The Failed Coward

by Chris Philbrook

  The gas station parking lot had perhaps five undead in it. Moving around within 50 yards or so there were about ten more shamblers spaced out sporadically. Patty and I formed a quick plan to ram the undead in the parking lot with the truck, then shoot the foot mobiles from a distance.

  I sped up and hit the parking lot going about twenty five miles an hour. Three of the undead were ripped apart by the plow on my first pass across the parking lot, and when I backed around to hit the others, I drove over one of walkers I’d missed, and then smashed the last one into a parked car. The walking corpse was pinned and immobile, and when we got out of the truck I took one of the halligan fire tools to the thing’s head. Poor woman’s skull cracked open like an egg shell. Took me a few seconds to fling the rotting brain tissue off the fireman’s tool.

  After that Patty and I picked a street, and we started taking out the walkers moving in on us. There were enough of them around us that trying to kill them with melee weapons would’ve been dicey. Patty took out her targets quicker than I did, which says a lot about how good a shooter she’s become. Accountant shishmountant.

  Once we were sure things were settled we checked on the few things we needed to at the station. On every pump there are gauges that tell you how much gas is left in the underground storage tanks. I’m not sure how to read them, but according to the gauges on the pumps, I’m fairly certain that between all three grades of fuel at the station, there is something around five thousand gallons in the ground. Motherfucking huzzah. I busted open the front of the pumps to check for manual hand cranks, and there was no attachment for one. I was really hoping for one. Mike and I talked about a solution to getting the fuel out fast, and we’ll have to try that idea to make this worth it.

  To double check the fuel supplies, I went to the small lids where the fuel trucks load the tanks, and using a screwdriver, I popped them open one by one while Patty covered me. I saw the faint reflection off the fuel of my maglite, so I knew there was enough fuel to make a full on retrieval worthwhile. I asked Patty to pull the truck around while I checked the store for remnants.

  Two of the large panes of glass on the front of the store had been busted in, and I went to the frames to get a clean look inside. I had a moment of déjà vu when I remembered getting gas here when the shit hit the fan back in June. I remembered pumping my gas covered in blood, holding my shotgun, and I immediately recalled the look of the cashier watching me through the window. Time flies when you’re fighting for your life.

  The store had been stripped of everything, right down to the scratch tickets at the counter. Where the people who stole them planned on cashing them in mystifies me, but they were gone. Some folks will fucking steal anything. I didn’t see anything moving around inside the store, so when Patty pulled up to the curb, I opted that we get out of dodge.

  Now I love Patty, she’s a wonderful woman, and I’m quite fond of her. However, she is not used to driving a truck with a giant yellow plow on the front of it. When she came up to the curb, she pulled in too close, and clipped a large metal rack that was intended to hold jugs of windshield washing fluid, and sent the damn rack flying straight at me. I had nowhere to go but dive in the parking lot directly in front of the truck, or attempt to leap like Otis over it, and neither of those options happened. I took the damn rack straight in the fucking guts, and got slammed against the frigging brick side of the store.

  I had the wind half knocked out of me, and I doubled over holding my midsection. Patty nearly shat herself when she saw me get hit, and she leapt out screaming to lend me a hand. Mercifully, she put the truck in park before she got out. Adrenaline rocks. The damn rack was wedging me against the wall, and I hadn’t gotten it off of me yet, and Patty grabbed the thing with one hand and flung the fucker ten feet. All I could think of was the urban legend of the grandfather who lifted a tractor off his grandkid. Granted this was a little different, but she tossed that hundred pound rack like a BOSS.

  She helped me into the truck just as a few more zombies started to come down the street about 50 yards away. We’d attracted attention. Patty stopped and plinked them dead with her rifle, and she drove us away.

  I noticed when we were making our escape that daycare building we’d seen the day of the meeting with Brian. Now, I know that building will have undead kids in it. I mean, that’s a given, right? At his point Mr. Journal you and I both know what my luck is like, and it’s easy money that building is filled with a dozen kids permanently stuck at the terrible two’s. Little evil bastards slowly rotting away with heads filled with sharp, murderous baby teeth.

