Before I forget, I want to point something out. If you haven’t already noticed, during the entire visit with Doug’s family, they didn’t encounter a single zombie. As soon as they left, Gilbert said they had contact with some stragglers. A few undead slinking out into the open from… somewhere. In the interest of not making noise and scaring the Manning family, they left those undead where they saw them, and moved out.
Mr. Journal do you think it’s odd that they didn’t see a single zombie in an area of town that we haven’t cleared yet, that people have been moving through recently? Were the dead on lunch break? Smoke break? Conspicuous in my book.
Gavin has given me a wide berth all afternoon, and all evening. He didn’t know the full story about the night of March 3rd, and the full details of the horde of undead that assaulted us that night. He saw the books after he helped us purge the campus, and he knew something strange was afoot, but the whole story was never shared with him.
I guess he asked on the way back, and Abby told him what happened that night back in March. Well, those nights. God that blew. I’m still surprised we made it through that. Mr. Journal, there were a lot of odds stacked against us then, and it was a miracle we pulled through it.
Anyway, Gavin is obviously a little weirded out over the whole “dreams from the dead” bullshit, and he just agreed to roll with the plan today because Abby was onboard with it. He didn’t believe my story, but he was willing to go on the faith he had in Abby. Now that he’s seen that the dreams are real, I think he looks at me, and wants to ask me if I’m a wizard. Or Nostradamus. Or if the Devil and I have some kind of ‘agreement.’
Either way, he was definitely strange around me. I’ll have to adjust to that I think. I can’t change that my dreams are visited by the dead. I can’t alter that for some reason I’m involved with whatever it is that’s going on. I don’t like being the center of attention. I don’t want to be the weird guy that everyone thinks is crazy.
I just wish I knew what the hell was happening.
If I’m lucky, I’ll have another dream one of these nights.
-Adrian
May 5th
I don’t know whether to be frustrated, frightened, or furious. Ooooh. I do know another F word that describes how I feel.
Fucked. That feels right.
Happy cinco de fucking Mayo.
I can’t even feel safe and rested in my fucking sleep. When I’m awake, there’s bullshit. When I’m asleep, there is a good chance of bullshit. When I walk outside, it’s cloudy, with zombies, and a good chance of bullshit. It would not faze me in the least if one day we went outside and it was raining giant fucking chunks of cow shit. I think I’d put on a rain jacket and galoshes, and shovel it all over into the fields for fertilizer without a second thought.
Alright, so we nearly shot Blake today. That’s a good indicator of how fucked up our day started. (Started, mind you) As in, first thing in the morning, here on campus, we almost shot Blake. Yes Mr. Journal, you read it correct, Blake was here on campus this morning.
We didn’t know he knew where we were. Sort of a bad sign isn't it? It points to our being idiots for not realizing that he knew where we were set up, and it points to him being a little fucking shady for having known we were here all along, and then playing dumb about it. A lot shady actually. Frankly I’m kinda steaming over it. I think that bastard was using us a lot more than we realized.
Abby was out loading the trucks this morning for the run downtown when she saw movement at the bridge. Like a fucking pro, she got her AR out, dropped to a knee, and put that front sight right on the head of her target, and was flicking the safety to semi to bring him down when she realized it was him. Quite literally, Blake was a half second from having his melon painted on the side of a van blocking the bridge.
Abby radioed we had Blake on the campus, and all hell broke loose. An unannounced visitor inside our stronghold? Holy shit. Everyone had guns up, rounds chambered, safeties off, and the barrels leveled on his face within thirty seconds. Upside: if anyone does that again, it appears they have about ten seconds before half a dozen rounds go right through them and they’re a fucking cooked goose.
