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

by Chris Philbrook

  Everyone was on board with the possibility of a weird dream. Mike and Mom did a great job too of pointing out that even if I was stark raving mad, and a lunatic teenager, the simple fact that we have been shooting fresh zeds at Gavin’s tower as well here at the gates is a terrible sign, especially when you think about how we haven’t been leaving much, or making loud noises to draw them in! There’s no reason for them to just wander like, five miles to a dead end road directly at us.

  If we have learned anything, it’s that the zombies are either dumb as fricking posts, and wander about, moving towards movement and noise as they see or hear it. The other thing that we’ve noticed, is that occasionally, rarely, they do really, really weird shit en masse. Like back in March, when they all showed up with books, and just occupied campus like hippies at a smoke shop sale.

  Unfortunately, lots of people here now weren’t here for those long days and nights here during March. They didn’t see it firsthand, and they haven’t seen anything truly bizarre with their own eyes. It’s hard to explain it to folks who can’t see it. I guess it’s a lot like faith. Either you believe, or you don’t. Convincing someone is work, and it’s often work they want no part of.

  I think at that point it was lunchtime, and we took a short break, and some of us strategized for the future. When we reconvened, things were far more sedate, and people more willing to listen. Even the few real skeptics were back, and they listened, if only to be part of the conversation. No one wants to be left out I guess. That doesn’t explain why so few folks voted though. Oh well!

  So our plan going forward is to seriously look at what we can do medically to treat Adrian. Blake is on the mend, and Doc Lindsey says there is little she can do, or little there is to do to make him any better. Adrian on the other hand still has a bullet lodged in his neck, and she’s still very, very afraid to take it out. We are going to have serious discussions about hitting area clinics to get more medical texts to speed up the learning curve so we can really try and do something to fix him up.

  The idea of going into the city to one of the three hospitals was also tossed out, but it was not received well.

  Everyone remembers what the hospitals were like when this all started.

  Adrian called them charnel pits once. I thought that was really apt. The hospitals were the worst places to be when this all happened, and I can’t imagine that they have cleared themselves out and gotten safer. I would, on any given moment of any given day, bet a trip to a hospital would be a death sentence for a few of us.

  Clinics first. See how that goes.

  I said our plans were ruined. We are planning a trip back to Westfield here to get hay from Lenny. We knew from a trip Ollie made that Lenny was gathering hay for us for the cows, and he has a barn full of hay for us. We have been pretty bad about supporting him too, what with all the bull happening here. Ollie was planning on taking the tractor trailer over to his Dad’s place, with maybe a humvee or two, and getting the hay. We need to feed the cows all winter off that hay, so it’s kind of important that we get it here. I just hope we have enough.

  Let’s hope the change in weather isn’t a sign of things to come.

  No cool fact about Adrian. I feel like it’d be out of place.

  Abby

  Dreams of a Dying Man

  “Hey man, you need to wake up,” a voice spoke to Adrian from the darkness beyond his closed eyes.

  Adrian struggled mightily to lift his eyelids. They felt like they were made out of pure lead. With a creak he felt all the way to the back of his skull, the lids parted, and Adrian took in the face standing above him. It was his friend Blake. Adrian was on his back, lying in cool, wet grass, a gray overcast sky hung sad above, surrounded by trees filled with tiny, bright red apples. He was in the orchard where he and his group of survivors had just been picking the bounty of red fruit.

  But Blake hadn’t been there with them earlier. He’d been back at their home, in a bed, laid up with a terrible wound and in a deep coma as his body struggled to heal. But here he was anyway, alive, quite conscious, and standing over Adrian, who presently had no idea how he had gotten into the position he was in.

  “What the hell is going on?” Adrian asked Blake. Speaking did him no favors. The words poured off his tongue like wet concrete, and it started a pounding in the back of his head that felt like he was being hit over and over with a blunt, heavy object. He let out a soft groan when the pain hit him.

