You’ve earned it. Dying is a real combo breaker.
So impending doom. Yep. Heard it here first. If Gilbert is sure we’re up the creek without that fricking paddle, then we are up that creek. He didn’t make many mistakes about stuff, and that worries me a lot. What I wonder now is, what is Adrian up to on the other side? And apparently as Gavin told me in the dream, Adrian’s body needs to be repaired lickety-split, or we may have to deal with whatever is coming without him.
Not cool. Not sure what else to say here. The Factory is doing well. I guess the undead over that way just up and left a few days ago, which really makes me wonder where they went. You want to place a bet on “right here?” Gavin’s tower is okay. No fighting over sexual preferences, which is a huge improvement.
The rain went away, so we were able to get most of the hay moved here. We need another full day according to Ollie to get it stored properly. We’re storing it all over the place too. There’s a LOT of frigging hay for these cows. I almost want to accidentally shoot one so we can have a hamburger, and so we don’t need all this damn hay. Also, the chickens are doing great.
The weather has been crappy like I said, but it’s clear right now. Nights are super cold though. Nipples into diamonds cold, and that’s pretty cold. If I had boobs, I’d want to tuck a couple of those hand warmer things inside the cups of my bra to keep them snuggly. Sadly, I don’t have boobs, and I just layer to keep my chest warm.
TMI Dad? I mean, you knew I had no boobs. You brought me up, and if you hadn’t seen my lack of chesticles, you’re just blind. Still love you.
I’m off. I’m tired, and I am so scared. I'm making jokes to escape how I feel. I think I just figured out a lot about Adrian with that sentence. Adrian’s sleeping pills are great by the way! I take one at bedtime, and within maybe half an hour I am light’s out. I am going to try and sleep without one tonight to make sure I don’t get hooked, and to stay a little more coherent in the very likely event we get pwned by a horde of the Devil’s minions.
Good times.
Adrian is an obsessive folder. If he has a napkin on the table, he’ll fold it three or four times to make it neat. His laundry is folded perfectly and stored away perfectly. His socks are bunched perfectly. His bed is made perfectly. Every day. It drives Mallory nuts.
Kinda funny that a guy that swears, farts, and makes dick and pussy jokes all day and night spends that much time and effort on the little things.
Or is it exactly as you’d expect? Funny guy.
Abby
October 28th
It’s been strange here with Blake up and about. Well, as up and about as he can get. He’s still pretty messed up, having taken a shot to the midsection at point blank range from a shotgun. Honestly, it’s really impressive that he even recovered. Miracles do happen I suppose. I guess there’s hope for Adrian yet.
Adrian’s health is stable I should add before I forget. He hasn’t had any twitching episodes or seizures like before, but Lindsey and Sophie are saying that he occasionally cracks a tiny smile on the corner of his lips. Up to no good with Gilbert I imagine. If I know those two… they are flipping over tables, blowing stuff up and trying to pick up chicks wherever they are.
How are things with Blake you ask Dad? Pretty good. He’s definitely a little quieter now, and a lot more serious about our plight(s). He’s certain that we are about to have something terrible happen to us, and I for one am fully on his side. With the dream I had, and the description of events he shared from the time he was down, I’m sure we’ve got something bad coming.
You know how I said we had a bunch of non believers around here? Well, when Blake’s story circulated here at school, lots of folks changed their tune. Or at least started to change their tune. It was like, such a huge deal that the guy woke up, and immediately had this intensely detailed story to share with us. It’s almost like, too true to be a lie, if that makes any sense. Like, if it were a lie, it’d be less strange and weird.
Mike is so happy Blake made it. I know he was sweating the guilt of Blake’s injury, and I think had Blake not made it, Mike would’ve been pretty messed up over it. I talked to Mom a lot about it, and she said that Mike spent a lot of time going over things, and wondering how he could’ve done things differently. He swears up and down that Blake getting shot was wholly his fault, but I don’t buy it. To be honest Dad, I really think that Blake getting shot was part of the plan.
