Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family

by Philbrook, Chris

  Abby loves her mom. I’m hoping this doesn’t translate later on into issues that become real problems when the shit hits the fan. Poor Abby was already dealing with the stress of Gavin dying, and the whole dreams bullshit, and now her mom moves out to a more dangerous home, and in with a guy she doesn’t know all that well… We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t take a nutter and climb a clock tower with her AR.

  We’d be bent. She’s a really good shot.

  Tomorrow we are finishing up that gate here on campus, and working more on the wall. I think we only have another ten or fifteen real days of work to get the back end closed, but that also raises the question of having a second exit. We need to figure out how to build a sturdy exit that can’t be breached easily. I’m sure the construction gurus here can come up with some clever idea.

  Martin idly mentioned that he needs more metal to work with, so on our travels out and about, we need to be on the watch for that stuff. After tomorrow I want to start planning for a hit on the clinic here in town. If it has anything left in it, I want it. I also want to make it safe and secure it so if we need to use that clinic for more major medical procedures we can.

  That will require a fairly in depth plan as well, but I am excited, because we need more breaching experience, and that clinic is likely to be nasty. I can just smell it now. All the sick and bitten and dead that rushed there on June 23rd and 24th, trying to get medical assistance for something that couldn’t be helped…

  I hate to say it, but clearing that place sounds like fun to me. Grab life by the balls and yank, right Mr. Journal?

  -Adrian

  August 11th

  Well, we’ve had a few days to get some stuff done, and it appears we haven’t done much of anything. It feels like we haven’t done anything at least. I hate days like this. I feel as if we need to get so much done on a regular basis that any day that goes by where we don’t get X or Y or both done was a waste.

  I’m also just being a whiny, impatient bitch. Must have sand in my tampon or something. Feel free to tune me out Mr. Journal.

  We came up with a finalized plan to hit the clinic a couple days ago. Well more accurately, we came up with a finalized plan to observe and examine the clinic a couple days ago. On the 10th. Which is actually yesterday, which kind of sounds like I’m losing my mind.

  Hi, I’m Adrian, I wet the bed.

  No shame in admitting that.

  All day yesterday here on campus we “relaxed” and accomplished a single project. Remember how I said we came up with a neat 'A' shaped gate idea for the opposite end of the bridge? We got that thing built yesterday, and it took all damn day, and took almost all of our free people to get done. However, it is one beefy motherfucker. Ollie has been scrounging for pressure treated lumber all over the area when he has time, and he’s been saving it for the fences and mostly for the gates. He had enough lumber to make the gate, and Martin had enough metal to build hinges and build a nice fat metal edge on the front of the gate that reinforced it, and will cut any trucks or cars ramming it straight in half.

  Once we accumulate enough lumber and resources we are planning on building a set of walls that will go along the guardrails on the bridge so even if something does go around the overhang, or if something does walk across the ice, we’ve got the campus sealed from it.

  Where was I? Oh yeah, we built the gate, and made the plan to scout the clinic earlier today, which was the task at hand right before I sat down to write this.

  Like I’ve been saying for forever now, I really want to do a live breach and clear before the final run to the warehouse. It makes really good sense to get a large building clear under our belts before head all that way from home and go into unexplored territory. There’s also a large part of me that really wants the adrenaline rush of doing it. I don’t think Gilbert’s place will be infested with the walking dead, but there’s little sense in ignoring the possibility. Shit happens, and frequently to me and those that spend any kind of time around me.

  Breaching and clearing the clinic here in town is something that’s been on my potential to-do list for a long fucking time. There might be medicine inside, as well as more generic medical supplies, and honestly the big reason to get it done is to have a largely sterile facility where we can do more significant procedures, as well a nearby place where we can go for more robust medical examination, like a heavy duty x-ray machine, or lab work, or whatever.

  There’s all that, and the fact that I am positive that the place will be chick full of the dead, and it frankly kind of creeps me out. It’s been far too long for that empty building to be unsafe, and filled with the dead. It’s long overdue that we get it done and over with.

  Long winded aren’t I? I really wanted to validate today’s activities. Maybe I need to rethink this. I shouldn’t be putting that much work into talking myself into doing stuff. It should come naturally, and be sensible.

  Ah fuck it. I want the place empty, and I’m spoiling for a fucking fight.

  Before we rush in there’s some sense in observing the place, and that strategy will be applied to the warehouse as well. More on that plan later. It’s still very much up in the air.

  Today we decided that a “recon in force” operation was a good idea. Essentially we rolled out in the warehouse team, drove directly to the clinic near the grocery store and pharmacy downtown, cleared the area around it to cut down on the danger on the final day of the breach, make another quick run to MGR, and then we came home.

  That’s the super short version of what happened today.

  When we rolled into the clinic area it was pretty heavily covered with a very spread out number of the dead. I was driving the HRT and frankly, they were just too damn spread out for me to make any real dent in the number with the plow blade. It just wasn’t happening. I made a single pass through, hitting maybe three or four, and then did one pass around the two story brick clinic hitting maybe two or three more before it was apparent it’d take me an hour of driving around to hit them all. Not only was that a huge waste of time, but also of fuel.