  “I’m not sure man. I was wandering in this dark, cold place for a few hours, then I managed to find my way to the interstate to make my way home. All of a sudden I poofed here, and saw you in the grass. There’s blood all around you, but you’re not hurt. I’m confused as shit.” Blake sat back on his heels and raised his hand to look at it. His palm was covered in a red slick of blood.

  Adrian sat up with assistance from Blake. He blinked his eyes and focused his vision as best he could, but things were still fuzzy, indistinct. The further away he looked, the worse it got. It seemed like his vision had degraded drastically.

  “Oh, the vision. Yeah that threw me too. There's nothing wrong with your eyes. You get used to it,” Blake said as Adrian was finally able to sit up on his own.

  Adrian shook his muddled head. That was a pain and nausea inducing mistake. “What is happening? Last I knew you were in a coma back at the clinic on campus, and a bunch of us were picking apples at the orchard outside town. Are we dead?”

  “I'm in a coma? Fucked if I know brother. I’ve been wandering my way back to home to try and find everyone. Last thing I remember was getting jumped outside that strip club Mike and I was searching out in the city. I remember some gunshots, then bam, I’m standing in a world where there’s no one else. Not even the dead people are here as best as I can tell.”

  Adrian looked out over the apple trees at the distant hills. The fall foliage was absent on the horizon. He knew the distinct trees were there, but he couldn’t force his eyes to bring the trees and hills into focus. He knew all the world should be vibrant whirls of color as the leaves changed, but as best as he could see, it was bright green, the color of midsummer. The closer he looked at his immediate surroundings, the better it got, but things were still… foggy. It was almost as if he was standing in a fine, nearly imperceptible mist.

  “And you say you’ve seen no one here? No one living, or dead? Just emptiness?” Adrian asked, his painful skull dulling to a throb. He felt his sore neck, searching for a wound. He found none.

  “Yeah. Here’s another weird thing. Everything is just like it was back before all this went to hell, but nothing works. There’s no electricity, or gasoline, or anything. Cars won’t start no matter what I do to them. Everything is like, preserved just as it was. Like the world was stopped cold. I mean look at these apples, they’re tiny, like summer baby apples.” Blake looked around the orchard, pointing out the tiny red fruit. In truth, they were mostly apple blossoms.

  Adrian saw them and immediately knew something was amiss. Just moments ago before he’d blacked out, the apples were ripe. The fruit was fat and juicy, ready for the picking. It was like he’d gone back in time from October to June again. June of 2010.

  “I don’t think we’re dead, but something is definitely not right,” Adrian said quietly.

  Blake snickered and sat down outside of the phantom pool of blood that surrounded Adrian. “No shit, Sherlock. How did I go from walking down the interstate about ten miles away to right here when I blinked? I haven’t eaten, or drank since I came to in that dark place. I’m stupid but I’m not that stupid. People don’t just teleport and not eat for days. This ain’t Star Trek.”

  Adrian nodded, sending a dagger of pain down his spine from an injury he didn’t have. He sighed and looked down at his gear. He was still wearing his body armor, and his weapon was still slung on his chest where it always was. At least if anything attacked them, he’d be armed and ready to defend himself.

  “Adrian.”

  “Yeah Blake?”


  “How is Kim? How is my boy?”

  Adrian smiled at the young father, his pain forgotten. “They’re fine. Kim is worried sick about you, but the kid is good. Great really.”

  Blake breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s great. Man I been sweating that. Little A.G. is the only thing I can think of. Oh, there’s one more thing.”

  “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

  Blake stood up and shook the blood off his hands. “I’ve been hearing voices. Sometimes just on the edge of my vision, you know? I think I can see things too. But when I look in the corner of my eye at what I thought I saw, there’s nothing there. Voices of people who I think are dead. I think I can hear the ghosts of the dead now.”

  Adrian looked at the seriousness on his friend’s face. He bit the inside of his cheek for a moment and nodded. “Well Blake, I can’t say that’s the weirdest thing that I’ve heard lately. I’m starting to wonder if I got shot too. Are you in any pain?”