You know. THE PLAN. The thing that nags at me, is which plan was he a part of? The good guy plan, or the bad guy plan?
So Blake is back in Hall B with Ollie and Melissa. Melissa is such an awesome mom to-be too. She’s taking care of little Adrian while Kim takes care of Blake. Ollie is taking care of the livestock and Melissa too, which is cute. He’s such a cute dad to-be. I can’t wait to see the kids when they’re all grown up. They’re going to be such good kids. The parenting here is amazing. You know that line about it taking a village to raise a kid?
It’s TRUE! With so many of us right here all the time the kids are always engaged, and interested, and there’s almost always something for them to do, or someone always watching them to keep them on the right track. I think we might be on to a whole new version of society here. It’s something to see. Randy would’ve been so successful here Dad. No strange outbursts I bet, and his whole ADHD thing would be an asset. Now if he could just stop fighting with other kids when he got uncomfortable or anxious or said something really fricking weird…
Spilled milk as Adrian would say. Randy doesn’t really need to worry about getting into fights anymore. And we don’t need to worry about him being successful anywhere. Man that sucks. I hate thinking about stuff like that.
Speaking of a village, we are still preparing some small Halloween event for the kids in a couple days. We didn’t do anything last year, because we didn’t have any kind of society last year at this time, and being that this is our first Halloween as a community, we’re doing something. We have been hoarding candy for months now to give to the kids who can dress up. It won’t be much, maybe 5 small pieces of candy at a few of the places on campus they can walk to, but it WILL be fun for them to make simple costumes, and eat that candy. Some sense of normalcy returning is a good thing.
We’re going to do it on Halloween itself, right before dark. Now that campus is fully walled off, it is basically safe and sound from anything but an incident inside the walls itself. Sooo… hello Jinx Fairy, have a field day with that mess up.
I hate it when I do that. I wish I could keep my rather stupid mouth shut more effectively. Adrian would smack me right now if he wasn’t off in la-la-land traipsing around with Gilbert, causing hate and discontent. I’m jealous Dad, just to be clear. It’s been very quiet here.
Well not that quiet really, there has been steady activity at the gate. I’d say we’re dropping one or two undead an hour, and waking up in the morning to maybe three or four waiting for us. It’s a nuisance, especially seeing how long we’d gone without seeing a single undead. Ollie said on the trip to Westfield to see his Dad and get all the hay they had to drive around or hit something like two or three dozen zeds, which is a lot compared to what we’ve seen the past few months. I remember Adrian talking shit about how he thought we’d taken care of them all.
Spoke too soon big guy! Even the potential savior of mankind opens his pie hole at the wrong time I guess.
I’ve been taking the majority of the watches on the gates and walls. It can be boring as hell, but I feel safer knowing that I am one of the people who is making it safer. Does that make sense Dad? I guess this goes back to how Adrian talks about how he feels safer going on the tough trips. He’s afraid someone with less experience will make mistakes, and if that he’s there, he can help make sure that those mistakes are either negated, or minimized. He’s a good leader. Always leads from the front, and always by example. I am here, send me.
Maybe that’s why we’re struggling so hard to stay positive and hard working. Without him o
ut there busting butt most of the time, and making things happen, folks don’t have that spark plug to motivate them. I think there’s also an element of folks just being scared shitless of making him unhappy too, but to be honest, that’s got to be a minor part of it.
I don’t want to leave out the fact that the past couple of days things have gotten better here with things getting done. Ollie’s hay trip and runs to Westfield motivated people well, and now with Blake up and about, there are a dozen projects he needs help on, and being that he’s kind of an original ALPA’r, people look up to him somewhat. He’s got a few followers that love helping him out, and it’s nice that he’s here and talking again to get them engaged in the work that needs to be done. You know the saying as well as I do Dad; idle hands are the Devil’s plaything.
