Unhappy Endings: Tales from the world of Adrian's Undead Diary

by Chris Philbrook

  “Whoa, easy man, there’s no need for the gun,” Alan said as he raised his hands in front of him.

  The man cleared the distance between himself and Alan in just a few quick steps. He grabbed Alan roughly by the throat and threw him to the kitchen floor, knocking the wind out of him.

  “Don’t tell me what I need this gun for, asshole. Now shut your hole and stay where you are or I swear to Christ, I will shoot your fucking face off,” the man threatened as he waived the gun at Alan.

  Alan nodded his head and watched as the man saw the half eaten sandwich on the counter. Without taking his gun off of Alan, he snatched it up and quickly inhaled it. As he finished what might've been the first thing he'd eaten in days, the stranger wiped his mouth off on his forearm.

  “Hey asshole, what else do you have to eat in this shithole?”

  “There’s some more sandwich stuff in the cabinet behind you. I also think there are some chips and crackers as well,” Alan told the man, choking back his fear.

  The crazy guy slowly backed to the cabinet, keeping his gun on Alan. He let out a low whistle as he opened the cabinet and saw all the food. Turning his back to Alan, he tucked the gun into the back of his pants and began taking the food out and setting it on the counter. Out of the corner of his eye, Alan saw something move. He turned to look and saw Emily silently and slowly making her way towards the man who had invaded their home. Alan felt his pulse quicken. The man didn’t know that his death slowly crept up behind him.

  Emily bumped into a stool, knocking it over with a loud bang. The man turned quickly, his eyes growing large with fear as she slowly approached.

  “Fuck me, it’s one of them!” The man cried out as he fumbled around his back for the gun.

  Alan didn’t know what came over him. As the man brought the gun around to bear on Emily, he launched himself, tackling him to the ground, knocking the gun from his hands. They rolled across the kitchen floor, wrestling for any sort of advantage. Sadly for Alan he wasn’t much of a fighter. The stranger quickly got the advantage, rolling on top of him and pinning him down with his knees. Pain exploded in Alan’s head and everything went blurry as the stranger’s fist came down hard on his skull. All urge to defend himself left his body as several more blows rained down on his head and face.

  Barely aware that the man had been pulled off of him, he could hear the sounds of struggling and a sharp cry of pain followed by a wet slurping sound, as if someone ate spaghetti nearby. He tried to shake the cobwebs from his head, but it just made him dizzier. It took a moment, but when his vision and head finally cleared, he saw Emily hunched over the stranger. She tore large chunks of flesh from his throat and shoulder. Alan gagged slightly as the strong coppery smell of blood assaulted his nose. Emily stopped and looked up at him, blood smeared across her face and shirt as she chewed and swallowed the last bit of the stranger that she had in her mouth.

  Alan managed to get to his feet and leaned against the counter for support until the room stopped spinning. After a few moments he unsteadily made his way to the bathroom and checked himself out in the mirror. The man had done a number on him. He could see his left eye beginning to swell shut and he had a steady drip of blood running from his nose. He grabbed a towel and did his best to clean himself off. When he was relatively pleased with the results, he turned to see Emily silently standing there staring at him.

  “Come here baby, let me clean you up,” he said to her as he took her hand and pulled her into the bathroom.

  He grabbed the towel again and started cleaning her off. If it wasn’t for Emily, his zombie protector, he’d be dead. The Devil said she would protect him, and he had been right. He finished cleaning off her face and tossed the towel onto the counter.

  “Thank you Emily,” he said to her leaning in to kiss her.

  Just before their lips touched, she turned and slowly walked out of the bathroom. Alan hung his head, shot down again. He exited the bathroom after her, just in time to see the stranger begin to twitch. He wanted to grab a knife and drive it through the stranger’s head, but that’s not what his job was. He was supposed to build the ranks of the Devil’s army, not thin it out. Stepping past the animating body, he walked over towards the spot where they struggled earlier and picked the man’s pistol up off the floor. The cold and heavy gun made him nervous, but he’d need it in the near future. Just like the stranger earlier, he tucked it into the back of his pants.

