Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 7): The Trinity

by Chris Philbrook

  So, the Outsiders live another few days, courtesy of the benevolence of yours truly.

  We’re going to recon the area again tomorrow night for a single day with a fresh set of eyes other than just mine. It always pays to have multiple people assessing situations, and this is no different. If we can come up with additions or subtractions to the plan we’ll do it, and start the appropriate preparations.

  This could really suck. Like, really suck. This place is a fortress for all intents and purposes. Heavy fence, heavy doors, no intel on the inside happenings, and no idea how heavily armed they are either. I’m venturing a guess here that they’re saving their best weapons for protecting the homestead. I can’t imagine they haven’t picked up some AR style rifles by now.

  More on that front later. Quick update on my own homestead. It’s been a long time since I talked about Bastion here.

  Crops are great. We visited Lenny and his farm is yielding strong for us right now. The food is great right now. Better than I have had in a year. Over a year. Our fields are great too, but not quite at the level of Lenny’s. Construction has begun on the barn for the cows and chickens for this winter. Ollie has been roughing out beams from trees with help from some of the folks, and the super structure/frame was completed late today. He’s thinking he needs another eight to ten days of work to complete it. Fortunately weather has been awesome, although the nights are starting to get really cool. Fall is almost upon us.

  Not excited for our wood and gasoline consumption. I’m also kind of surprised that Blake did a fuel run yesterday without me. He’s starting to stockpile fuel here on campus which I am really not keen on. We’ve potentially got an arsonist/murderer here, and I don’t like the idea that we’re putting hundreds and hundreds of gallons of fuel within easy reach. He assures me it’s all, “Safe and sound,” and that he has a plan for keeping it that way, but I didn’t have the time to go over his master plan with him yet.

  He also said that gas station we’ve been hitting regularly was finally empty, and we are now going to have to go to one of the other two to get gas. Kinda sucks, but at least we know what we have to work with. Theoretically at least. I just hope that one of the two gas stations still fucking has fuel left in it. Last thing we need is to go to the other two places and find out that neither of them have any fuel. I’d blow a gasket quite frankly.

  I’d fist a nun.

  So yeah. Recon tomorrow night with Mike. Once we are good to go after that we’ll start planning shit. Then I guess we’ll see what happens after that.

  -Adrian

  September 21st

  Wow. One year of this writing bullshit.

  I can’t believe I’ve stuck with it this long. I haven’t written this much in the entirety of my damn life, and to think I’ve done it all on this ratty, used laptop I got for work, after the world as I knew it shit the collective bed like an old lady on Pentalax. I think it’s amusing that the end of the world has made me so damn chatty.

  Witty even.

  Going back and reading the first entry I wrote a year ago, I feel like I was so naïve when I started this. When I came here to campus to escape this lunacy and survive, I had no damn idea what I was going to do. I had no idea what I was getting myself into either. I had such a shit plan, and the fact that I’ve made it this far, and managed to document so much of it along the way just amuses the fuck out of me. I was such a selfish asshole.

  One whole year of writing this damn journal. Writing to you Mr. Journal. Ha, I remember when I talked about what if you were Mrs. Journal, and if that meant I was into trannies. Good times. As it turns out, you’re still a dude in my mind, and I don’t have to deal with that strange internal conflict. Yay for consistency.

  Instead, here I sit debating a frontal assault on a batch of asshole survivors that have endangered the people I have taken in here. Killed one of the people I have taken in here. They’ve taken supplies we need to make life easier. They’ve shot at us, and destroyed things we could’ve used to save lives or make our life more livable.

  Mike and I infiltrated their part of the world yet again yesterday to get another good look. Mike came to the same assessment I had when we finally returned early this morning. Getting inside that place without killing the innocents in the process would be more or less impossible, unless we could get the good guys or the bad guys all outside. That seemed largely like a big old pipe dream.