I don’t know what else to talk about right now. Mike and Mom are doing well and that should make you happy. Caleb and Sophie are also doing well. Caleb’s wounds are healing very nicely, and he has inserted himself into the rotation of watches. Caleb’s not quite as nice as Adrian is, I should add. He seems to have more of a temper. But, he also seems like he’s super protective and affectionate to those he cares about, which is cool. Their kid is cute.
Ryan is doing really good on the hydroponics. Becca, Adrian’s little sister has been spending a lot of time with him, which I knew was pissing Adrian off. I don’t know if there’s like, romance in the air between them, but they do spend an awful awful lot of time in that gym with each other.
I am sick of apples. Oh, and Blake is now making moonshine cider with some of them. Should be good stuff. Even if it is terrible, we’ll still drink it, as our liquor and beer reserves are basically running on fumes. I think a few trips out to empty or search houses are in order. Might be a good idea if only for us to find more booze. Pacify the locals, as it were.
Things at Gavin’s tower are still good. Things at the Factory are still good. They have talked about having a rather large amount of scuffles there over who is in charge, blah blah blah, but everything seems to be settled. I guess the majority of the undead are gone or dead there, so they seem to be doing well. The rain lately has given them a nice supply of h2o, so that’s good. One less thing for us to worry about I guess.
Passing out here. I need to get some rest. We’re doing some extra construction on the barn tomorrow that I told Ollie I’d help with, and I also promised Becca and Melissa I’d help with making the big breakfast tomorrow for the folks who are helping do it.
The things I do.
Here’s a funny fact about Adrian: he isn’t ticklish. How weird is that?
Abby
October 31st
I think it’s beginning.
Two very strange events happened today. One here at school, and the other off-campus.
Second story is easier to tell than the first, so I’ll share that one now.
We have lost radio contact with Gavin’s Tower. No one there made their proper radio checks the last two check ins, and they haven’t responded to our last two attempts to radio them. It definitely cast a huge shadow this afternoon when we were doing the Halloween stuff for the kids. I think the adults did a good job hiding it from the kids, but I know there were a lot of pained glances exchanged. Definitely not frigging cool.
We spent most of this evening after the trick-or-treating talking about the plan to go there tomorrow, which I am a part of. I am hoping it goes well, and just turns out to be a busted generator, or a loose wire on the radio equipment we put on the roof there. That’d be swell.
Of course, that ain’t gonna happen, and we both know it Dad. I’m so worried something has happened. Dwayne has been a shithead lately, and there’s always the chance that they are surrounded by more zeds, or another band of roving dickfaces have attacked them. The door Martin welded/made down there is sturdy, but any person with a brain and a chain can easily open that door. It wouldn’t take much for someone with a vehicle to tug it right off the side of the building.
The other thing that happened today will keep me up tonight. I’ve already got a movie to watch in my room, because I know I am not sleeping. I’m kind of afraid to sleep, and I desperately want to take something to make me sleep, but I know if I dream, it’ll be messed up, and if I take a pill to dream, I won’t wake up if something bad happens, and I don’t know what’s worse right now.
During the hour or so that we had kids going from building to building getting candy, I took on the role of roving security. Alex and George were on gate duty with James, and everyone with a kid was taking them around to get the candy, and sort of lead them along like good parents do. I simply hung around centrally on campus, and made sure nothing was happening that was odd, or weird, or whatever. Granted, it was a non-job, but I felt good watching the bulk of the little folks in their costumes wander about and I felt good that if something were to happen, I was there.
Plus I felt like I was shafting Adrian's Jinx Fairy. After my slip up the other night I felt like I had to go the extra mile to ensure we didn’t have an incident. Adrian would never forgive me.
Here’s where it gets weird. I am sitting on one of the small stone benches that’s sort of near Hall E, sort of in the middle of campus, and I swear to you I saw a kid making a beeline around the back of the building and towards the wall facing the river. Now none of our kids have any business over there, so I hop up, and trot over to check whoever it was out. As memory serves, the kid was wearing a sheet, and was trying to look like a ghost or something.