  A noise from the front of the house caught his attention. Fearing another invasion, Alan bolted out from the kitchen to the front hallway were he heard the noise. He found Emily standing in front of the door, staring at it. She turned her head, those milky white eyes locked on to his for just a moment before her attention turned back towards the door. It was time to go.

  Alan grabbed the backpack he loaded up before from its nearby resting place and slung it over his shoulders. He opened the front door, letting the warmth and light of the late morning spill over him. He felt Emily’s cool hand slide into his, taking hold of it.

  Smiling at her, he held her hand tightly and together they stepped out into the horrible new reality of the world.

  Eddie Smith, Part One:

  The Truck

  Hey kid. You having trouble sleeping tonight? Yeah? Eddie too. It makes my skin crawl to try and sleep out here without two fences between us and whatever is out there. What's that? Thinking too much eh? I think a lot too when I shouldn't. Want me to tell you a story to help you sleep? Well I ain't got no happy stories anymore, but if you want to hear one, I'll tell it to you.

  What's that? That's a long story son. How we got to be on the road on this here trip? Okay. 'Spose there's enough time for that. Let's start at the beginning, and try not to skip over the juicy bits.

  I've spent a lot of time on the road, sitting behind a big old ring of a steering wheel, and if there's anything that you can achieve sitting behind a steering wheel, it's thinking. I've thought a lot. I used to think behind that steering wheel that when I retired, and stopped driving for a living, I'd find time to do things where I plain old didn't have to think anymore.

  Problem is, I like to hunt, and I love to fish, and I'll be damned, but both of those occupations leave you time to do two things: think, and drink. I'll be damned if I spend my retirement sitting in a flat bottomed boat with a rod in one hand and a Bud in the other, thinking about all the thinking I thought while I was driving.

  Of course, retirement sort of implies that I'll be done doing my day job, and if you know anything about anything kid then you know no one really has a day job anymore. Some of us work hard still, real hard, but none of us have day jobs anymore. Well, I guess there might be a government office deep inside a bunker somewhere that folks still put a shirt and tie on in, but I can guarantee you they ain't cashing no paycheck.

  I bet they're eating good though, and nowadays, that's better than money ever was, amirite?

  I am what you may refer to as retired from driving, though I've done a lot of it lately. You see, here we are heading east again, on the road. We've met several folks who have been kind enough to pass along the location of a safe place. A place where some very important people are living. Maybe you've had the dreams too.

  But the end of the story comes later kid. We're talking about the beginning right now.

  Today's story is about history. Not boring history like how the Louisiana Purchase went down, or the migration of weird and strange folks across some frigging ice bridge in Alaska. History about how I got to where I am right now as I tell this story. We're gonna talk about some regrets, some successes, some mistakes, and maybe when that's all said and done… I'll talk about the place where we're heading. But you gotta be a good listener, and keep your hand away from that revolver on your hip unless you see something coming. Hands on guns makes me all ornery.

  When the world first shit the bed back in June of 2010, I was delivering a load of diesel to a handful of my company's gas stations. I worked early hours that day. M
y boss had called me at home and woke me up to come in four hours early. He'd been watching the news, and knew that people would panic, and he wanted to have all our stations loaded right the hell up so we wouldn't sell out early. Rightfully so, I told him to go fly a kite, but he said he'd pay me double time for the shift, and as I'm sure you can understand, I got bills to pay. I hopped in my truck, and headed down to our operations center.

  I left our main facility in North Texas with a full truck of diesel for five of our stores. To be honest, it seemed like a complete waste of time to me. Most of our shops had been refilled that night prior during the overnight shift, and having me make a second round about four hours after Billy finished his run through didn't make no sense to me. But, for double time, I'll drive a truck around full of diesel for twenty solid hours if they let me.

  I knew shit was bad when I turned on Sirius. You ever listen to Sirius? Good stuff. I had caught a little of the news before I left my trailer that morning and things were definitely weird overseas. Grade A weird. People biting folks, riots, martial law, Mayan calendar nonsense.