  I made the command decision to set up an outer firing line with the vehicles, and we’d pick them off at range until the crowd was thinned out enough for us to wade in with melee weapons. The humvees, semi, and I in the HRT pulled back, and drove in to establish a firing position about a hundred twenty yards out.

  Most of the initial firing we had the newer folks do. We had plenty of time with the distance we’d put between them and us, and there was always the simple fact that our more veteran shooters could pour it on if need be to buy us additional time. I had Abby watch our asses as we used the hoods of the humvees as fixed firing positions.

  I must admit, it was a good time. It felt like a clean, safe way to get them trigger time shooting at actual moving targets. I’ve said many times over that our more experienced people when in a stable firing position are more or less one shot, one kill accurate now, and that’s still pretty much the case. In really tight spots that’s obviously not going to hold, but if we have enough time to aim, it’s nice to know that we’ve got that kind of firing efficiency.

  Sadly, the new folks aren’t anywhere near that kind of accurate yet, even with the stable firing position of the humvee. I think a conservative estimate of 4 or 5 shots to net a single kill is about accurate, and I think there were maybe two people who threw that number way the fuck off. I don’t wanna name names or anything, but I watched two of our shooters waste ten shots each trying to kill two zombies. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to watch that, because I’m SURE that it was their nerves messing with them. And if they’re getting nervous here and now, they’ll shit spiked bricks covered in Thai chilies when we go to the warehouse.

  Can’t have that.

  So those folks are officially rotated off the shooting teams as of right now, and they’re now either off the operation entirely, or they can work on the labor team that will clear out the warehouse proper. I guess they can put some range time in to b
uy my confidence back, but shooting an orange piece of construction paper stuck to a tree is a lot different than shooting at a small girl in a blood-soaked sundress with her intestines dragging behind her. It isn’t apples to apples. Nothing of the such.

  Once we’d taken enough down that we could safely wander around with pistols and halligans, that’s exactly what we did. It’s also very critical to get these people up close time like the clear we did in Westfield the other day. Doing that clinic and making sure people could get up close and personal with the undead is a big deal. I distinctly remember that day back in what was it, November? Back when that asshole zombie tackled me in the cafeteria and I took a fucking mental holiday shortly thereafter and locked all the campus doors. Kicking that motherfucker’s ass with my bare hands was a huge confidence booster in retrospect, and giving these people a semi-controlled environment to do the same is awesome.

  As you’d expect, Martin and Blake did the most amount of melee work. It was nice to see guys like Alex and George pitch in though. They’ve been on campus doing wall work all the time, and seeing them in action dropping bad guys was nice. I must say one of the massive side effects of the wall work is physical exercise. Our people are fucking ripped now. Operating chainsaws and lifting logs and digging trenches builds muscle, and with our largely reduced diet, folks are lean for the most part. The men are strong and sexy, and the women the same. It’s crazy how attractive we all are. I’d easily say that on the standard sexy scale of 1-10, we’ve all gained at least a +1.5. Easily.

  It’s like P90Z. The Z stands for holy shit I survived the zombie apocalypse, lost forty pounds and now look like I could easily be a cast member in 300.

  I guess it’s not all bad.

  Once we had the parking lot clear, the streets around the clinic clear, and the bodies stacked up and out of the way, we lit a funeral pyre. It does sound stupid for us to do that, but we’ve got tactical reasons. Pretty clever shit if you ask me. The dead bodies everywhere around town are like disease filled landmines. When we finally get around to dealing with them, they’re likely to be ROTTEN and filled with all kinds of pestilence and whatnot.

  We had maybe 80 bodies at the clinic just outside that were just around and about so burning them now before the disease sets in was a smart idea. Remember how I said the zombies don’t rot, and don’t have maggots or anything? It’s like the evil power that motivates them preserves them, and kept them warm enough to stay mobile through the cold months. It’s like they’re smoldering with hatred towards the living.

  Unpleasant though to say the least.

  Plus, when we did the MGR run afterward, Mike said he’s got a great view of the clinic fire, and if those Outsider motherfuckers go to the clinic to find out what the smoke is about, Mike will see them, and hopefully gather some intel. So haha asshats. Joke’s on you. I’m hoping they show up in the middle of the night tonight and Mike watches them fumble around, scared out of their mind as they try and figure out who cleared out that many undead and then took the time to deal with the bodies. It’s a calculated show of force as well as a way to try and get intelligence about these assholes.

  We didn’t go inside the clinic today, that’s tomorrow. We could see through the ground floor windows though that the place had a large amount of undead inside. It will be a real bitch of a clear, and we’ll have to do a choke point and pull operation to do it safely. Set up a car stereo blaring our favorite female pop singer, make sure a door with some kind of blockage is opened, and then we just plug them as they come out. Lather, rinse, repeat, then go inside and clear the place out the old fashioned way. Hopefully it goes well.

  Mike and Patty are awesome at MGR. They say the movement is very light, but the dead are definitely out and about. Mike says they move around like waves. They’ll move one way in town for a few hours, then something will get their attention and they’ll turn in a different direction. Almost like they operate on their own set of tide tables. That really creeps me out.