  Anyway, in my delirious state of hip and stomach pain, I realized that the daycare building still had all its windows intact, and that very likely there would be baby food and possible formula inside. My greedy little nugget immediately decided that we needed to hit that place to get inside and see if anything was available. The two pregnant girls in Westfield are going to be needing a lot of baby food and formula when the kids are born.

  Patty smashed a few more corpses down with the plow blade on the way home. I can’t be certain, but I think I saw some satisfaction on her face. It’d been awhile since we were able to use a vehicle to take some of these fuckers out. I know it felt good when I did it.

  By the time we reached campus I was much better, and I got myself into Hall E without too much pain and effort. Of course sitting here right now ten hours later I’m feeling it. I’ve got an enormous bruise all over my side and stomach that looks faintly like the metal grid pattern on that fucking rack. I’m gonna be sore for days. Patty has apologized a hundred times already, and Abby took a couch pillow to her mom’s head for trying to kill me. Funny to watch the daughter scold the mother.

  Someone once told me that as we age our children become the parents. I hope this isn’t the first sign of Patty reaching old age. She isn’t that old really. We’re all laughing about it now of course.

  Oh… before I forget. While we were away Abby spent some time cleaning up outside trying to gather all the books the zombies brought onto campus with them. She seemed somewhat shaken talking about it. I guess from what she saw, there was no rhyme or reason to the books. Some were Twain, some were King, some were textbooks, some were romance novels, and there were a few coloring books as well. That tells me the books were some kind of symbol, some sort of message to someone. Likely me. I need to think on this at length.

  Otis is laying here on my bed with me, across my feet. He is such a godsend for keeping me warm at night. I forget how much heat the little guy puts out. When he’s gone at night, I notice I wake up looking for warmer blankets. I know he’s snuck away and down the hall to Abby’s room a few times to cuddle with her, which is nice. She’s adopted him officially as her pet too, and I can’t read Otis’s mind, but he seems pleased with this.

  I spent the majority of today chilling out on the couch in the living room, on my stomach. Oddly enough, it actually felt better being on my stomach than any other position. I have come to the conclusion that I am suffering from karma over sharing the story of Patrick getting shot in the ass. He had to be on his stomach, and now I’ve put my own stomach time in. Patrick, if you’re out there listening, wherever you might be, I’m sorry dude. But even you gotta admit, getting your ass perforated the way you did is pretty funny in retrospect.

  Sigh.

  I miss my friends.

  Sigh again.

  If I can move around decently tomorrow, we’re going to get things ready for a return trip to the gas station the day after. I’m going to load all but one of the fuel barrels into a truck so we can restock everything. We’re gonna head down in two vehicles, secure the area, set up our pumping apparatus, which I need to make sure works tomorrow as well, and get every drop we can while we’re there to make the trip worth it. You know... I frigging forgot to check the diesel tank while we were there earlier. Doh. Oh well, can’t be perfect.

  I’m gonna hit save here, head downstairs for a glass of milk, pop some ibuprofe
n and a couple melatonin, and hit the sack. I’m sort of hopeful right now I see Cassie in my dreams again. Maybe I’m finally reaching the point where I am not afraid to sleep?.

  Or, I just really miss the woman I love most.

  'Til we meet again Mr. Journal.

  -Adrian

  March 11th

  Sup dawg? Hope all is well with your Mr. Journal. Things are pretty good with me. We’ve had a highly eventful past couple days here, and I’m happy to say, we fought through the bullshit, and got what needed to be done, done. Where’s my cigar?