  I heard the word "zombie" several times on the boob tube, so I figured I'd listen in to the news on the radio. I started with the British channel, the BBC one, and after listening to that for an hour, I switched over to the CNN one for an hour, then back to the BBC, then back to CNN, and so forth. You probably like zombie movies too, kid your age.

  I live in north east Texas outside a small city called Longview. If you can get your hands on a map without it getting bit off, you can find my back yard between Dallas and Shreveport Louisiana right off I20. Closer to the Shreveport side, but really, that ain't no real fact that's important anymore.

  I am positive you've heard the stories of how it jumped the pond. Well, I guess more accurately, how it started to… what's the word? Manifest? Appear? Strike like the vengeful hand of God? It all started overseas right around our midnight I guess, and by late morning that day it had reached the eastern seaboard. I did the math. I listened to every single hour on the hour that morning from 3 am on, and I'll be damned if I didn't have the time when it hit east Texas to within an hour.

  Right about an hour before noon that day the gas stations were a damned mess, and the sense of me delivering got real apparent, and real stupid, all at the same time. It reminded me of hurricanes. We don't really get nasty hit where Longview is, but I used to live down in Florida, and when a real bad storm is about to come in, everyone and their damn brother runs out and buys all the shelves clean of food and water, and then fills all their damn gas cans, car tanks and whatnot, and if you get in their way, y'all gonna get curbstomped.

  Of course, most folks agree to get along, and little curbstomping actually goes down, but that day was different. One little fire here, one little fire there, and the next thing you know, all hell actually breaks loose.

  I was in the city of Longview when I saw my first fatality that day. Just off of the I20 exit at our gas station there. The shop is only about three hundred yards from the exit, and by that time of the day, I was getting mighty paranoid. Company rules say we aren't supposed to carry our personal guns on us, but they can kiss my ass. I typically carry my belt piece, which is my .38 snub, and I had that thing carrying heavy in the small of my back. I was glad to have it, but I was feeling the urge to pull it every time some damn fool came close to me or my truck.

  I was just putting away the hoses and such after topping off the diesel at the shop when I see a patrol car coming down off the ramp in a real hurry. It makes the curve towards town, hits the main road going a solid seventy, and someone in a dang import station wagon makes a lane change, and the trooper can't stop in time. The cruiser rolled right over there in the middle of the way, and hit another car head on. Another car wound up hitting the ass of that car, and before you know it, there's four cars in the road all crashed up.

  I was some ways away, and lot of other folks were right there stopping in, so I stood there and watched with my hands on my hips. No more than ten seconds after the cars in the crash settled, and the first of the folks were getting out their cars to check on the injured, dead or dying, another cruiser came off the ramp like a bat out of hell, and slowed at the accident. He wound up leaving the scene after talking to the officer in the rolled over cruiser. That trooper had a broken arm, but he seemed okay.

  I kept watching, and no more than two or three minutes later, one of the injured folk in the car that got hit head on started to flail and try to get out the wreck. You might say that's when the wheels came off for me. I had this… sick feeling down in my gullet when I saw that old guy start twitching and wheeling his arms all about. No one in a car accident does that after they've been passed out for such a time.

  Well of course the folks rush over to help the geezer, and wouldn’t ya know, when they get to him, he does what you'd least expect him to: bite people. Two arms reached into the car window to help get the door open, and both arms came right the hell back out with big old bite marks on 'em. Now at first I thought maybe they'd cut themselves on the wreck. It happens. You aren't paying enough attention to the twisted metal, and something sharp reaches out and bites ya. Happens all the time with cars and wrecks and stuff. But after the first guy pulled back holding his arm, and then the second, I could see the looks of betrayal on their faces. I mean they looked angry that they'd been hurt, and that's when I knew shit was on. The first dude bitten got the hell back in his car and drove away. He spun around the wreck in his Mustang and floored that sumbitch to the I20 and was gone heading west towards Dallas before you could count to ten. The woman who was bitten sat around, but I didn't see what happened to her.