I run around the end of the building towards the wall, and the kid is just gone. Like, poof gone. So my heart drops hardcore, and I get this sick feeling that the kid ran to the top of the… the berm, that’s the word, and he’s gone over the top and fallen down near the river, where there may or may not be any zombies.
I get my AR off my shoulder and get to the top of the wall as fast as I can. I get to the top, where the logs are kind of sticking up, and there’s no kid on the other side of the wall, just six zombies.
Right off the bat I’m really confused and weirded out that there are any zombies at that spot in the first place. They were easily like a hundred yards away from the bridge, and there is like, no reason at all for them to have walked from the bridge to here. The other messed up thing about it, is that they would have had to cross the river in the water, or walked across the bridge, and fallen off, then climbed up the embankment on our side of the river, and THEN walked all the way to a random spot on the school wall.
That’s like, a LOT of weird coincidences.
So I lift my gun up and flick the safety switch, and I am about to start shooting when it occurs to me that the kids are maybe fifty yards from me. If I start shooting without telling them that I am about to shoot, there will be panic. Also, if I start shooting, it’ll attract more attention to the school, and that’s bad.
So I grab my walkie, and radio to the gate for James. Alex says he’ll send him when he sees him, which should be like fifteen minutes or so. To kill the time, I stand near the top of the berm wall behind the logs, and I watch the six zombies kind of mill about, and scratch at the logs. I notice maybe five minutes in that the logs are entirely scratched to shit where they are standing. Also, the fingers of the zeds are raw, and some are worn straight down to the finger bones, like they had been scratching at those very logs for days…
These folks had been there for awhile. A few minutes later, as I’m starting to get the heebie-jeebies standing there just a few feet from them thinking about it, James comes waltzing down the top of the berm, and asks what’s up. He sees the zombies just as he gets to me, and does like a “oh holy shit” face, and he proceeds to get his rifle free.
I stopped him, and we have the discussion about the kids being right nearby, and how the undead got to this remarkably strange place. It’s like, strange for him to think about too.
Remember how I said a long ways back that James was using Adrian’s bow? Practicing and stuff? I remembered that, and told him
to go get it, and drop these guys with that. He takes off at a run, and I remain all alone in the woods, near the river, with six zombies scratching at the wall at my feet. Some of them finally look up, and then they go MENTAL. One of them starts gnashing his teeth so hard that I can hear them snapping together, and I even heard a few of them crack and splinter right in his face. Icky.
I can almost feel their fingers gouging into the wood below my feet right now. It was the worst feeling then, and the memory of it now bothers me. I can feel the shuddering of the wood as the bones and nails dig out inches long splinters. Like I said Dad, no sleep for me.
As James is coming back, I look over my shoulder at the back of Hall E, and I realize in like, a split second that it makes a lot of sense where these things are scratching. If you drew a straight line from where they were scratching into campus, like as if the wall wasn’t there and they could walk straight…
They’d be scratching right where my bedroom window is. That can’t be a coincidence. No way, no how.
Neither can be what happened when James arrived with the bow. At point blank range, James couldn’t miss the headshots. When he saw how nutty they were being when he returned he was creeped out too, and we had a nice what the hell moment as he started putting arrows in their faces. Sadly, some of his arrows missed the gray matter, so he had to shoot a couple of them twice.
Here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back: as James is dropping the zeds, I’m watching the ones at the end of the line to make sure they don’t do anything like, insane or anything, and there’s this dead girl at the end, and she’s looks an awful lot like me, except she’s all messed up. Well, all messed up except for her eyes, which were all milky, and cancerous, and strange. And I am not kidding one bit, but that chick looked up at me with those messed up eyes, and she lifts her arms up, and slowly taps her tiny, dirty Mickey Mouse watch three times directly at me. One. Two. Three.
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 7): The Trinity Page 20
