Many of the wounded from the other night are now more wounded, or were downgraded from wounded to dead. More on my dead friends later.
The remainder of campus took at least a hundred grenades. Roofs are fucked, doors and walls are fucked, and almost every single window is shattered. The gymnasium, cafeteria, and main school building were all hammered too. Rounds landed all the way to the back end of Bastion, back where the NVC people were originally stored in staff housing. Generators took hits, vehicles took hits, the fucking barn almost burnt down…
Our berm wall held up better than we could’ve hoped, and the back berm wall and gate did as well. Luckily, they didn’t try to make it through the woods to hit us that way. It’s harder to get to, but harder to defend as well.
Fuck. Rebuilding… it’ll be a year. If we can find the shit to do it with.
Or the people to do it.
James Halwitz died in the gun battle. Shrapnel, I think. He was in bed in the infirmary when a grenade went through a window. He was in a bed next to Ollie, and Ollie died as well. Took a direct hit from something explosive. It took a long time for us to figure out the smears on the wall were him. That’s how little there was left.
Ollie.
A few others died here during the fight, but beyond those two… it doesn’t matter to me. I can’t… find enough sorrow for them too, after James and Ollie. God, Melissa and the girls. Jesus, shit. Hawaii Dave died fighting on the wall, and his kid and wife were wounded. Archer (the kid with Downs) and Ginnie, the older lady who kept up with him were both killed in the fray. More. So many more.
I’m most worried about Abby right now.
When the NVC people passed by the apartments downtown, MGR took pot shots at the convoy. They drew .50cal fire as a result, and if you know anything about that gun, you don’t take cover from it unless you can get behind a boulder, or a few houses. It just kills you. Patty and Mike shot from the roof at the armored humvees with M4s and hunting rifles. When the .50s came back at them… they had no chance. Patty’s dead. Mike’s so fucked up he won’t last more than another day or two unless a goddamn miracle happens. Joel’s been picking concrete out of Mike’s chest and face for hours, and there’s no end. They shouldn’t have shot at them. They just shouldn’t have.
I don’t need to tell you how this is affecting Abby. She’s… she’s an orphan now. Mom and dad, little brother too. Step dad is knocking on death’s door. I’m about to be the only family she has left, and I’m preparing to march off to certain doom to give her, her man and baby a better shot at a peaceful life.
All I ever wanted was to give our kids a safe place to sleep at night, and food to eat.
Fuck, I’m crying.
A dozen more are wounded. Michelle took something to the side of her head and nearly lost the top of her left ear. She’s doing okay, but she’s scared. I’m not gonna bother listing everyone else off. I have to go.
Kevin and I are headed north with Abby and Hal, plus old man Peter White and his two nephews. The four of us are going to try and hit Calendar Mountain in a way that will prevent them from ever doing anything like this to anyone else ever again. I don’t know if we have enough power to get it done, but we don’t have much else in the way of resources to spare, and we have to do something. Everyone else is hurt, or must stay behind to help protect the settlements if they’re attacked while we’re away.
Wish the seven of us luck. We’re going to need it. I’m going to go tell Michelle I love her dearly, tell her that this was the right thing to do, and tell her I’m proud of her, and I’m going to squish Otis until he claws me. I’m going to kiss baby Gavin on the forehead, and watch Abby’s heart break as she leaves him with Michelle while we do this.
Then, I’m gonna see a Japanese man about some bad decisions he’s made. Maybe he’s about to say the same about a white guy.
-Adrian
June 5th
I just don’t know.
I hope what we did was enough, because things have yet again taken a turn that I didn’t see coming. Am I that blind to what’s going on around me? Or are people being that deceptive? More on that later. Jesus what a mess.
I’m alive. I’m so tired, but alive. Kevin, Hal, Abby, Peter White (or so he said his name was) and the two guys he brought up from Virginia are all alive. We made it. No wounds, no deaths. We fought smart. Barely fought at all. Shot a whole hell of a lot. Blew some shit up, but didn’t fight much.
