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

by Philbrook, Chris

  Yeah just fucking dead. I don’t even know what to say, or where to begin really. This just blows. We’re gonna be cutting down trees and shoveling dirt for days to get out from under this bitch.

  Nothing else to report Mr. Journal.

  -Adrian

  Paranoia Island

  “How are the locals Ethan?” Kevin asked as the parajumper sat down in the shade, resting his weary feet on an empty box of rations.

  “Sick, restless. Sick of being restless. Restless about being sick. Scared shitless we’re about to leave them. Same old bullshit.” Ethan tilted his head back as far as it could go. Kevin thought the young man’s head would just fall off.

  “Sounds good. They still pissed we’re rationing out antibiotics on them?” Kevin asked as he tossed the younger airman a plastic bottle of cool water.

  Ethan caught it with deft precision. “Yeah a little. Luis is doing his best to keep them calmed down, but it’s only a matter of time before they pull a village riot on our Castle Frankenstein. They’ll be at the gate with pitchforks and torches soon enough. All it’ll take is one or two sick kids and we’ll be making the decision to kill some of these people to keep them away from the bird. God forbid they figure out we’re only a part or two away from being airborne.”

  Kevin sighed. They’d already been here far too fucking long in his mind. The MC130 they arrived in The Azores in was being worked on, but with no substantial maintenance crew, or spare parts on site to speak of, the repairs were going at whatever was slower than a snail’s pace. They arrived at Lajes Airfield at the end of November. Today was June 23rd, 2011.

  The date stunk for two reasons in Kevin’s mind. The first was that the plane they landed in was still not functioning after seven and a half months. Once, back in March they thought they had it up and running and ready to go, but on a test firing of the engine that needed the maintenance, smoke poured out like the motor was about to explode, and they had to pull the entire thing apart again, and start all over. Without all the proper diagnostics tools, and a trained maintenance team to help with the repairs, they were sitting on their thumbs as they scoured the island looking for parts they hoped would fix the issues. The locals helped them, supplying items here and there, but the closer the plane got to taking off, the closer the locals got to losing the protection the team offered them, as well as their medical expertise. The social balance on the small island was awkward at best.

  The date also sucked in Kevin’s opinion because it marked the one year anniversary of the end of the world. Kevin was in Jerusalem when it all started. He was guarding some asshole Senator named Henke at the time, and when the Politician was on the stage, standing at the podium making his impassioned speech, terrorists struck nearby. It would’ve been fine had the dead not sat back up after dying. Kevin and his team of security professionals would’ve had the senator up and out in seconds, and safe inside the embassy before anything could’ve gotten them. Except the dead did sit back up, and watching them tear the living apart and press forward to do it again and again to both innocents and villains alike was too much to deal with. They seemed unstoppable, and never ending. Almost all of Kevin’s expert team of warriors was dead within 24 hours.

  Over the next few months they had scurried from safe place to safe place, dealing with a world rotting apart. Kevin flew from Israel to England, dealt with a chopper crash in downtown London, and then a massive siege of the dead at RAF Mildenhall in the English countryside. Kevin, a team of Air Force special operators, and the flight crew of a MC130 Combat Talon stole ammunition, two humvees, fuel, food, water, weapons and the plane and left the base as it was overrun with the dead. They landed in Morocco, hoping to refuel at a clandestine Green Beret forward operating base. Sadly, the base was gone, and they landed at a local airfield.

  That’s when things got weird. Before leaving Mildenhall Kevin had a dream in a white room where two of the dead men from his team spoke to him, telling him of things to come, and things to watch out for. One of the things his men told him was to watch out for the rule of three. Kevin was struck by the dream powerfully, and as they landed in Morocco, Kevin saw a trio of small flames burning nearby with two figures standing in the midst and he knew with complete, unnatural certainty that he had to find out what was at that fire. Of course a legion of the dead was amassed around the two people at that fire, but that didn’t stop Kevin. He knew he had to find out who those people were.

