I am happy to report that for all intents and purposes, we are doing fucking nothing.
The whole crew of folks at the Factory is staying there. With the sisters and their asshole lackeys all dead, there is no real reason for them to leave there, despite our dynamic… trio telling them how awesome ALPA is. The Factory has food, a solid security system, a durable building that is easily defended, has a diesel powered generator in the basement for electrical needs, and apparently they have been able to subsist on rainwater this entire time. When cold weather hits, they’ll have snow too.
I can’t lie, the water situation over there definitely weirds me out. I don’t see how they could live that long on just rainwater. It doesn’t make any sense, they must’ve had a large supply of bottled water, or something to have kept the 50 or so folks there alive as long as they did. No idea, just saying it seems sketchy. Maybe they rationed like a motherfucker. Not sure.
Anyhoo… they want to stay put. That is largely in our interest, because as best as we can tell, they are entirely self sufficient, other than their need for freshwater, and possibly for security. I think we can trust them with guns to protect themselves, especially right after they got to see what happens when you piss us the fuck off. I don’t see how they would want to get right back into it with us. Just doesn’t make sense.
The water issue does bother me, especially now that Blake has the old water truck filled with gasoline. Surprise, surprise. I’m trying to piece together exactly what he was thinking, but it’s hard when he’s in a coma in Doc Lindsey’s clinic. Second hand knowledge from Martin and passed on pillow talk from Kimberly. He thought we weren’t going to need it for water again, so he filled the damn thing up with fuel on the last fuel run. Granted, it’s full of gasoline for us, which is righteously awesome, but if we wind up getting into the whole “giving water away” thing again like with Westfield, then we are going to need that truck back in service, or we’re going to need to find another one pretty damn fast. I don’t want to hand deliver a shit load of individual gallon jugs again. Fuck that noise.
Abby, Mike and Patty are staying at the Factory until tomorrow. We’re heading back there with a small delivery of food and water as a gesture, and to help them transition to a new life without all that pesky oppression. We also want to examine their food needs and make sure that the gardens they have growing in the back will get them through another winter. I didn’t notice it the other day, but I’m told on the flat warehouse roof they had more garden plots. What worries me is the inevitable snow that’s only a couple months away. I guess they struggled mightily last year, and I don’t want to set them up for failure if we can avoid it. I’m also thinking we might just want to bite the bullet right now, and have Ryan give them the know-how to set up their own hydroponics plant inside.
That’d increase their overall food production, and also eliminate a lot of the cold weather concerns.
Why am I worrying so much about saving the lives of people I just met? Do I care too much? Or am I just a gullible bitch?
Oh, I should also mention that Mike said that the undead in the area around the Factory have reappeared. It seems that there were maybe a hundred or so drawn in by our massive gunfire exchange, which does seem pretty likely. What does still strike me as odd was the fact that there were no undead at all in the area the day of our assault. It just seems like there should have been a lot more.
Maybe I’m just a negative Nancy.
So yeah, tomorrow we’re headed back to continue figuring all this out. I’m hoping there is a clear leader there that can take over with minimal support from us. I’m also hoping that we can get their security guy Andy on board with setting up a similar security system here at ALPA and possibly at MGR. I guess his system runs on some glorified LAN setup, which I totally dig. He’s pretty clever for a virgin vampire. That’s not fair at all. I’m sure living there he was swimming in forced vagina.
Which begs the question, should I even work with that asshole? Is he fruits of the poisonous tree or what?
Dammit. Moral dilemmas fucking everywhere. This was so much easier when I thought everyone was dead, and I was all alone. I talked about how many bullets I had, and how much food I had left, and what happened when I tried to get food from the cafeteria and a single lone zombie tried to bite me, and just bit the collar of my fleece jacket.
Oh, the simple life.
I might try and talk with Jason too while I’m there. I’d like to nip this old school awkwardness bullshit in the bud if he and I are going to get along for any length of time. He was a pretty good friend of mine before the Cassie thing developed, and if I can repair that lost relationship, he’s a great guy to have on your side. I mean, six-four and three-fifty has some clear benefits, but he’s a stand up dude generally. I’m sure he was just dragged into the bullshit there because he worked there before June 23rd, and it was a pretty decent set up to stay at if you could hold back the vomit.
Of course, I could be totally wrong about him too.
-Adrian
October 2011
October 1st
God where to begin.
So much has gone on at the Factory since I last wrote an entry. It seems like that was forever ago. Like, a week or more. Pissing me off that I can’t find the time to write more. I feel like the longer I go between journal entries, the more likely I am to miss details, or forget things. I’m getting too old for this shit.
We rolled out to the Factory in another large group ready to hit the place like a sledgehammer. If you remember Mr. Journal, we’d heard reports from Mike and Patty that the place had been surrounded yet again by a large number of the undead, and we wanted to clear them the hell out. As the reports indicated, the place was indeed surrounded. This was really creepy to see too I should add. The area of the town they are in is pretty urban and industrial, and seeing the tighter city streets packed up pretty good with the walking dead did nothing for the quality of my fucking sleep. I’ll be dreaming of those dead for a good long while.