We jetted right after I wrote the above entry, Mr. Journal, after we pushed the disabled Bradley over the bridge with the snowplow and a tractor. Blake had to run the tractor with fucked up ribs because Ollie died. Still not over that. Won’t be for awhile. I can’t stop thinking about Melissa and the girls.
Two humvees, seven souls heading north. Kevin asked me to make sure he and I were in the lead humvee with Abby and Peter White. He wanted Hal with the other two for some reason. Once White got into the back seat I knew what happened. Kevin turns in his seat next to me, and looks at White. White nods at him and smiles, but says nothing.
“Director Lancaster,” Kevin says, flat as a can be.
White just grinned and nodded. “Kevin. Nice to meet you officially,” he says, and does the tongue cluck.
Kevin had his Glock in his hand and his finger over the trigger the whole conversation, but get this: Lancaster/White is the old man handler at State that held Kevin’s hand during the end of days as they departed Jerusalem, and wound their way to Mildenhall in England. He helped get them around, and is sort of responsible for Kevin being alive right now.
Half the drive up, Lancaster explained why he was here, and what he was doing. Turns out… that C5 Galaxy we saw flying one day… he was on board, and landed at an airport a few hours away. His ‘nephews’ aren’t cops at all, they’re Army Rangers, and his ‘nieces’ are also military. Lancaster himself has ‘company guy’ written all over him. That little Beretta… Just enough to dome people in the dark with.
Lancaster is here to vet us. For… a bigger project. I’ll explain more after. Sufficed to say it was a mind fuck that he is who he is, and that he isn’t who he wasn’t. Back to the story at hand.
A frontal assault on them like what they tried on us was suicide. They had enough guns to turn back our meager assault from a good distance, and we had no idea what heavier shit they had. If they had AT4s like we did… even worse. So that immediately went out the window.
I also knew Mizaki wouldn’t show his face for me to shoot it. He’s a general. He tells other people how they’re going to die for him. So hiding in the woods with a sniper rifle and hoping to take him out was a dumb idea. We didn’t have that kind of time, and God forbid they tried to mount another assault on us while we waited.
We had to hit their infrastructure and their resources. We had to make it an impossible venture for them even THINK about going at us or someone else. I wanted to do it in a way that would minimally affect their civilians. If all of what we heard about them was true, I didn’t want to make them suffer for the transgressions of their ‘respected leader’ any more.
That being said, this is war.
Infrastructure targets I considered viable; vehicles, fuel, food, roads (the bridge, specifically), military aged/uniformed people, electricity generators/power lines, communication equipment, and weapons/armories.
I was on the fence about food, and we crossed it off.
We had 3 AT4s, a handful of grenades, gasoline, supplies for Molotov cocktails, and some leftover Semtex with detonators they brought from overseas. That’s the most powerful tool in the box. Now we knew they’d be hopped up on security; they had to be after what happened to them, and after what they sent Picarillo to do. Lancaster’s boys were armed with similar gear, and most notably, they handed us four thermite grenades.
So sneaking in or up would be a serious task. We’d need the cover of darkness to do anything, and perhaps better yet, we’d need the cover of chaos. We had to sow discord to disable their ability to
defend all their locations all at once. We had to trick them into thinking they were being hit by a massive force that they couldn’t defend against.
We drove a lot of miles out of way to stay out of their line of sight. We drove almost an hour north and an hour to the west before heading east and south to the vicinity. It stood to reason they’d be defending harder south. We hit two locations simultaneously because we reasoned they’d be soft; Rick Talbot’s house, and Talbot labs. We set that shit on fire like it was our fucking job, and then dissolved into the woods a few miles west of Calendar Mountain. We drove the humvees far into the woods until they were entirely invisible, and used that site as a base of operations to strike out from. About then we heard over their radio channels that they saw the fire, and knew what burned. Someone higher up made the call to not respond.
