re not going to take it anymore. I won’t watch us suffer under their heel another day. And if there’s anyone in the world that can work the miracle we need, it’s you.”
Adrian’s face twitched into a grimace, but he stifled the expression. He smiled, and nodded. The people of Bastion stood in shock. Their entire civilization had just declared war on a larger, better armed and trained en
emy, and they had no idea what to do, or what to say.
Adrian turned to Kevin, then faced Becky. “I’m sorry, but I need him.”
“I know. I couldn’t stop him anyway,” Becky said with a shrug as she wiped the tears from her face.
“Once more?” Kevin asked, extending a hand to his best friend.
Adrian took it, and they shook. “Once more.”
“What about Hal and I? We’re two of the best shooters you have,” Abby said, pissed Adrian hadn’t come to her yet.
“You’re a mother. He’s a father. I’ll figure out how best to use your skills when I have time to think about it. Calm your tits for now.”
Abby glared at him, but a coo from Gavin pulled her anger away. Adrian looked away from her and into the crowd. He looked for another face. A specific face. When he found her, he exhaled and took two steps in her direction.
“What?” Mallory asked.
“Still got your trimmers?”
“Of course. I can’t do much with scissors and only one arm.”
“Go get them. I’m going to need a haircut for this.”
May 26th (2nd entry)
We’re going at them. I don’t know exactly how, but we are. Kevin and I, if I have my way. I might bring a few others into it if I absolutely have to for help here and there, but we’re doing it.
I’m writing this on my laptop in one of the spare rooms in the medical clinic. I called together a meeting of the war minds to get a better idea of what we can do, and how to do it. Mission planning. I couldn’t pull both of them out of the clinic with so many wounded so we’re here, and we’re about to start. We have Hal, Abby, Michelle, Caleb, Quan, James, Ethan and Joel, Kevin and myself, Blake, old man Peter White and one of his nephews ( a guy named Phil, which was not lost on me), plus Kate and Nick. We’re going to go over our plans in the event we’re attacked too. We have to be ready. I’m going to take notes and then Kevin and I will figure it out.
We’ve abandoned the idea of trying to get help from Captain Maria and her people. We can’t afford to spend the time with so many balls in the air, and there’s a very low chance she’ll offer to help anyway. It’d be like the Washington Generals begging the crowd for help at halftime versus the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone knows how that game will end…
Right now we have two priorities that won’t last more than four hours. The first is figuring out what the NVC radio ‘all clear’ message is for the day so we don’t get invaded, and the second is tracking down Picarillo before he gets to Calendar Mountain.
Mike and Patty took that job on, and they’re scouring the world between here and there looking for him. If they don’t find him, they might at least slow him down.
I’m not angry right now. I’m happy. My pulse is slow, and my breathing steady. We’ve got a job (war) and now we’re putting the handbook together to get it done. I’m in my happy place in many ways I guess.
I don’t want to kill people. I really don’t. I thought my days of that were long over, but I was wrong. Maybe my days of that will never BE over. Maybe this is just how it is now. How it always will be.
Sad. But I will do what must be done, because my loved ones need protecting, and I am a protector. That’s just a pleasant way of saying murderer, I suppose. Maybe that’s why Kevin is the Warden. The actual protector. I should also add that my… let’s say polite but dickish nudging of Michelle to make the call to do this has resulted in her being very quiet. She’s withdrawn, sad, and I am positive she’s racking up gray hairs five an hour. We’ve barely kissed, let alone hugged since the meeting. I suspect it’ll be that way for some time.
Oh, and the Mohawk is back.
What? It gave me pretty good luck back in the day. I could use some luck right now.
Oh, and now that I think about it… I haven’t had a dream with people in it in days. Mostly it’s just me, doing stuff on my own. Like, always all alone. Not even a sign of Otis.
Come to think of it, it has been like that since… since the zombies came back.
Not again. Please no. Not again.
-Adrian
May 28th
I don’t think this could get much more fucking complicated. I need to move, as Kevin and I are heading out to pull the toilet paper curtain open on this shit show. People are running around everywhere as we prepare for war, and exhaustion is the norm.
As you can see, I’m alive, and that’s good. The Jinx Fairy flutters about, but as yet she hasn’t landed on us and sprinkled us with her ‘fuck-you’ dust. That won’t last until noon tomorrow.
Good news first; we secured the radio codes for the remainder of the month of May so Calendar Mountain doesn’t know what’s happened at Bastion unless they drive here, or fly over here. Sergeant Rodriguez tried to help us by finding Lt. Dana’s code book (apparently there’s a little spiral bound notebook filled with dates and random safe words) but that code book went back to the mountain when Dana was pulled. The immediate conclusion was that Picarillo brought new codes, so Rodriguez helped us search for Picarillo’s shit, and lo and behold, we found a tiny spiral bound notebook in a backpack with five day’s worth of codes in it. The code words were; Cherokee, Sioux, Mohawk, Iroquois, and Custer.