We radioed ahead to the Factory folks we were inbound, and our people there went to the rooftops to start picking off as many of the dead as they could. While they were shooting, the entire population of the factory went up to observe us work.
We’re pretty surgical now. I swept in driving the HRT in the lead after calling for a cease fire. I mowed down two large swathes of undead, once in each direction on the street, and that gave us enough breathing room to move around on foot, and make some serious headway with halligans. With a nice overwatch team of Patty, Mike and Abby picking off the adds coming around the corners and down the street, we were able to take out well over a hundred undead in just over an hour. All in all, it was one of the safest clear situations we’ve ever had. Pretty crazy to be perfectly honest. I was expecting a much larger shit festival. I think it went so well because we had three elevated shooters. The whole situational awareness thing allowing us to remain safe and whatnot. Best of all, it allowed us to conserve ammo after the triggerfest the other day. I should’ve yelled at the girls for that. We really do need to conserve ammo.
Once everything was clear, we pushed all the bodies down the street with the HRT about two hundred yards or so, and we made plans for the Factory people to start a pyre to clean up the mess. That’s their problem though. I’ve already got enough to do.
Meetings. Lots of meetings. I introduced myself to all the folks who live there, and all of them seemed really nice, and very grateful to be alive, and fully freed of their “bondage.” I don’t know why I put that in quotes. They were pretty seriously bonded up, and it blows that they were in the situation they were in.
Mike and Patty made MAJOR headway on establishing a new, capable leadership. Andy, the tech guy was almost unanimously installed as one of the people to make decisions. The consensus, Mike and Patty included say that he’s basically brilliant. Like, cure cancer smart when it comes to electronics, and gizmos and whatnot. He’s just a bright fucking guy.
The third person voted into a leadership role was one of the dancers who worked at the club. She was pushed into the role of sex slave as I understand it, and she looked like she’d been ridden hard for a long time. I’m not talking about “veteran down on her luck stripper” ridden hard. I’m talking “lived in a cardboard box after getting raped and stabbed” ridden hard. She was introduced to me as, and I shit you not, “Lulu, the stripper with a heart of gold, who used to make really good enchiladas.” (last name not provided) Lulu is a holdover from the club’s days before the fall of mankind. She’s streetwise and smart, and has the support of the remainder of the survivors. It’s nice to see her rise to the top after dealing with what she’s dealt with. Heartwarming even.
Mike and crew did a more full assessment of the Factory as a place to live while they had time. The building has a nearly brand new diesel powered generator as well as a central heating system that is equally new. Both systems are powered by diesel/heating oil, and in the basement of the Factory they have about 1,500 gallons of diesel on hand. Down the street at the diesel dealership in one of the garages they have an additional 2,500 gallons in a small heating oil delivery truck. According to Jason and Andy, that amount of fuel will last them perhaps to March, and that’s assuming they use a minimal amount of fuel to run gadgets, and they shut down parts of the building they aren’t using. I imagine with the drastic reduction in survivors, they'll have an automatic savings.
This was the reason they were pushing into our area. They’ve exhausted all the local diesel and gasoline supplies, and they have been too concerned about pushing east and south into the city. That all makes sense. One good thing to note is that the dramatic loss of bodies at the Factory means they will consume far less electricity regularly, and they can shut the heat down to multiple areas they previously had to use. Jason and Andy credited the March out of fuel date to that. If they were still at capacity, Andy thought they’d perhaps make it to the end of January, maybe into February. And if you’ve ever lived in this neck of the woods… you know that’s a shitty time to run out of heat.
Weaponry on site is a serious concern. If you remember, I said they had a bunch of scatter guns, and lever action rifles. The majority of the gun inventory there was actually bolt action rifles. I’m slightly sickened, and also slightly amazed at how they came to be where they are in terms of weapons. In storage there they had about ten AR style police rifles, and plenty of spare magazines. Not one round of 5.56 anywhere to be found. Nor did they have any 7.62 or .308, or 9mm, or .45, or even .38 or 12 gauge. All of the core calibers and their weapons were out of use because they had long since run dry. They were using 16 and 20 gauge shotguns, and lots of rifles in more obscure calibers. Stuff like .45-70, .303, .30-30, .30-06, and the such. The kinds of guns hunters would own, and have a box or two of ammo next to.
They’d depleted their core ammunitions long ago, and they were using what they had left. I credit that to living closer to the city and needing to shoot guns a shitload more than I did. Well, we did. I live in a much smaller town, and thus have had far fewer undead to kill. The good news is we are up about 20 magazines for our rifles, and we’re now hood rich when it comes to spare parts for the ARs. I’m sure Mike will go through them and give them the eagle eye to upgrade/repair what he can.
We are also rich a SHITLOAD of handguns. Some of them need some serious tender loving care to get back to snuff, but that’s easy peasy, just elbow grease. They had 1911s, Glocks, Berettas, Sigs, Smith and Wessons, Taurus’, you name it. We have a ton of spare parts and magazines now. Mike is taking a full inventory of everything so we can assess where our needs are, and what we can do about them.
