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

by Philbrook, Chris

  Adrian’s heart and brain froze as he watched her chest rise and fall in uneven stutters. She looked straight up to the bright blue sky and the wisps of clouds, paying no mind to her worldly surroundings or her plight. Bile rose in Adrian’s throat, and he crawled—scrambled, madly—to her side.

  “Let me see,” he said, looking into her eyes as he pried her hands away from the wound. He looked down from her lethargic face and watched as a pool of blood formed on her flat tummy. He put her hands back on the wound and pressed hard as his eyes overflowed with tears. He grabbed her free hand and pushed it down hard. “MEDIC!” Adrian bellowed.

  She nodded, her head uncoordinated, moving around as if she were connected by only a dream.

  “Adrian,” she whispered.

  “Shhh. Save your strength. You’re hurt bad.”

  “I know,” she whispered at him, smiling. Her other hand reached up and brushed his cheek, leaving a bright red smear of blood. She frowned at the mark she left, then smiled as if she remembered something sweet, and nostalgic. “Honey. Adrian, go.”

  “No.” He pressed harder on her stomach and looked around feverish to find someone to help, anyone with… help.

  “You have to save them. They can’t help themselves all the time. They’ll be okay. Go. Just go. Come back when you’re done,” she said and smiled. When her mouth closed blood welled out from the corners and she coughed.

  “No. I’m staying right here,” the man said through gritted teeth and a sob that made him drop his pistol in the dirt.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said after coughing a thick wad of blood into the air. “Take care of this. Promise me. I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  Something in Adrian’s head clicked. “I’ll go, yeah. I promise. I’ll take care of the shooter. Press hard here. Hard as you can.”

  “Good start,” she sighed. Michelle nodded and put her second hand on the wound. Adrian felt her press down, and it wasn’t nearly hard enough. He snatched his pistol up and looked to the closest person. Little Danny McGreevy. The teenager watched Michelle bleed out through his own tear-filled eyes.

  “Danny, please. Help. Press here,” Adrian pleaded as another shot zipped by overhead. Somewhere a shooter on Bastion’s side started to fire back. They had no target, but bullets out at least felt good. The redheaded boy nodded and crawled over. After wiping his eyes free of tears, he crawled over and put his entire upper body’s weight on Michelle’s midsection. She looked up from the blood soaked dirt with marvel and love as he aided her. She struggled to breathe as another shot snapped by just a foot above their heads. It impacted a metal light pole a few yards away and made a hollow pinging noise.

  “Adrian,” Kevin said as he readied the M4A1 he grabbed from a stone bench nearby. “There’s one shooter. One gun, one angle of fire. We’ll cover you. You grab a vehicle and blast over the bridge, then move into the forest. We’ll get a few shooters up right behind you. I think I know about where the shots are coming from. That fucking gray boulder on the hill we talked about a year ago. It’s the only cover out there.”

  Adrian didn’t even respond to Kevin. He leaned over Michelle and kissed her on the head. “I love you. I’ll be right back.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Adrian got to his feet and bolted. He ran as another heavy slug tore through the air and perforated his khaki pants through the pocket. As he ran, Kevin and Lancaster fired blindly through the gate and over the berm wall into the forest at the shooter that had them pinned down. The big man with the strange haircut ran deeper into the campus towards the parking lot that flanked the cafeteria. He knew the school’s vans were there, with the keys in them. They had been using them to move debris all morning.

  He ran to the driver’s side of the first vehicle he came to and ripped the door open. He jumped up into the seat of the retired school bus and turned the ignition. The vehicle lumbered twice, then came to life, sputtering as all their cars seemed to now. With pistol in hand he yanked the column shifter down to D3 and floored it.

  The sluggish van steered around the road that circled the center of Bastion and launched towards the turn to the gate, and the bridge that crossed the river that protected them from the undead for so long. As he made the turn for the bridge, the windshield blossomed as a shot passed through the center of it. The spider webbed glass obscured his view and he ducked out of instinct.

  All he had to cover was a few hundred yards. He saw the boulder and aimed the van up the road to reach a spot where he could launch into the open area they’d cleared of trees and brush. He had to get close. Had to use the vehicle as cover. He’d never cover the distance between on foot fast enough. Incoming gunfire grew in intensity, and the windshield disintegrated from a dozen entry holes.