  Jaden, the leader of the Air Force special operators, lost a leg in the trip after a hijacked Hilux flipped in the desert and rolled on top of him, smashing the leg to bits. Ethan, the tired PJ sitting across from him at this moment wound up doing the amputation just below the hip. He was left with a stump. Jaden wasn’t angry. He understood the risks, and in fact was pleasantly surprised to have survived to that point at all. Kevin still felt strong pangs of guilt whenever he thought of the incident, or saw Jaden's pink stump in the evenings when they were trying to relax.

  Michelle was the woman in the center of the three fires. Michelle was older than Kevin by several years, and was a pure and beautiful blonde woman. She was a researcher, a Theologist and explorer, having spent her entire adult life looking into religions and cultures of the world. She exuded a confidence and wisdom that made her a calming influence unlike any Kevin had ever encountered. Oudry was the little African boy that had stood with her that night, but he was dead. Undead at first, but by the time Kevin and the men got to her in their stolen trucks, she’d killed him for good. He’d been her guide in Africa for some time, but the presence of evil had usurped his good nature, and she had to put him down.

  Evil was real. Very real. If the presence of a world filled with the walking dead wasn’t enough proof for you, the insane dreams, and the story Michelle told them was enough to seal the deal. Michelle was in Africa in a glade at Midnight when the clock turned to June 23rd. She watched as Evil entered the world, and gave un-birth to the first undead. Evil spoke to her with conviction, and told her humanity had failed entirely, and this was our last judgment. Survive this, or we as a species would be wiped off the planet.

  Heavy shit.

  Some of Kevin’s men were skeptical. Some of them flat out called her crazy, but when Kevin told them he had dreams like hers, and when they remembered some of the bizarre, unexplainable behaviors of the undead, it all started to make sense to everyone. Why not Evil?

  Humanity certainly needed judging.

  Neither Kevin nor Michelle, nor any of the other men had experienced any of the strange dreams in the mysterious White Room since they’d landed at Lajes. Everything had gone quiet on tht front. Many of the men had put two and two together, realizing that they never dreamt of each other, only of those they thought were dead. Michelle couldn’t explain it fully, but as she reminded them, in the months following last June, they had only experienced a small handful of dreams. It wasn’t that unusual for them to have gone months without any of the strange nighttime visions.

  Becky Masters sat down on the crate next to Kevin as his mind raced on all the strangeness of the world and rested her head on his shoulder. Becky was the wife of Alan, one of Kevin’s men who died a year ago on that day. Kevin and the surviving members of his team made a run north into England to rescue Becky and her daughter Shelby. He’d made a promise to his man, and he kept it. Of course now, a year later, he and Becky were gradually falling into what amounted to love. Kevin felt guilty about it at first, but he knew Becky needed the support, and he knew Shelby needed a father figure, and he knew he didn’t want to be alone anymore.

  “Ethan, how was the clinic at the terminal today?” Becky asked in her light English accent. She’d lost a lot of it in the time she’d been around all the Americans. It was too easy to learn bad habits.

  “Shit show. Poor Jaden trying to deal with patients from his wheelchair. People running all over the damn place, barking in Portuguese. He’s still there now dealing with them.”

  Becky nodded, understanding. H
er daughter Shelby was playing around in the middle of the runway, wearing a makeshift set of butterfly wings on her back. She “flew” back and forth, a wide smile on her face. The tiny girl was the picture of childlike innocence. The scattered undead milling about at the heavy fence on the fringe of the airport were not.

  Kevin wondered if that fence would fall down like the one at Mildenhall did. It seemed like only a matter of time. Or perhaps a matter of desire on the dead's part.

  *****

  “Luis, can you please tell this woman to stop squirming? I need to lance this abscess without her moving around like a goddamn fish out of water,” Jaden pleaded to the local official in the office-turned examination room in the airport building.