Patty made good inroads meeting people, as did Abby. I also want to share that the time the Williams girls and Mike spent together as a quasi family at the Factory did them good. It was the first stretch of time where all three were together since the Patty/Mike relationship reveal, and it seemed to me that they were slightly repaired. Abby was being much more civil to her mom, and Mike seemed genuinely more comfortable around Abby as well. I hope they did some bonding.
Anyway, Patty met a lot of people, made some friends, and shared lots of good tidbits. Well, many of the tidbits were straight up horrifying. I will say this: I am very, very glad we hit that place. The sisters were wretched women, rotten to the core. They ignored and even encouraged terrible practices all in the name of survival.
I will say this Mr. Journal: if I sacrifice my humanity to survive, kill me. I don’t want to be a monster just to prolong my life. I’d rather starve, freeze, or be eaten alive than put people through what they did. Some of the folks at the Factory will never be the same.
Vehicles! They have them. We didn’t destroy any of theirs in the hit, so they have plenty, and we are now rich an additional 10-12 diesel vehicles in various sizes. One of the men at the factory has some experience with diesel engines and all that jazz, but the shame is that one of the dudes we shot the other day was a savant when it came to mechanical work. Blake is still on his deathbed, and if he goes, we’re back to damn near square one when it comes to mechanical expertise.
On our trip we brought about a hundred gallons of water in some of the jugs and containers we had leftover from the slower Westfield days. Luckily it rained the other day, and the Factory is flush with drinking and bathing water. I’m still very concerned about their water though. I’ve said it before, clean water means hygiene, and hygiene means no sickness. The last thing we need to do is get sick.
When we left, we left the water, as well as about twenty five pounds of various veggies from our garden, as well as two gallons of milk, and two dozen eggs for them to do with as they see fit. Eventually, I’d like to get them about ten chickens so they can start their own chicken… hatchery farm thing or whatever you call it. Their own eggs and occasional chicken will go a long way towards boosting their morale.
We left them with their usable weapons, and all their ammunition for those guns. We didn’t give them any ammo for their unusable weapons, and further, we confiscated all of it in the name of inventory’s sake. I don’t think that went over well, but we did leave them with plenty of weapons and ammo to defend themselves. We also gave them one of our radios, and told them that if they needed help, we’d be there for them. Lulu seemed appeased by that notion.
Oh… I forgot to talk to Jason about the Cassie thing. We never had time to sit down one on one. Too much to do otherwise. I will say that he was pretty friendly to me while I was there, but it did feel a little awkward. Sort of like when you see a friend you haven’t seen in a really long time, and you just don’t have anything to talk to them about. You have that awkward, “So, how’s the girlfriend? Yeah? That’s great. I’m good. How about them Knicks?” kind of conversations.
All in all, I think it went well. Obviously, there is more to it than just what I wrote here, but you get the idea. The place is pretty safe, and should last against all but the most overwhelming of undead attacks. Now as for the attacks from the living… well, it didn’t do all that well. Of course we had a man on the inside, which was the defining difference, but still. I think we could’ve gotten in with minimal losses. If they had better weaponry and shooters though, we’d have been bent and left sore.
But they didn’t, and we aren’t. So nyah.
Blake is still alive, though he is still blacked out. His need for blood has abated for the moment, and he seems to have stabilized. He is breathing on his own, but he isn’t eating due to being out.
We’ve got him hooked up to an IV right now, but we can’t sustain that for long. We can’t give him all of our IV bags. We simply can’t. Eventually we’ll need to pull him off of it, or… I dunno. Stick a feeding tube in him. Lindsey wants to make a run to the clinic downtown to see what she can do. We don’t want to let the man starve while he heals in a coma he could come out of.
I don’t want my friend to starve to death, and I don’t want to put him down either. I want him to heal up, stand up, and go back to being a dad to his son, and a husband to his wife. Whoa. They aren’t even married. Maybe I’m just filling in the blanks or something. Dunno. I just want him to sit up.
Otherwise things are well here. Ollie, Melissa, Martin and Julie are doing an amazing job of keeping everything moving here on campus. Everyone else is working hard on getting the barn done, which is now another week away from completion with the delays we’ve experienced. No rush really yet. When the snow comes we’ve got issues though.
I think we’ll beat the snow. Oh, and kiss my ass Fairy. I’ll shove you right down the drain with the rest of the shit.
I’m drained. We are sending a crew to the pharmacy to collect blood type tests. I remember seeing about ten of them there, and we also left a bunch at the clinic, which we are going to gather as well. If we can get some blood types documented, we’ll be far better off when it comes to donating blood for transfusions. Plus, Lindsey is going to get more info on feeding tubes and the such. Hopefully we can sustain Blake until he can fully recover from the coma.
-Adrian
October 4th
I love fresh baked bread. It’s so fucking yummy. I am a little pissed though because we are running out of flour, and we have no wheat growing to make more. Next year, that’s a huge must for us to tackle. Bread is the shit.
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 7): The Trinity Page 12