  Mike did suggest that one course of action we could take was to simply set up a team of shooters outside the place, and wait for them to leave to go… anywhere. Once enough of them step outside to mount their vehicles, we open up with half a dozen simultaneous shots, and then get the fuck out of dodge.

  Mike’s line of logic on that is that if we torch the dealership, thus wrecking their cars, they might roll out of the Factory far more on edge, and far more ready to engage us should we shoot at them. If we simply wait until they leave the building under normal circumstances, their guard will be down, and we might catch them entirely unaware.

  Our resident Sergeant also shared the idea that we could still blow the cars at the dealership after we shot at them, sending them into further disarray after hitting them via sniper fire. Imagine the complete chaos we could achieve in just seconds. A handful of shots, a handful of dead and dying, and seconds after that we trash their cars somehow.

  I wish we had explosives, or a few crates of Javelins, or something that we could use to blow the dealership remotely. Of course if we had all that shit, our lives would be a bit better, and our safety would be a shitload more assured. But alas we do not have dynamite, or simtex, or LAW rocket launchers, or any of the other fun doodads our military has in spades sitting in warehouses all over the world, likely left unused. Left unloved.

  Sigh.

  So Mike and I planned another recon mission tomorrow night, only this time it will be just Mike and Blake going out. Blake is an industrious and clever guy, and Mike and I both want to get his eyes on the subject. I’d like to send Martin too, but he isn’t as good a shot as is needed yet, and I don’t want to risk losing both Blake and Martin should they get ambushed hard, or whatever else.

  Mike and Blake are heading out after about 8pm tomorrow night, and will be gone for about 24 hours to get some observation time on the far side of the Factory. With any luck they’ll find a new and interesting way to crack the nut that is the Factory.

  I’m hoping.

  -Adrian

  September 23rd

  I am a little worried. Mike and Blake haven’t returned yet, and they haven’t responded to radio calls either. They should’ve been back here by now, and it is highly unlike Mike to extend any trip like this without sending us some kind of message first.

  I hope they are okay.

  I’m very distracted by this. I am supposed to be doing a quick gun inventory right now to get a grip on what we have stored in the various armories across campus, but I can’t seem to get the two guys off of my mind. This is troubling me, and I really feel like something is amiss. I’m almost certain of it.

  I am certain of it. I can feel it in my bones.

  I grabbed Martin, Abby, and Mallory and sat down about fifteen minutes ago to discuss what the fuck we should do if Mike and Blake don’t return or contact us within a few hours. The consensus opinion is that we should go look for them. Of course they have the Prius with them, so we’d have to drive normal vehicles to get there. Of course I have a much better idea of where I can drive without alerting anyone over there where we are now, but that’s beside the point.

  Lots could’ve gone wrong. What scares me is that they aren’t radioing. They didn’t respond to our radio an hour ago, and if they aren’t responding, then they got attacked by undead, killed by the Outsiders, or worse yet, captured by the Outsiders. I mean there’s a small chance the Prius died at the same time BOTH of their radios died, but let’s be honest, that’s highly fucking unlikely, even with my shit ass luck.

  At some point here I need to t
alk to Kimberly and Patty. Neither of those women are going to want to hear that their man is missing. I’m sure they’ll blame me for whatever happens.

  God I hate this shit. This is my nightmare.

  I’m going to head to bed here shortly. If I don’t hear from them by morning, we’ll start packing up for a robust movement into the Outsider’s territory. I know about where they went, so tracking them should be fairly easy.

  Gilbert, I could use a dream about now.

  -Adrian

  September 24th

  Still no word.

  We are assembling for a full operation into Outsider territory to try and find them, or find signs of them. I’ve got the two humvees, and the HRT going with a full team of shooters. Myself, Abby, Mallory, James, Hector, Alex and George, Amanda, and Angela. My brother Caleb is going as well. He’ll be riding shotgun with me in the HRT providing cover fire.