  Luis moved forward and chattered out a series of requests at the woman with the large infection on her leg. She listened to the man and stopped moving her calf, letting Jaden get the small scalpel down to lance the infection. The bulbous lump on the side of her knee was the size of a grape, and when Jaden drew the scalpel across it, a white-yellow pus slipped out. Thin red ribbons of blood traced their way through the custardy mess as it ran down her leg. It reminded him of the color of the eyes of the dead. Jaden wiped the pus up as the woman spoke down at him in broken English. Her tone was frightened, and her eyes wide.

  “Mister Jaden, please don’t leave us ever. We need you.” She'd practiced the phrase before. He could tell.

  Jaden smiled up at her as he sopped up the mess. “Don’t worry. We’ll be here for a while.” It was a lie. He'd practiced that phrase before. As soon as they could, he and the rest of his people would leave this damn island and all the needy, paranoid people on it. To validate his feelings, the small girl in the room, the daughter of the woman with the infected knee jumped to her feet and grabbed Jaden’s single leg, pleading with him in Portuguese to stay. Jaden couldn’t understand all she said, but he knew enough. The locals were desperate for their support.

  And paranoid Jaden and his people would leave them high and dry.

  *****

  “How far off are we from being able to test the frigging engine again?” Kate asked. She was pissed that the repairs had taken this long and hiding her displeasure was too much work.

  Dale, her flight engineer and the man most able to manufacture the makeshift part they needed was covered in grease, oil, and scratches. He worked his knuckles to the bone day after day in the machine shop of the hangar they’d taken over, trying to create the part that should’ve been there in the first place. “Kate I don’t fucking know. Luis said he had the piece we needed, and he was supposed to bring it to the clinic today, but when Roger and Joel came through earlier, they said he forgot the part. Once we have the part, I can work it over, make sure it’s at spec, and if it is, then we can fire up the engine for a pre flight test. If it goes well, then we can fucking leave here. But Kate, we’re talking about a transatlantic flight here. If this part fails, we fucking crash in the ocean and swim to America.”

  Kate scowled at the sense he was making. She hated this island. She hated the dirty locals who had bled them dry for months of medicine and hard labor. She hated the Portuguese language. She hated the fact that they should’ve been here for a few days, but now they’d been here for months on end. Granted, they couldn’t have flown into America during the heart of winter anyway, not knowing if the runways would be clear, but shit, they could’ve left months ago.

  “Alright fine. One more day then. If Luis doesn’t show with that part tomorrow, then I am marching my ass outside the fence, and I am making his ass bring me to the fucking part. I’m done with this shit.” Kate walked off after scooping up a heavy wrench from a toolbox. She was headed to the fence to crack a few zombie skulls to let off some steam.

  Dale knew she was serious. Kate didn’t threaten to do anything she wasn’t completely willing to follow through on. If anything, she was reliable like that.

  Dale was frightened for poor Luis.

  *****

  “Jaden, you don’t understand. If they know you are leaving soon, they will stop you. They can’t afford to have you leave here. Our medical ability is gone on this island. We can’t risk ferrying over to the other islands. We don’t know how bad it will be there. Our electricity is spotty, the water doesn’t always work right, and there aren’t many guns or bullets left here either for if the dead spread like before. You are our only hope for medical care for our children. If I give you the part you are asking for, and you leave, they’ll surely kill me,” Luis said in hushed tones to the leader of the special operators, and chief physician to the locals.

  Jaden sat quietly in the terminal of the abandoned airport, digesting the facts Luis had just laid on him. All of the day’s patients were gone, and all that remained was the chemical odor of the bleach they cleaned the rooms up with, and the sound of a clock ticking the rest of their lives away. Luis was the remnant leader of the local populace. There were a few thousand folks left on this island, which still amazed Jaden and the rest of the team he’d arrived with. How all these people had survived this long with the undead menace about befuddled him. There were almost no undead here. One here and one there, but nothing widespread like on the mainland. They were usually the old or sick dying alone in houses on the fringe of the island. Maybe it was the fact that they had a low mortality rate here naturally? Or maybe it was that there was no looting, or rioting, or violence of note yet here.