  Our primary concern the past couple days has been preparing for a fuel run, and then doing that fuel run. It certainly illuminates how difficult life is now when it’s a two day process to get gasoline safely. Before the shit hit the fan we’d hop in a car and zip down to the closest station and with a swipe of the atm card, we’d have a full tank. Oh how I miss that. Not that rolling into town loaded for war doesn’t have its upsides. Occasionally I realize that I’m standing in my town wearing body armor and holding an assault rifle, shooting at zombies and I am sort of forced to smile out of amusement. Sad that I find that amusing now I guess.

  Yesterday we gathered our resources, and finalized our plans. Now, getting the gas out of the underground storage tanks in an efficient manner was the make or break fact of this whole process. If it took us too long to get the fuel out, then we ran the risk of being overrun by the undead, or wasting excessive amounts of ammo defending ourselves. It’s this enormous ballet of resource management. More time means more danger, more danger means more bullets, etc etc.

  I told my idea to Mike about getting the gas quickly and safely using a sump pump. Mike said that they had actually used an old sump pump themselves to get the gas out of the tanks in Westfield. He said they used two different pumps with success. One model was a standard plug into the wall model that they powered with a converter off one of their truck batteries. He said it worked awesome, but the risk of sparks creating an explosion had everyone shitting bricks the whole time. Eventually they located an older manual crank sump pump in a basement of an older multi family home. Same basic principle applies. You work the pump mechanism with one hose in the gasoline supply and the other in a storage receptacle, and as long as you’re well greased and don’t make any sparks, you simply crank out the gas you need, and then get the fuck out.

  I knew I had seen one of the manual sump pumps in the basement of one of the houses in the vicinity, and it was our mission yesterday to find it. It took us all morning and into the afternoon to locate one, and wouldn’t you know, it was at the giant farm house at the end of Jones Road. Gilbert found it. I wound up salvaging a pump out of one of the houses near the old gas station but it was electric, and thus far more scary. Gilbert said he had an AC//DC converter at his place we could use if it came down to it. It’s always good to bring a backup plan. Fortunately, we found enough O-ring clamps and hoses to test to make sure we had a good fit. I was scared any rubber hoses we’d find would be dry rotted, but after about thirty houses we found ones that would work.

  After we’d picked up a bunch of stuff out of the houses we came back and emptied all the barrels into a single full barrel. We had to move the hand crank around a few times to get it done, but the end result was all but the one barrel in the back of the plow truck. We also topped off the generator tanks, and filled the fuel tanks of the vehicles we use most. That way we could get the max fill on our containers. Once done with that, we formed our basic plan for today over dinner. I was pretty sore at the time too from taking that metal rack to the guts. Mr. Journal I tell ya man, it was nice to sit down. Nothing is broken, but my whole stomach and all of one hip is a pretty sweet checkerboard bruise. Sore as a bitch.

  Once we’d gotten our basic plan down, Gilbert and I taught the girls weapons maintenance. I know I’ve said I like cleaning guns, and I still do, but cleaning all the guns all the time does get old. Fortunately both women have a good eye for what needs to be done, and they took to the process of weapons maintenance fast. Patty seemed to really enjoy it. Maybe that’s some remnant of the mom flaring up. She strikes me as the kind of person who kept an immaculate house. Gilbert and I showed them how to clean their own weapons as well as the M15’s, in the event we had another horde show up and we had to cycle through the weapons again. Gotta keep all the guns in the fight as they say.

  Gilbert shuffled off to his humble abode right before we had dinner. He said he was tired, and wanted to make something small for himself to eat. He seems better health-wise now than he did a week or so ago. I think the stress of it all gets to him sometimes. Not that he’d admit it. That white haired dude is harder than nails. Patty, Abby and I had a small dinner, and we plopped ourselves in the living room and watched a few movies. Separately we wandered up to bed once we were tired.

  I slept soundly last night. Happy to report that.

  As a group we all met after eating breakfast. Gilbert has been using the truck instead of the snowmobiles to get around since we had the few days of rain. The snow is much lower today than it was over January and most of February, and we are experiencing this sweet freeze/thaw sleet cycle that has everything covered in either ice, or snow that’s so frigging hard it’s more like concrete.