Over the next couple of hours, the fires didn’t draw any of their forces away, which sucked. With scoped rifles from a quarter mile away we watched one humvee eventually head out with maybe five souls on board. No radio traffic to say what for. I thought it was conspicuous though that they sent just one vehicle to do anything. I’d never want to roll out alone, especially like that. Oh, and we totally saw that they had two armored humvees blocking the interior end of their bridge, and they had armed guards on the outer edge of the bridge. No chance of an easy approach, and we could see that multiples of their guards had binoculars and were actively looking for attackers.
When night came, we watched them with our night vision equipment, and saw they couldn’t see us. Their radio chatter was nervous, but they verbalized that they couldn’t see shit. Idiots. Kevin and I hiked north for a mile or two before crossing the road and getting down into the riverbed their bridge crossed. The water was high; it’s been a pretty rainy month at night, and we were able to either float or wade through the water to stay out of view. As we departed, Lancaster did the same with his men heading south. From the opposite mountainside Hal and Abby called us clear to move on the special operations comms, and we were able to get to the base of their bridge. They never expected anyone to hit the bridge. It was their best protective feature, not a target in their mind.
As Talbot labs continued to burn over the top of the ridge, lighting the distant sky with orange and red, I helped Kevin set a half dozen charges of Semtex on two bridge supports. We floated downriver a mile or so after before cutting back across and setting up a southern shooting position far from Abby and Hal. Lancaster and his two men were set up south of the town at a third location, with their own agenda. I’ll never forget the little toenail of a moon in the sky above. I don’t know why, but the image of that white sliver above as we ran and hid, soaking wet, scared shitless and exhausted will stick with me forever.
Kevin and I set up near the condo complexes that they took over and filled with their inner circle flunkies. Far from the core of the resort and the bulk of the security, we knew it was a soft target, especially at range. Plus, if we hit it, we might draw out another vehicle or two we could hit.
It worked.
We called out to Lancaster, and he and his two boys started to shoot the generators, transformers, and any guards they saw in their AO. They all had M4A1s just like Kevin and I, and they had suppressors to keep their location under wraps. It’s fun when your friends bring toys. Kevin and I started to take shots at the few guards we saw (some shots suppressed, others not for shock value), and blew out some generators and transformers too. Kill shots on people, I should say. No fucking around. I couldn’t see what color uniforms they wore through the green colored NVGs, but if they had a weapon, or if they wore what looked like helmets, fatigues or body armor, I shot at them. I pretended like I was playing Syphon Filter, and I needed to rack up the high score on a night level. I probably killed six people. Shot at least ten. Shot at three times that. Fucking terrible.
That done, we displaced and moved through tree cover to another condo complex, and repeated. Mind you; we shot from the woods, deep behind cover where we were entirely hidden, and we did it in the dark. We might as well have been ghosts swooping in and slashing souls away. They had no chance, even when they started opening fire randomly into the world. Their cries for help over the radio ramped up, and grew in intensity as their wounded became more and more critical. When the cries became too much, Mizaki himself came on and ordered for help. Abby and Hal pounced.
As the two humvee QRF wound its way around the Jersey barriers they had on the bridge, Abby and Hal called out to Kevin, and Kevin blew the Semtex. We were like, a mile away maybe and the explosion was loud enough to feel in our chest. Crazy powerful, just like when we dropped the two parking garages when I went to the city looking for Cassie.
The bridge didn’t collapse, but it did shift, causing three feet of the road surface to buckle and fall away. One of the humvees steered into the crack that opened, and smash against the barriers, blocking the way out. In a genius (and ballsy borderline idiotic move) Hal got one of the AT4s up and running, and somehow managed to send the warhead straight into the second humvee to the rear, blowing out the motor and shutting the entire bridge down without doubt. Well, at least until they cleared the two busted ass vehicles off of it, patched the hole we made, and declared it safe to drive over. Hal and Abby had to displace, as his shooting the AT4 gave away their position. They took heavy small arms fire as they evaded to a second firing position across the mountainside under concealment.