  All I could hear in the back of my head was what that BBC guy had kept saying earlier in the morning, "It seems that the bites are poisonous." He said all British-y, and snooty, but I kept thinking to myself…. Why risk it? With that Mustang fella on the interstate heading who-knows-where, all infected or poisoned or whatever, I figured he'd die and crash, then bite other folks, or maybe even stop, die, and then bite other folks. I mean hell at that point I felt with that one bitten dude free on the interstate, we might as well have been invaded by the Russians. Or the Chinese. We were occupied. Enemies right here on our precious soil.

  At that time I truly felt that Jesus Christ was my savior, and for that I am thankful. I surely hope he really is the forgiving type, because I made the decision right then and there that I had to get the hell out of Longview, and get somewhere safe. And I made that decision right then and there because I still had a truck three quarters full of diesel, and if this shit went south as hard as I thought it might, I was in possession of liquid gold. Say what you will, but diesel makes the world go round boy.

  I got myself back inside the store, and loaded up my credit card with all the water and food there. I think I got pretty lucky on that end too. Folks wound up rushing to the grocery stores to stock up that day, but no one went to the convenience stores like ours until things got much more desperate. I cleaned it out with my eBay MasterCard, racked up a whole shitload of points for auctions, and headed out. I needed to get my truck full of gas somewhere safe. I needed to get it into the back of my property where it wasn't visible from the road. I also needed to get out and lay low for a day or two. I wanted to treat the world like I treat my women; avoid the crazy for as long as you can.

  Getting out of the parking lot and onto the highway was a hassle. The crazy man inside the car that had bitten those folks was flailing around all… well, all crazy like, and you could see the man was dead as can be. He had a dent in face that made his cheek all gone and his neck was split up the middle making it look like a bloody awful hotdog roll. When I saw him trying to pull his dead ass out the car, I knew all this jazz on the radio was the real deal. I didn't stop to help though, forgive me. I knew I had to get out. Of course sitting here tonight I'm starting to see my purpose in all this, and I feel a little better about it.

  I live off of 300 north of Longview outsid
e the city, and I did my level best to not think about the jail time I'd have to serve if all this blew over and was nothing. I figured I'd get grand theft auto, and possibly something serious like a felony for stealing the fuel, but I concocted a pretty good story about how I swung back to my place to change my clothes 'cuz I shit myself while I was driving. You see, our trucks have GPS on them, and if they got all nosy and shit and tracked the truck on me, they'd see plain as day it was sitting in my yard. Now if all this had just turned out to be nuthin' I'd need an excuse. I'd like to say I got lucky and that this turned out to be all real, but inheriting the world we're in right now is just about the worst luck anyone can have.

  Anyway kid, I live at the end of a dirt road in a 14 by 80 trailer that I paid for with my own money. I worked a lot of overtime, plus when my dad kicked the bucket he left me a small insurance policy so now I live on eight acres well off the road with no mortgage. I drove my truck around the back and parked it behind the trailer so if anyone happened to come down my road, they'd have a hard time seeing the oil tank. Gotta protect what's yours kid. Especially now.

  I parked my ass in front of the television as soon as I got all my guns loaded and placed strategically around the house. I'm not a gun nut kid, but I believe in owning firearms for recreational and home defense purposes. I have a couple shotguns -both twelve gauge- a SKS because I like guns and stuff, and a few handguns. I already told ya about my revolver, but I've got me a .357 as well as a 1911 my dad gave me. That day I didn't go quite so far as to slap on the holster and the .45, but I kept it in my lap right up until dinnertime.

  Right around then was when things were getting real bad in Texas though. It's kind of silly how bad things got and how fast. Back then we knew nothing, and I'm sure folks responded in as dumb a way as possible. You see, I think the worst thing that we suffered from that day and the first couple days after was indecision. Some folks thought it was nothing. Some folks thought it was just a nasty rabies style thing.