  “Oh hells yes. My gut is killing me right here. Thought my appendix had burst or something.” Blake cupped his side with a wince right where Adrian knew he’d been shot a week or so earlier.

  Adrian looked at the gray sky and laughed. “And I think that finishes the puzzle. You were shot right there, and it hurts even though you have no wound. My neck is killing me, and I bet you anything I got shot there too. I bet we’re stuck in the fucking clinic with Doc Lindsey fretting over us. I bet we’re both in comas. I wonder who the fuck shot me?” Adrian shook his head in frustration. His mind raced, ratcheting through all the possible perpetrators.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I’d be willing to bet one of my precious balls we’re halfway between dead and alive, and if we want, or don’t want to go one way or the other, we need to figure this bitch out.” Adrian got to his feet, and put his hands on Blake’s widening shoulders. The young man had grown and thickened in the months they’d shared surviving the end of the world. Against all odds, Blake had become a dad, and Adrian had become a capable leader of men in that time.

  “What do we do?” Blake asked.

  Adrian’s eyes tightened as his mind kicked into overdrive. Finally he cracked a small smile. “Well if you appeared where you went down, and I appeared where I went down, then I think we go to where some of our friends went down before, because if I had to guess, I bet if we make enough noise, we could scare up some reinforcements. People who might know a little more about what’s going on as well.”

  “Who?”

  Adrian smiled again. “I think there’s an old man that owes me a big fucking pile of favors.”

  Blake grinned. He knew the old man.

  *****

  Days passed. Well, what passed as days wherever the hell they were. Time seemed to have very little meaning in the dreamlike world the two men wandered in. Frequently when they weren’t paying close attention the sky would darken, and it would be night without notice. Then when they least expected it, it was day again, and that cloudy sky returned, keeping the colors of the world in muted tones. Sometimes it felt to the men that they would walk for days on end and make little to no progress, seeing the same houses and streets three, or four times over. The two men were not transported over vast distances in the blink of an eye like Blake had been before either. There was simply putting one foot in front of the other, and the sore feet that accompany long walks.

  Geography held little meaning. Road signs were frequently blank, and there were streets heading off into directions neither man had ever seen before. They only seemed to make real progress when both men focused intently on their goal, and refrained from talking, or looking around. Willpower and the desire to be somewhere new seemed to be more important than physical effort here. Once the two men figured that out, things improved.

  Adrian was unsure how much time had passed when he started to hear the voices as well. It might’ve been a day, or three or four days. It was hard to say.

  “Hey, can you hear me?” A whisper came to Adrian as he passed what he thought to be the road that turned onto the industrial park where STIG was. He froze, turning an ear to the desolate road that went off into the dark. He couldn’t be sure if it was a man or woman’s voice.

  “Did you hear that?” Adrian asked Blake quietly. Instinctively he flicked the safety of his rifle to semi, though he felt the gesture was a wasted one.

  “I heard nothing. You hearing voices now too?” Blake asked quietly, turning his attention to the air for sounds. He was scared, but he wanted to hear too.

  The whisper came again. It sounded to Adrian as if were just on the fringe of his perception. Almost like the whispered words of someone in a memory, instead of in the moment. “Adrian, can you hear me? I’m right here," the voice said.

  Adrian closed his eyes and focused every bit of his concentration on the words he heard. He took a deep breath and set his feet in the road, grounding his being, trying intently to pluck the voice from the ether. “I heard you. Talk to me. Tell me who you are.”

  A breeze blew through the abandoned streets, rustling up phantom leaves that weren’t really there. The voice came on its heels, “It’s hard to talk like this. You’re the first people we’ve seen like you. You’re not really here. You're like a ghost.”

  Adrian’s eyes darted around as he tried to figure out the mysterious statement. “Not really here? Like how I can hear you, but not see you?” Adrian was now sure the voice belonged to a man.