  Mike told me roughly where he would be parking the Prius, so I’m going to start there, and see what happens. We’ll move on foot if necessary, but I’d really be in the vehicles. They’ve got some armor, and we can move out quickly if we need to.

  I am seriously debating driving the HRT straight through the front of that fucking strip club later today. I’m starting to think the lives of the innocents in there are not as important as the lives of my two friends.

  I hate thinking that way, but it’s how I feel right now.

  Wish us luck Mr. Journal.

  -Adrian

  The Factory

  Blake blinked once slowly in the chill September night air and took his eye off the scope of his Enfield rifle. He had just spent a solid minute and a half staring at the front door of an old strip club that had been repurposed into a fortified sanctuary and his vision was getting blurry. People had gone there to survive the end of the world. They’d gone there to stay safe from the undead that had torn the city apart over a year ago.

  Blake wiped a cold rivulet of tear from his cheek as he turned to the man laying on the roof next to him, looking through the scope of a rifle just as he was. “Mike I don’t see how we can do this. The place is as tight as a sardine can," Blake said, trying to be quiet.

  “Tight as a right-winger’s asshole you mean,” Mike said without moving his eye from the scope.

  "You talking about your own ass?" Blake chuckled softly and took in their surroundings. The two men were prone on the roof of a large warehouse about a tenth of a mile down the street from the abandoned strip club they’d driven to reconnoiter. The club was the stronghold of a competing group of survivors they’d been calling the Outsiders. The Outsiders had stolen from their town’s supplies, and had attacked Mike and Blake’s people several times in the past month or so. A recent set of violent clashes had led Adrian, the man that led Mike and Blake’s settlement to start a series of missions deep into Outsider territory to determine how much of a threat they actually posed.

  It seemed the Outsiders were terrible people. Three of the men had captured one of the Outsiders during one of their forays into the city, and the man named Barry confirmed what they’d heard from other survivors: the Outsiders had slaves in the club. It seemed like a classic case of the haves forcing the have-nots to do what they wanted. Petty despots ruling over the downtrodden in a world overrun with the walking dead. As if things weren’t shitty enough, Blake thought.

  “Adrian’s idea is still pretty solid. If we torch the dealership down the way to get them to come out, there are plenty of shooting positions around here we can take a lot of shots from before we have to move. I’m just worried that they either will come out guns blazing, or they just won’t come out at all. Then what the fuck do we do?” Blake said.

  “If they come out guns blazing then we duck, and wait for them to reload. At the very least, we’ve torched their rides. If they lay low and don’t come out, then we sit and wait for them to show their heads. They can’t stay in there forever. Turn it into an old fashioned siege,” Mike answered. Mike was wearing his National Guard uniform with some dark strips of cloth stitched and taped over it to make it more urban looking. Blake thought he looked silly, but Mike said it was useful.

  “Maybe there’s another way we can get in. Did Adrian say he checked the back of the building at all? There might be a side or back door that’s easier to get into,” Blake offered quietly in the pale moonlight.

  “I don’t think he made it to the far side of the building. I think he was content on his trip here to just watch this door and the vehicles in front. We could pack up, make a large circle, and try to get a look at the back. I tell you what though, there are no tall buildings on the other side of that nightclub. If we’re going to do this, it’s gonna be ground level, and fast as hell. In and out lickety-split.”

  “It’s dark, we’re sneaky. We can do it quick and be gone before they even know we’re there.” Blake grinned.

  Mike grinned back at the younger man. “Good attitude. Let’s do this and head home.”

  *****

  It took the men over two hours to circle the club. To ensure their own safety they’d taken a wide path that kept them far away from anywhere the people in the Factory could see. The last thing they wanted was to be spotted and get into a firefight. Both men were heavily armed, experienced combatants, and above-average to excellent shots, but two people couldn’t fight an army, and they had no idea how many people could stream out of the Factory should they alert them to their presence.