After Abby radioed and told us what was up, she walked straight up to Blake, gun pointed at his face, and ripped him a brand spanking new asshole. I wish I could’ve heard what she said. From Hall E I could practically FEEL her rage. I can tell you this Mr. Journal, the resemblance to Patty in that moment was uncanny. Gavin sprinted out to be by her side, and luckily, it didn’t escalate. It could’ve gotten really fucking ugly. Abby and Gavin escorted him to the stone benches near the school building, and I went out to talk to him.
First, I ripped his brand new asshole three times larger, and like a goddamn pro, he took his tongue lashing. He knew what he did was stupid, reckless, and had as good a chance to get his ass shot as it did to get our attention. Fucking moron. And to top it all off, he said he knew about the safe house, and the radio inside, and didn’t think to radio us using it. Fucking kids.
Blake admitted when I asked him that he knew we were here all along. He said he’s come up twice and checked out the campus, but not since we had started talking to him. He thought for the longest time it was just me up here, and he felt no need to mess with me. Of course now I wonder how many times he’s observed me moving around up here through the scope on that fat ass Enfield? Mr. Journal, on the record, I’d like to say that it took a concentrated effort on my behalf to not draw my pistol, and blow his fucking brains out right there on that stone bench. I felt almost as betrayed as when I confronted Gilbert outside Hall A. I didn’t do anything today just like I didn’t do anything back then. Maybe I could identify with Blake as much as I identified with Gilbert.
So the million motherfucking dollar question is what the hell was so messed up that Blake risked eating a bullet to come up here for? Blake found himself a digital camera and some batteries, and took it to the farm to document what he’s been seeing. Specifically, what he saw yesterday afternoon. (Don’t even get me started on the fact that we had just found a frigging camera for him on our own)
Blake handed me his camera and started to ramble on and on about what was on there, essentially narrating what I was looking at. Describing him as being “agitated” would be very fair. It doesn’t take a homicide detective to see that he is more invested in the farm and what goes on there than would be normal. It was obvious to me and to the others that he was tied to this place somehow, and he was holding out on the full truth.
So the pictures. It explained a lot of the tension he was feeling. Blake’s vantage point was from the top of a small rise, and was about two or three hundred yards through light forest from the farm’s gate. It was just as he described. Steel fencing for the cattle, reinforced with lumber here and there at weak spots. Large farmhouse, barn, farm stand converted into secure trading house on the side of the road. I mean his description from before was perfect.
The pictures that were troubling were of the people. He had taken snapshots over the course of the day of 5 men and women armed with AR variants. I couldn’t tell in the pictures, but they could’ve been M4’s too. It’s hard to tell at a distance, especially with a bad camera shot.
There were three other people, two of them old, who he said were the two owners of the farm. Apparently they were the husband and wife who ran the farm stand there, and sold the homemade ice cream back in the day. The third adult was their son, who looked about my age or a little younger, and didn’t seem as martially proficient as the folks hefting the AR’s. He had a rifle, but it was slung on his shoulder barrel up, and just from his posture I felt like he wasn’t too much of a threat.
All that was fine and dandy. What bothered me (and him, obviously) were the six women who came outside in the late afternoon.
All six women were between the ages of 16 and 35, and to a one, they were all pregnant. If I could tell that they were pregnant then that tells you they were showing, which means they were at lea
st 4 months pregnant or better. When the girls came outside they were escorted by two of the armed guard folks. They were taken to a few picnic style tables near the house, they had something to drink (iced tea from the looks of it), got some sun, and then they were escorted back in. Blake has pictures of all of it, and honestly, it looks shady as fuck. The girl’s expressions are clearly odd. They don’t look like prisoners, but they don’t look happy either. Not like there’s a shitload to be happy about in general, but you’d think they’d show some kind of positivity, and not one of those pictures reflects any of that.
Blake was tweaking when he was pointing everything out on the little camera screen to me, and finally I’d had it with his bullshit. All of us were gathered around, listening to him, and looking at the small camera, and I called him out. It went something like this;
“Blake dude, enough. You seem like a good kid but you gotta own up brother. You’ve been shady as hell about this farm, and it’s obvious to me that there’s something up you are not telling us about. What’s the story?”