  Michelle’s face flashed in his mind’s eye, and he willed the vehicle to go faster.

  He had to get back to her. He promised. Another round smashed the front of the vehicle, piercing the hood with a loud thunk.

  Adrian yanked the wheel to the right and sent the beaten van into the uneven terrain. The right front tire blew out immediately and the van listed to the side, threatening to pull him down the gentle slope of the hill towards the river. He fought hard with both hands to steer the wheels towards the boulder that the shots were coming from, and keep it on four wheels.

  A low stump hidden in the grass stopped his drive hard, and Adrian smashed into the busted windshield. The world went black for a second, then came back into sharp, vivid focus. He watched the wind twist a distant branch and smelled something sweet in the air.

  “Get going. He tripped,” Michelle said to him from the passenger seat.

  Adrian looked over to her, utterly confused and lost. “What? How did-“

  “Go. Get him now so he doesn’t hurt anyone else,” a smiling, unhurt Michelle prodded from the faux leather seat beside him.

  The world dimmed again, and Adrian found himself stumbling though the grasses and mushrooms of the forest edge, gun in hand. Trees ahead would give who he pursued a chance to duck and cover, and in his addled state, he held onto the idea that he had to stop whoever shot at them right now.

  A man wearing fatigues popped up out of a depression and snapped off several shots with a pistol at Adrian. Adrian’s side erupted in a flare of white hot pain, but being shot wasn’t enough to stop him. He saw the man. He knew his caliber. He had his number.

  “PICARILLO!” Adrian bellowed, and raised his Kimber with both hands. He pulled the trigger twice as he walked and watched as the man who’d shot his love, and shot him too crumpled back into the depression and out of sight. Adrian approached the fallen man as the pain in his side grew hotter, bigger, and began to throb. Stars swam in his field of vision as he tried to focus on the front post of his weapon.

  “No. God, no. Not like this. Fuck,” Picarillo muttered through pain in the ditch. Adrian crested the top of the natural trench and looked down at the man. Both of Adrian’s shots hit center mass. The bastard was covered in his own blood.

  “No God,” Adrian spat, his chest heaving, as he pointed his weapon down at the fallen man. Picarillo jerked, and raised his gun hand up to aim at Adrian. Adrian fired once more into the man, striking his shoulder and rendering the arm useless. The man’s pistol dropped.

  “Fuck you,” Picarillo squeaked as he gasped in agony. Then his motions slowed, and his head leaned back into the earth. He looked up to the sky the same way Michelle did. “God, please. Help me.”

  “Look up. Look at me. No God here. No God. Just me,” Adrian growled.

  “I thought you… you were supposed to be the good guy,” Picarillo said, then laughed weakly.

  “I am. Or maybe I was,” Adrian said, and shot the man in the face.

  Adrian turned and looked down the small hill opposite Bastion as his hands spasmed, clenching the grip of his pistol in one hand, and the air the other. Inside the distant earthen wall that bordered the river and protected them somewhat from the attacks that just
struck them, he saw thirty, maybe forty men and women standing around where Michelle had fallen. None looked on at any who rendered aid.

  They looked at a dead body.

  Lancaster and Kevin walked up the hill, guns in hand towards a bleeding, disconsolate Adrian Ring. Adrian’s pistol hand had fallen to his side where the gunshot was and pressed against it. The pain grew, flared, and ate away at him. His entire body ran a river of sweat, and he felt the weakness returning. His legs were about to betray him.

  “Brother,” a frightened Kevin said to Adrian. “Are you okay?”

  Adrian tore his eyes away from the group of mourners inside the wall and looked at Kevin. Just like he was, Kevin cried.

  “Talk to me, please. How bad are you hit?” Kevin asked, taking another dangerous step towards the wounded animal of a man.

  “I’ll live,” Adrian said. “She died.”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said, his voice cracking as tears ran down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. Let me get you to Joel. You’re hit pretty bad.”