  Once again we increased the MGR water and food supply so now they have a full ten days of water and food on hand. They aren’t eating or drinking as much as I thought they would, so it turns out that’s not that large an amount of food. I’m really happy they aren’t draining us. It’s also helpful that the crops are yielding good shit now. Plenty of veggies on the regular, and the kids continue to get fish out of the lake.

  Hunting has dropped though. Our wild game take is down dramatically. The wall means less creatures are wandering into campus, and that means less wild game. That subject came up at dinner tonight, and we’re thinking of setting out traps in the area behind campus to draw in stuff we can shoot. I think Blake said he’s already making salt licks so we can bag some deer, or God forbid a moose.

  That’d be delicious.

  Tomorrow we hit the clinic. Wish us luck Mr. Journal. Might need it.

  -Adrian

  August 13th

  Well. That went well. Well-ish.

  Since yesterday all I’ve had on my mind was the fiasco at the clinic downtown. I say it went well, but I’m really being sarcastic. It went fucking awful. We overlooked a few really small details and it damn near cost us quite a few lives. Not cool Mr. Journal.

  It’s always a little thing that gets someone killed it seems. I mean maybe I’m wrong, but it’s like I cover the big details, the concepts really well, but some tiny little fact escapes me, and it winds up spiraling out of control into an event that gets someone dead. It sucks balls.

  We rolled out early in force after getting in touch with Mike. Mike said the Outsiders came near the clinic in the middle of night like we'd hoped, observed the mess from afar for maybe ten minutes, and then left in a hurry. He said the two wagons were back, and he saw four adults, all male. One was really tall and thin, one kind of short and rotund, and two who were generic. They booked it pretty fast due to what Mike described as an ‘untenable amount of the dead' that had flocked to the clinic again. I guess setting a huge fire in the middle of an abandoned town that’s still filled with undead tends to draw those undead in. Should’ve thought of that. Seems like a no-brainer in retrospect.

  Once Mike gave us the all clear to roll downtown, and the heads up that the clinic had been surrounded by undead yet again, we packed up for a long day out on the town with that in mind, and we headed out.

  We didn’t roll into the place like our warehouse breach plan would’ve had us. We set up a firing line in the street about 120 yards out yet again, and opened up on the massive crowd that had reformed in the street and parking lot of the clinic. It was a fucking mess.

  Instead of a good straight line we were too staggered, and not ten minutes into the shooting it became fucking apparent we were going to get surrounded. Abby and I were firing out from the flanks and dropping undead as fast as we could move our sights, but it wasn’t enough. I don’t know where all these motherfuckers came from, but there had to be two hundred and fifty of the bastards. Abby hollered out she needed support, and I was already pot committed on my side, and it was about to totally shit the bed on us, so I ordered a fall back into the vehicles.

  Abby and I went cyclic just trying to drop bodies to turn them into shit for the undead to stumble over, and that bought us enough time to regroup the vehicles a couple hundred yards away in the intersection near the pharmacy I shit myself in. It was weird to set up a circled wagons last stand deal in the middle of Main Street. Fucking surreal.

  Now that we were that far away from the herd heading from the clinic, and we’d broken the line of the undead coming at us from the rear, we had enough time to reload magazines, encourage the new folks that everything was indeed very much still under control, and then get our nerves steadied to deal with the remnants still heading our way. It was a perfectly good example of how a retreat can turn into a reorganization period, then into an assault. That's also why you shoot people in war who are trying to escape.

  The slaughter began in earnest, and it was a tide of dead. Fucking-A
that felt good after nearly losing our shit. We pissed through so many rounds in the ten minutes following our displacement the streets were covered in brass. We couldn’t walk around with nearly slipping and falling. I made sure we focused on using the .22 rifles as much as possible because we’ve still got a ton of that ammo around, and frankly, we had the time and ability to do so.

  What a rush though. I really felt great afterwards. Of course more bullshit was headed our way, but for the moment, I felt like a goddamn rock star. We had weathered the storm, and I was happy with how it went. I mean it was also a rush to see the other folks proud that we had survived. It’s a bond you only get in a really bad situation like this. I remember some of the horrible ambushes and IED attacks Kevin and I were in back on Route Irish, and I tell you what, there’s little that’ll build a bond faster than surviving what you feel is the time God has chosen for you to go.

  The camaraderie is something special.

  We moved on the clinic a few minutes after. As I said our plan was to set up a choke point at the front doors using loud noises (read: Lady Gaga) to draw them out and through the door setting up a kill zone that we could control. We’d keep the HRT parked slightly behind us, and if the door became overrun, we’d simply drive it forward, using the plow blade to block the exit, and then restart at a different door, or shoot over the plow blade as best we could to clear the passage.

  All that went like fucking clockwork right up until the point the undead came spilling out of a side access door around the corner of the building. I have no idea why twenty odd zombies would’ve gone to a door that wasn’t even facing our way, but they did, and lo and motherfucking behold, one of the dumb bastards leaned on the emergency plunger bar, and the exit door sprung right the fuck open. After that they simply went to the noise we were making, and we had major fucking issues.