Not sure what the deal is on Custer.
As it turns out, Quan (the Vietnamese guy with the thickest Asian accent imaginable) does the best Picarillo impersonation. Like, dead-on Joe Pesci watered down just enough to sound like Pasta-Actual on the horn.
Mizaki himself called the morning of the 26th not two hours after we met to make the plan to take these fuckers out and not ten minutes after we’d found the codes. Had Quan not been spot-on and right there when Mizaki called… Man I dunno. Anyway, King Shit of Turd Hill (north) asked if the ‘rogue’ had been secured after being fake and pleasant for like ten seconds. The sound of irritation in his voice was unmistakable. It got worse when Quan said, and I quote, “Not yet. They moved him. I’m searching.”
You’ll note Quan chose words with no L in them. He fucks up Ls worse than crack addicts spill drinks when they’re feening for rock.
Anyway, Mizaki said to ‘keep at it’ and Quan said, “Yessir.”
Time purchased, we turned our planning to Picarillo. If he made it to the Factory, and made contact, we’d be fucked hard. As we saw it, that meant two things; block off his ability to get to the Factory, and/or find out where he’d go if that wasn’t his destination.
Obviously he’d try to secure a vehicle, but we’ve already looked at every vehicle in a twenty mile radius of here. Like, every vehicle, literally. They’re either non-operational due to dead batteries, flat tires or squirrels, or they’re seized up, or drained of fuel. Blake and his garage gang have stripped so many parts off of them right where they were left it’s not even funny. Well actually it’s pretty funny. Anyway, Pasta isn’t getting a car. He might’ve stolen a bicycle. There are plenty of those he’d ride out of town on.
The good news, is that our cameras at the corner of Route 18 and Auburn Lake Road caught him on foot, moving towards town, which means he’s headed where we’d expect him to. He was also carrying an M4, and had minimal gear on him. Enough to survive I’m sure, but he’s not loaded for war like Rambo.
So, Mike and Patty are borrowing horses and we’ve dedicated multiple people to searching hard. Peter White and his two nephews and nieces are the core of that group. I should mention that during our meeting the other day, White didn’t say anything. Didn’t offer advice, or speak, like at all. Not even one of his weird tongue-clucks, which he has done whenever he was thinking around me. He did however, watch Kevin with something approaching fatherly love, which was weird, but then again, a lot of people look at us strangely now. We should be used to it. Anyway, we’re hopeful we find Pasta and turn him into sauce before he gets to an operating car, or if he reaches the Factory before we do.
Which is where I’m headed tonight with Kevin, James, Blake and Caleb as a breaching team. We’re also bringing six more shooters
to secure the perimeter to stop squirters when we go in. Andy is disabling their cameras remotely with his laptop when we approach so they don’t know what’s coming.
This might be the worst part of it all. Hector and Celeste went behind our backs to ally with the NVC, and when we get there tonight, Kevin and I are going inside that factory with suppressed weapons, and we are killing the NVC soldiers if they don’t lay down arms immediately. If Hector or Celeste so much as reach for a gun… We will kill them too.
They have been friends for a long time, and there are many people in that building I care about, but things are a little different now. It breaks my heart to think I’ll point a gun at someone who had my back for so long. We’ve come too far, and been through too much to be doing this to each other.
If all goes well, we will secure the NVC people, any of the Factory people who still want to throw in with the counselors from Camp Assfuck Your Neighbors, and we’ll replace them with our folks for when Piccarillo finds his way there.
Gotta run. Kevin said we’re leaving. Shit, I have so much more to write. Later, maybe.
-Adrian
May 29th
Sixteen dead, seven wounded. Blake took a round to his side armor, breaking a couple of ribs in the process, but he’ll survive.
I shot my friend Hector in the face when we got to his bedroom. No sense wasting time talking around it. The shame I feel is deep. I breached his room wearing full head to toe armor, and when I identified myself and told him not to move, he moved for something on his bed stand. I couldn’t risk it, and double tapped him with my rifle. One round hit his upper chest, and the other entered his face straight through the lower teeth. He died quickly. He was reaching for a pistol. There’s a tiny bit of solace in that.
Not enough.
Celeste was shot, but she survived. She and about half of the people of the Factory are locked up right now at the police station downtown. Same one we got the HRT from so long ago. It’s crowded in the cells, but that’s what you get for siding with douchebags.
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 10): The Last Resort [Adrian's March, Part 2] Page 20