  “Yeah,” Adrian said, succumbing to his grief. He dropped his pistol and fell to a crouch, covering his face with his hands and smearing his own blood on the cheek opposite the one Michelle had smeared hers on.

  Lancaster and Kevin watched as Adrian fell apart. The shattered man dropped to his knees and cried for minutes, long enough for ignorant clouds to pass above, and long enough for the birds to talk to one another about whatever it was the things of nature did. Maybe they talked about him. When he was ready, Adrian reached into the dirt and grabbed his pistol with filthy, blood crusted fingers. He looked at the pistol, the thing of murder for a long time, then up at Lancaster with reddened, weary eyes.

  “Yes?” Lancaster asked.

  “Europe, huh?” Adrian asked through a grimace.

  And now,

  a sample of Chris Philbrook’s sci-fi debut:

  Move Smooth

  Move Fast

  Strike Hard

  Strike Fear

  Disappear.

  –Unit Creed of the Gharian First Expeditionary Marine Scout Snipers

  PROLOGUE

  White Bay Spaceport, Sota

  16 June 162 GA

  High in the nighttime sky, the gas giant Ghara hung suspended, as large as the palm of an outstretched hand. The moon ran flush with ribbons of color that reminded all who gazed upon it of blue-green seas. Like a spoke radiating from Ghara’s gemstone hub, the frozen moon of Sota moved in concert around it.

  Many thousands called Sota home despite its month-long nights and skin-blackening cold. The earnings for hard work on Sota were ahead of the other moons and if you wanted a good plot of land on Ares, Phoenix, or Pacifica you had to do at least a year of work on the cold moon. Any work would do, but some jobs earned your plot of land faster than others.

  A warm front had passed through recently and the moon’s cool air had a gentleness to it. No frostbite would sink its teeth into the flesh of the colonists hard at work this night.

  The shuttle Beagle waited on a secondary launch pad of Sota’s small capital city, White Bay. The tilt-wing transorbital craft sat poised to take exhausted workers to a warmer moon for vacation; or to a new station; or home after an extended work contract, the deed for their new land in hand.

  “I think I’m going to propose to Melody.”

  Sgt. Dustin Cline and his best friend, Sgt. Waren Dillon, walked shoulder-to-shoulder across the grated-steel landing surface to the Beagle’s ramp. The light of the cyan gas giant above made the snow of Sota glow with an almost neon luminescence. Living here made the nights on other worlds seem cavernously dark.

  Waren smiled from a full head’s height above as he shifted the weight of an over-packed ruck on his back. “For real on the marriage proposal?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking yeah. Before the expedition starts. I got a diamond for her already.”

  “An engagement ring? Man, that’s old-fashioned. Diamonds are a dime a dozen here on Sota. You should’ve given her a ring with an opal or something. Those are rare, man. Good for you, though. You understand in every possible way Melody is above your pay grade right?”

  “Hell yes. She’s amazing.”

  “I meant like, out of your league, dude. She comes from a good family. She’s an officer. She’s already got–what?–six acres worth of earnings on Ares, right? What do you have? One acre on Phoenix?”

  “She’s got five acres, and I’ve got two, thank you. But I’m almost to reenlistment, which means I’ll get a third acre. You hear about the deal they’re offering for the new planet if it’s habitable?”

  The two men reached the foot of the ramp and stepped up its incline. A flight sergeant looked at their name tags as they walked past and checked something off on a touch screen. Inside the long, yellow-lit two-story-tall cargo bay, men and women bustled about, strapping down pallets of exports and unstrapping the netted seats from the walls of the ship.

  “We already know from the probes that it’s habitable. We just need to secure landing sites and build infrastructure. But that’s what we do. Well, the secure portion.”

  Waren dropped his ruck in front of an empty seat against the wall. Dustin nodded as he put his own bag down hard, then collapsed into a seat.

  “Because of the distance from Ghara and the moons, Pioneer 3 is saying first wave colonists can earn an acre per six months there, and–get this–you can turn in your real estate anywhere else for double on the new world. That means Melody and I–you know–can work a year hitch on the new world, earn four more acres, and then swap the eleven into twenty-two on the new planet.”

  “That’s some serious acreage. What would you do with all that land there? Raise a huge-ass family? You don’t even know if the soil can grow shit.”