From there, we maneuvered in the dark to a better vantage point where we could see the interior of the Calendar Mountain facility enough to take shots at anyone moving. As Kevin and I took up shooting positions a few dozen yards apart, Lancaster and his crew hoofed it north to do the same, and Abby and Hal picked up a third shooting location after a half hour ruck. Within an hour all seven of us were in hidden locations, taking long distance potshots at anyone and anything we saw move. Some shots were suppressed, others not. We had become the ultimate force multipliers, and managed to pin the entire place down. Listening to their radio chatter about us was one of the best feelings ever. We’d put them on their knees.
Then as dawn approached, after hours and hours of us putting it to them, Mizaki pipes up. “Attacking forces, please identify yourself, this is General Mizaki of the Northern Valley Cooperative.”
I grabbed my handset off my hip and got to talking. “Hey prick. It’s Adrian Ring.”
“Mr. Ring… this escalation of force is dramatic and unfounded. Many people have been hurt or killed tonight needlessly. We need to bring this to an end.”
I laughed. “That was the point of weeks of preventative diplomacy, asshat. Remember when we discussed terms? Signed your bullshit papers? Then you sent that Italian prick down to kill or capture one of my friends because he was British? Remember sending troops without our asking for it? You recall doing that? Your chance for a better way was then. Now, we do it my way.”
“Adrian, the world has changed since we agreed to those terms, and I had to make difficult decisions. I had to think of what was best for the NVC and its people.”
“And I the same for mine, especially in the wake of your expansionistic, colonial, aggressive ways. You’re a fucking liar, Mizaki.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree. Things have changed now that the dead have returned to life, yet again. How do we resolve this in the here and now? Focus on what’s important.” He was angry, I could hear it in how he hissed at me. I remained calm, and let my patience irritate him.
“Let’s start with me telling you how this will go.”
“Let’s not do that,” he said, interrupting me. “Let’s start peaceful, equal discourse.”
I stopped being calm. “Kiss my ass you ignorant, back stabbing prick. Fucking listen to me. I have friends dead on slabs right now because you couldn’t fucking be patient, and trusting, and allow for someone else to manage their shit, so you will fucking listen, or this peaceful discourse ends, and I keep blowing your shit up, and killing your people until they’re ALL dead. T
ell me if that’s important to you.”
Silence. So I continued. “You’re going to tell everyone who lives with you that they can walk. I know people are in your wire that don’t want to be there, people relocated by force. The Wilson family is missing four people and I expect to hear that they’re moving out. You’re done heading south. You’re done with Spring Meadow, the Factory, MGR, and Bastion. If any of your fucking people come within five miles of any of my people armed, I will be back up here in the worst way imaginable. You and your fucking settlement here are done patrolling beyond your doorstep, done securing other people’s shit, and done expanding. Got that?”
“I’m listening,” Mizaki said back.
“You fucking better be. I want you to know that we took all the vehicles, and all the heavy guns you had at Bastion, the Factory, and Spring Meadow. We have all those guns, and all that ammo, and plenty of people able and willing to use them. We also have a lot more of the heavy weaponry you’ve gotten a taste of, and we will not hesitate to use it. You guys are shoot on sight right now, with no exceptions. Oh, and your pilot ate a .300 Win Mag and we set that fucking helicopter on fire. “
“Adrian there has to be a different-“
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up, Mizaki. I’m done negotiating.” Somewhere someone on my team shot at one of their dudes. We technically never called a ceasefire… “Mizaki there are kids at both of our places. Kids, dude. Parents. Moms and dads who want to raise their children in peace and safety. We had that before you fuckers came around, and you fuckers ruined it for us. Dozens dead and wounded. Orphans everywhere. I won’t have a single death happen again by your hands or by God, I’ll fucking end you with my bare hands.”
“That’s a hollow threat,” he said back to me, almost laughing.
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 10): The Last Resort [Adrian's March, Part 2] Page 23