  We decided we’d take the plow truck for the plow and the fact that we’d loaded the barrels and empty containers into it already. Gilbert would also take his Chevy, and we would roll into the gas station just like we did the other day. Hit em with the plow, then pick off the stragglers. Abby and I would set up and operate the sump pump while Gilbert and Patty pulled security for us. We would fill all the small containers first, and then fill the barrels. If the gas station was overrun with the dead, we’d use the plow to kill as many as possible, then kite them away from the station and kill them as needed.

  We took off sometime around 10am. It was another chilly day, somewhere around freezing, with a reasonably stiff winter breeze and sleet that came and went randomly. We all bundled up good, but I didn’t take gloves. I thought they might cause static, and I really wanted to avoid that. The drive down to the gas station was smooth, and we kept in radio contact calling out what we saw on the sides of the road. Not much to report. We did see that moron zombie still caught in the clothesline, which got Abby laughing so hard I thought she was going to have an aneurism.

  I made an audible at the line of scrimmage when we got close to the daycare. I wanted to check it out while we had time and were in the neighborhood. The parking lot had foot deep crusty snow covering it, and Abby volunteered to walk on the top of it to check the windows. Just like Legolas she sprinted right across the top and peered in a bunch of the windows. She walked around the rear of the building and made her way back to the truck calmly, so I knew she wasn’t too spooked.

  To make a fairly long story short, she said there were no visible undead kids in the daycare. She also said the place looked deserted, and it hadn’t been ransacked as best she could see. That left me with the hope that we might find some food for kids and stuff. Even diapers at this point would be awesome for trade. I’ll take what I can get I suppose. After hearing all that Abby had to share, we pulled away, and went to the gas station.

  I ran over one zombie with the truck in the remaining distance, and when I dropped the plow blade to clear away the snow near the gas caps I hit one more. We didn’t pass any others on the way, and in the surrounding vicinity, we didn’t see any either. A clear area meant we were a full go. I backed the truck right up to the gas caps and we started our operation.

  The caps came off after some solid raps. Apparently they’d frozen solid over the past couple days from that wonderful freeze/thaw bullshit. Once the first cap was up we got the sump pump down on the ground, and the first hose into the tank. Abby jumped into the back of the truck and started to assembly line the small gas containers. After a few miscues where I knocked the hand pump over, or the hoses got moved around, we were in business.

  The gas came out a l
ot faster than we’d expected, and we wound up wasting a fair amount of gas until I got the speed of the flow down. It took us less than five minutes to fill every last gas can we had, and that’s quite a few now. Once those were full Abby took the longer hose and we started to fill the large 55gallon barrels. Those took a little longer than 5 minutes to fill. We had to slow down our pumping speed for a few reasons.

  A few seconds into the first barrel Patty and Gilbert started encountering roamers moving into our area. Patty called out their presence, and waited as long as she could before she started taking them out one at a time with her rifle. Once the noise started, we knew the clock was ticking before larger amounts of undead made their way to the sound of gunfire. When we started pumping again, I went nuts, and wound up knocking over the damn pump a few times, and even tugged the damn hose out of the barrel on Abby, and she got an entire pant leg covered in gasoline.

  We recovered though, and within seconds we had a good rhythm going and the barrel was filling up fast. I can’t say for sure, but I want to say we got the first barrel filled in a little under ten minutes. Once we got to the subsequent barrels, we were going from empty to full in something like seven or eight minutes. Of course, with all the barrels we had to fill, that’s about a half hour’s worth of time in the open.

  Even without the zombie threat over our heads, the cold was a bastard. Of course, once the zombies start showing up, you start to forget about how cold it is. After the first batch of roamers was dispatched by Patty with the .22 it was quiet for quite some time. As we were finishing up though a few more started to manifest in the distance, and we managed to wrap it up before we had to engage them. Abby actually flipped out at Gilbert as she was getting off the truck because he was about to shoot a zombie.