  Another breeze, this one warmer and more summerlike caressed Adrian across the face as the voice returned. “You can’t see me? I can see you. I can see right through you.”

  “Like a ghost,” Adrian said.

  “Who the fuck are you talking to?” Blake interjected. He couldn’t hear the voice Adrian was conversing with.

  Adrian held a single finger up, urging Blake to be quiet.

  “Yes. Like you’re a ghost. But we know better here. We’re the dead ones,” the voice said. There was a distant sadness in the words. A realization spoken aloud.

  “Holy shit I heard that,” Blake said breathlessly. The words scared him, and he felt regret over trying to hear them so ardently.

  “Did you die in the explosion at STIG? We’re very close to there,” Adrian asked the gray world softly, his eyes closed once more.

  “Oh, yeah. A lot of us died that day. Hey I wanted to apologize for being an asshole. I kind of treated you like shit, and I never thought I’d be able to say I was sorry. I’m sorry Adrian. So very sorry for all my failings. More than you know,” the voice said, trailing off into further sadness. The world around them seemed to dim with the emotion, mimicking the soul of the invisible speaker.

  Adrian’s mind raced, putting it all together. “Charles?”

  There was a moment of quiet before the voice returned again with a single word, “Yes.”

  Adrian had mixed emotions suddenly as he opened his eyes to look at Blake. Blake looked at Adrian and shrugged. Blake had never met Charles or Randy. “He’s Abby’s dad. He died in the big STIG explosion.”

  Blake mouthed the words, “Holy shit,” and went back to listening.

  Adrian spoke again, “Charles I’m so sorry about you and Randy. Abby is still with me, doing well, and we were able to rescue Patty too.”

  The light surrounding the two men picked up again as Charles’ heart soared with the good news of his wife's survival. “I’d wondered why she wasn’t here with the rest of us. We’re all stuck here Adrian, sad, angry, stranded. There’s no moving on here. Just waiting. Waiting forever.”

  “No heaven, no hell?” Adrian asked.

  “No. Just this. Just a world stuck on a day like any other. No joy to be found, just purgatory.” Charles’ voice was filled with despair again.

  “How can we help you?”

  “Adrian when you came near the sky lightened, and everyone knew something good was about to happen. We could hear your footsteps as you came. The breeze came and went as you b
reathed in and out. The unbearable burden of being here was lightened Adrian. Just being here helps us.”

  Adrian winced at the string of strange compliments. Then he shared the worst thought he could imagine with the disembodied voice of Charles, “Chuck I can’t stay. I need to get home. I don’t know exactly how I am going to do that, but I know we need to make it back to campus. Back to Bastion.”

  Adrian couldn’t see Charles think about the name he’d called the campus, but he knew Charles was mulling it over. “Bastion eh? I’ve heard that before. Sometimes others come through. People not fettered to a place like we are. We’re like those shadows at Hiroshima, burned here forever. Heh, we're our own monuments. Our own headstones. But some, the lucky ones, mostly those that died before all this began, they can come and go. They’ve talked about you. Talked about Bastion. It’s a fitting name Adrian. More apt than you know.”

  “What else do these wanderers say? I’m curious to hear what’s being said about the living,” Adrian asked Charles as he looked around at the vague surroundings. He suddenly felt very far from home.

  “Adrian you’ve got to go. There isn't enough time. Maybe there's too much time. It's hard to say. Tell my wife and daughter that Randy and I love them very much. You’ll figure this all out for us. You know what Adrian? This is going to sound funny coming from me, but I’ve finally found faith. Believe it or not, I’ve got faith in you. Ha. Of all the things to be faithful of, I have faith in you. It took dying to understand it, but here I am. Go. Take care of this.”

  “Charles, don’t be a dick. Talk to me, you can share things with us, please man,” Adrian pleaded into the void as the sky darkened suddenly into full night. His pleas were for naught. Charles had either left, or was ignoring him. Adrian kept his temper in check long enough to calm down, and put one foot in front of the other once more.