He went blank, and after a few too many seconds it was clear to me that he was thinking of an answer. Gilbert pressed the issue. “Blake, son, the longer you think of what to say to us, the less likely we are to believe it. The truth comes out naturally, lies take time to think up. Speak now, or we’ll drop you and this farm bullshit like a hot potato.”
Blake swallowed hard and looked at Gilbert. Gilbert’s words were harsh, but he said them in a pretty friendly way. It was a threat, there’s no doubt about that, but it was delivered with honey, not vinegar.
“Go back a few pictures.” Blake pointed at the camera, so I flipped back a few frames until we got to a close up picture of the women gathered. Blake pointed out a younger woman. She looked his age, maybe a year younger, short reddish brown hair, kinda pretty, and she was really pregnant. About to pop pregnant. Blake choked up instantly. “That’s my girlfriend. Kimberly.”
Everyone went silent. I asked the awkward question, “Blake is she carrying your baby?”
Blake’s floodgates were wide open by that point. Patty handed him a tissue, and after he got done blowing his nose, and wiping his eyes, he gave me a huge shrug. Patty slid in like a professional mother, and put her arm around him. Also, while I’m on the subject, does every fucking mom have tissues on her? We’re like, ten or eleven months into the fucking apocalypse and Patty has a tissue on her. It is seriously like a super power. Befuddles me how that shit is even possible. Nice tangent, eh?
That’s when Blake filled in the rest of the story. He said that back in August he and Kim were doing okay, hiding and moving around just like he’s been doing all along. The two of them had been hunting in the woods, and every time they bagged a deer, the two of them would take some of it to the farm to trade for fresh milk, or eggs, or canned food, or whatever. Blake said he got a few boxes of .303 off of them too, which explains some of how he’s survived this long using just the one rifle.
Anyway in August during one of their trades, the old man of the farm (who Blake identified as Thomas Adams) presented them an offer. They had room for one more person in the farm, and if that person was willing to work on the crops, and with the animals, they’d be protected, fed, and would have a good life.
After a few days of talking it over, they decided Kim would move into the farm. After all, Blake could visit the farm anytime…
But that changed. After a few visits over the course of a couple weeks, Thomas told Blake that Kim didn’t want to see him anymore, and that they were broke up, and he should go his own way. Thomas produced a handwritten note from Kim saying as much. Blake says he has the letter still back at the garage, and it’s definitely her writing, but he says it’s bullshit. He claims it’s a fraud, and that they forced her to write it.
He hasn’t seen her since the first week of September. If you do the math, that baby has a very high likelihood of being his. It’s either that, or she got plowed up good and proper within days of moving into the farm. According to what Blake says, she wasn’t that kind of girl.
Now I’ve said the same thing about a few girls, and the test of time has proven that we frequently do not know people as well as we think we do. I’m not saying this Kim chick is a whore by any means. I am saying it’s possible she maybe had too much to drink, and something happened with one of the men inside those farm fences.
Blake insists that child is his, and frankly, the circumstantial evidence agrees with him. It is highly unlikely that she had consensual sex with a new person right off the bat. Possible? Sure. Likely? No, not really.
There’s a darker side to this. You’ll note I said consensual sex. It is unlikely she randomly decided to get knocked up. There is a small chance that she was… impregnated. Against her will. There’s some logic in that train of thought, because why else would there be six pregnant women, all clearly knocked up since June of last year? What sensible woman would seek out pregnancy with the world the way it is now? What guy for that matter would want to make babies already? The world is so fucking far from being suitable for intentional childbirth it’s not even funny. We don't even need to discuss the scale of childbirth they're looking at there. Multiple pregnant women.