  “It can grow shit, Waren. Unlike this desolate ice ball you’re from. Who the hell wants to live on Sota anyway? Look, like you said, the probes pretty clearly show vegetation and wildlife. But I dunno. We don’t have to commit to the idea yet. I figure we can sort it out while we’re there. Marriage first.”

  More men and women moved around, organizing, sitting, getting situated. Waren sat beside Dustin.

  “Is she being assigned to the transits to the new planet?”

  “Yep. One trip a year or something like that. Not sure if she’ll be assigned to the planet as local transportation or if she’ll just work the colonial shipping lines to it. Gotta wait for the planet to orbit the sun and line back up with Ghara and the moons. I hear there’s a pretty powerful magnetosphere that will prevent comms and travel for a period of time. The window for transit is pretty small and there are some pretty severe blackout dates.”

  “That’s fucked up. We’re gonna be stranded on a foreign moon for a year?”

  “A foreign planet, Waren, and yes, we are.”

  Dustin and Waren’s team leader, Lieutenant Lionel Hauptman, had just boarded. The lieutenant had served in the special-operations community since his enlistment a decade ago. He’d earned his commission through hard work and achieving great things in terrible places. The lean but powerfully built man wore the same slate gray and white camouflage uniform they wore, plus a matching cover. He walked over and stood before them, calloused hands on his narrow hips, forming an inverted delta with his body.

  “Ready to get off the ice ball, L-T?”

  Hauptman nodded. He had an oddly slender head atop his broad shoulders. “Yeah. I hate sweating but I hate freezing more. I’m looking forward to this new assignment. It’s a whole new world, brothers, and we’re the Lewis and Clark of it.”

  “The Christopher Columbus of it.”

  “The Marco Polo of it.”

  “The Magellan of it.”

  “More like Leif Ericson, really.”

  “What about Donohue and Ming?”

  Another voice nearby muttered just loud enough for the marines to hear them. It dripped with an ancient Russian accent. “Americans. So arrogant. So loud.”

  The three soldi
ers stopped their joking and looked over at the speaker. Older, bearded, and wearing glasses, he had a professorial look to him and wore a coat far heavier than was needed on the warmer Sotan night. His arms hugged his torso, guarding against the piercing nature of the cold the soldiers didn’t feel.

  “Pardon me, sir?”

  “Oh, you heard me? I said, ‘Americans are so arrogant.’ You are Americans, yes? That is your heritage?”

  The soldiers sighed. Discrimination. Such was the way so often. Deferring to their unit commander, Waren and Dustin let the lieutenant speak for them. They shot things. It was his job to talk to assholes and officers.

  “Sir, America has been gone for hundreds of years. Earth is a barren shithole as far as we know. Calling us American makes about as much sense as calling you a badger.”

  “I would rather be called a badger.”

  “Is that a Russian accent I’m hearing?”

  “Da. I have Russian blood inside me.”

  Russians. Now there’s an arrogant lot, Dustin thought. The fucker even cultivated the accent to stand out. No one has an accent anymore. Da. Prick.

  The generational vessel that brought their expedition to the Ghara system, Pioneer 3, had been propelled by Russian-designed-and-maintained systems. During the two hundred year voyage from old Earth to Ghara, the Russians had held a place of respect and power aboard the colossal vessel and had kept that sense of entitlement in the near two centuries since Pioneer 3 had reached Ghara’s habitable moon-rich orbit. The descendants of the original Russians aboard the ship had been almost automatically funneled into high-paying tech positions across the colonies. The practice had bred elitism.

  Americans, on the other hand, were relegated to two entirely different roles aboard the ship. Prior to the Pioneer 3’s departure, the Americans had managed the world’s economy through their stock markets and run the world’s wars through an exceedingly well-funded military. Over the centuries, the United States had morphed from having the moral high ground in conflict to simply being a nation of mercenaries and police. When the Pioneer-class vessels had left Earth’s orbit, there had been no need for money any longer, so the Americans on board became security personnel. Now, most of the American descendants worked in the military, or security, or in the financial or accounting sectors. People tend to do what their parents did, it seemed.