  The far side of the city near the Factory building was almost eerily empty. Normally the men were accustomed to seeing one or two undead moving about in the streets periodically, but they’d seen almost none in the 24 hours they’d been in the area. Their leader Adrian had said he’d killed a few when he was in the area previously, and it stood to good reason that the Factory residents kept the area clean of the undead menace that had torn the world down, but this was still very creepy. Both men exchanged confused looks as they went from street to street making their way closer and closer to the back of the Factory.

  Mike dropped to a knee near the corner of a building and slowly slid his head around the edge of the brown brick. He peered at the end of what amounted to a wide alley that terminated at the back of the Factory’s disused freight docks. Parked across the alley blocking passage was an old straight body moving truck. It might’ve been a Penske, or a U-Haul, Mike couldn’t see which in the dark. He dropped lower and looked underneath the truck at what was concealed beyond it. He smiled when he saw what the rest of the alley contained.

  Row after row of wooden boxes turned into small planters. Mike quickly lost count in the darkness of the night, but he knew there were at least twenty of the boxes arranged neatly. The wooden grow containers were sequestered safely behind a sturdy chain link fence that ran from one side of the alley to the other. The steel poles were rooted directly into the concrete of the sidewalks, and the pavement of the street. The chain link strung from pole to pole was securely fastened straight to the sides of the building. There was no exit in the fence. This was an area intended to be used only for their food. It could be a perfect place to hit the Outsiders. They might not go to rescue their supply of cars, but Mike knew for damn sure they’d save their food. Food was life. Cars were not.

  Mike pulled his head back and turned to face the younger man Blake. “Hey, we’re in business. They have a truck blocking the alley, and behind that is a fence, and inside that fence is a bunch of gardens. It’s their food supply.” Mike’s eyebrows hopped up and down showing his enthusiasm for the newly found target.

  Blake grinned ear to ear. “Oh fuck yeah. I wonder if we can hit both places at once and get them going in both directions. Fucking dicks.”

  Mike shook his head. “I don't think so. We need to make sure we can find good shooting positions on this alley first. We might be able to lure them out here, but if we can’t safely shoot them here, then there’s no reason to draw them out here.”

  Blake nodded at the elder Sergeant’s wisdom. “Mak
es sense. You wanna do that now?”

  “Yeah. Then we’re the fuck out of here and to home.”

  The two men got to their feet, and walked quietly away to search for shooting positions.

  *****

  “What the fuck are those two up to?” Cheryl asked the short man sitting in front of the back of security monitors. Cheryl was a tall blonde woman with her hair tied in a severe looking bun. She had high arching eyebrows that were penciled in, and a nose job that made her face look sharp like a hawk's. Everything about her appearance screamed “bitch.”

  The short man twitched his right hand slightly, moving a tiny joystick set in a keyboard. A monitor in the center of the bank changed view slightly, following the two men as they scurried away. “They were just looking at the gardens in the alley. I think they’re scouting us for a hit. Maybe trying to steal some food?”

  “Andy why the hell would anyone want to hit us here? You think it’s those assholes we’ve been running into in the town? You think they’re ballsy enough to try us head-on here?” Cheryl asked as she leaned forward over the desk, getting close to the green tinted monitor.

  Andy licked his lips and flashed a glance sideways at Cheryl’s large fake breast inches from his face. She was a bitch, but she’d sunk enough money into her body before the end of the world that she was still built to make dicks grow. Andy looked back at the screen and shrugged. “It could be. There’s no way to know unless we go ask them.”

  “Now that’s a great idea. I’ll go get a handful of the boys. Good job Andy.” Cheryl stood up straight, patted Andy on the shoulder and left the strip club’s security room.

  Andy stopped her by reaching out and loosely touching her wrist. “Cheryl tell them to be careful. We haven’t had much luck with those folks, and I can see on the cameras these two are heavily armed. Sniper rifles and military grade assault rifles. Machine gun stuff. They look like they can deal it out.”