So where does that leave us? What the fuck do we do with this information, right? I mean, do we confront these people based only on Blake’s accusations? And honestly, what do we have? She did go there willingly, and if we went there, and she said as much, then what? Blake mentally shits the bed, goes on a shooting rampage, and everyone dies for nothing. If she says she’s being held there against her will, then we what? Arm up, lay siege, and liberate a half dozen impregnated women?
I can see how that ends. I don’t need to dream about it first to know that people will fucking die.
If that’s his kid, I guess he has a right to see it. If it were my kid, I’d rip a mountain apart stone by fucking stone to get to him or her. I don’t know. With Blake right there the best we told him was that starting tomorrow, we’d do a more industrial hands on recon mission of the farm. I’m a little more experienced in this kind of work than he is, and frankly, he is only going to see what he wants to see. Fresh, unbiased eyes are needed for this to make sense, and go down right. By right, I mean with no bloodshed. I’d really like to avoid another Westfield. Too many folks died for nothing. Well, not for nothing, but arguably for not enough.
I’m doing it myself, alone. My ribs are good enough to do it, and if I have to, I’ll chew ibuprofen all fucking day to make sure it gets done. Blake seemed very happy to hear that I was taking this on personally. We told him we would talk to him again, at the safe house downtown, at noon on the 7th. We were already going to be downtown to meet with the Manning girls at 9am, so it went hand in hand to kill two birds with one stone.
Seriously though, fuck that asshole. I’m really pissed at him right now. I told him he owed me hard, and that the only thing he could do to make it right was to use that fucking garage and do some work on our cars. Of course now, I don’t trust him nearly as much as I did before, and I didn’t trust him for shit before.
He practically begged me to let him make right by us, and Gilbert said after that he felt Blake was honest on that at least. After Blake left we all agreed that this has been the wrench in his works all this time. Our new theory is that on some level he saw us as a means to an end. He had the farm problem, knew about it all along, and once we met him and made friends, he decided to try and bring us to bear to help him on his problem.
Are we right? Who fucking knows? I supposed we can corner him again and ask him, but that might push him over the edge, and we don’t want him snapping, and we definitely don’t want the one kid in town that knows how to work on our vehicles to irrevocably hate our guts.
Sigh. Bullshit.
Sooooooo much bullshit. I’m gonna get cramps in my big toe. Lots of pushing.
I hate zombies. I am starting to hate people too.
I am packing up for this recon mission after
I finish here. I am planning on getting set up near the farm before first light, and staying there until the sun goes down. Ideally, I’ll have eyes on for over twelve hours, and I’ll see something that gives us more information.
In three days Mike will be here for another water run, and I want his input. I feel like our two groups are allied enough now that we need to go over major things like this. They need us, we need them, and we need to make sure we work together to survive together.
I really didn’t need this.
-Adrian
May 7th
I smiled today.
There’s a certain profound power in that little statement for me. I don’t smile much anymore. I laugh every now and then, but I laugh at farts, and people falling down when they’re drunk, so really there’s nothing special about a laugh for me.
I never get to smile though. I’m almost never genuinely happy enough about anything that I sit there, and let a real, honest smile come cross my face. One where I start to feel better as soon as it starts, and I feel tremendously better once it’s over. It’s like a long hug from someone who loves you. It wraps you up, and gives you a little bit of precious life and love that you needed.
I smiled today.
Yesterday I was not smiling at all. I’m starting to feel the walls closing in on us regarding that fucking farm, and I don’t like it one bit. It’s a good thing today went well, otherwise I might’ve jumped the gun and done something stupid.
Where to begin?
Right. The Farm. I pulled my recon mission yesterday. As I said I planned to, I was up before first light, packed and out the door before anyone else was even stirring. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t sleep much anyway. It was the first night I slept fully on my back, and between that being a little uncomfortable, and the pre-op nerves, I might’ve racked up four hours of sleep tops. It’s an adrenaline rush to do this shit. Brings back a lot of memories for me.
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 5): Wrath Page 6