  “Look Luis. This isn’t our home. We have spent a long time here, caring for your people, fixing things, protecting you from the living and the dead, and that has to count for something. We need to get home to try and find our families too. Take care of our own children and families. If you are that worried about your own safety, we have some room on the plane. We can easily take you to America with us,” Jaden said quietly. He didn’t think anyone was there with them, but it still wasn’t worth risking.

  Luis rubbed his hands together nervously. Jaden could hear the sweaty palms slide over one another in the darkness of the building. In between the ticks of the clock he could hear a pin drop. Poor conflicted Luis thought long and hard about the offer Jaden put forth before answering him. He looked to the doorway a tenth time to ensure no one was standing there listening. “I need time to think about this Mr. Jaden. I cannot just move my wife and son. My mother and my sister would have to go as well, and then there is the issue of my brother in law as well. It is not a small thing.” Luis had a thick Portuguese accent and Jaden struggled to decipher it.

  “That’s a problem Luis. We can’t take that many people. That’s too much weight. What if we left some supplies? There are medical books in the clinic in town I’m sure, and the nurse Rosa you introduced me to has to know how to do the most common things. You think it is selfish of us to want to leave to be with our families, but it is equally selfish of you to keep us here like this for your families. You can’t keep us hostage here much longer. Eventually my people will run out of patience. You don’t want my people to run out of patience Luis. We are not the kind of people who deal well with being held hostage,” Jaden offered quietly. Immediately he felt like he’d said too much. He hoped Luis didn’t feel threatened.

  Luis thought once again, contemplating what Jaden meant, and seemed to like this plan. “That should work. We have been very unfair to you and your people. You are right. We would need a fair amount of supplies. I can bring this part you need tomorrow when you open the clinic, and if you give me the medicine then, we can trade. We should do this after. When everyone is leaving. Everyone knows you and your people want to leave, and if they see me give you the part, they will know it means you are leaving soon.”

  Jaden nodded in agreement. “That’ll be fine. We can wait until everyone has left, and you can get the part from your car. We’ll keep the medicine out of sight, and once everyone is clear, we can do the swap. We’ll leave at night. No one will be the wiser.”

  And with that, Luis left. Jaden had the refreshed hope that maybe, just maybe they
would be able to get off this damn island, and head home. The paranoia here was awful.

  *****

  “Tomorrow the part is coming,” Jaden said to the gathered group of men and women just outside the hangar they’d turned into a home. "Luis assures me." Every night after finishing up their work at the clinic in the terminal everyone gathered around a fire pit they had made. It was their way of communicating everything. Their way to be a family.

  Kate, Kevin and Michelle, the leaders of this band of pilgrims took the words in with a smile. It was bittersweet on many levels. The last time they were this close to leaving it turned sour, and here they sat again. Never mind the simple human aspect that this was the safest and happiest they had been in a year. Granted, Kevin thought, it wasn’t all that safe, or that happy.

  “Bad news is, Luis will get strung the fuck up if we leave after getting this part, and we can’t take him with us either. I feel bad for the little man. I mean he’s already going bald, and now we’re gonna get him killed,” Jaden smirked, tipping up a bottle of the now rare local beer. His face soured when he tasted the bitter, overly hoppy swill.

  Roger, one of Jaden’s men snorted hard, “Fuck that beaner. He’s been slow rolling the parts we need to keep us here this long. How is it that he randomly finds the part we’ve been asking for now, after all the time we’ve been pushing to get it? This island ain’t that fucking big. He needs to shit or get off the pot, otherwise we’re all gonna lose patience, and go into that fucking town and FIND that part. Sick of waiting for these assholes.”