Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel]

by Meadows, Carl

  “Whatever. A marine. Either way, you signed up to be a protector, right? Not because you wanted to shoot people. Getting your hands dirty so others didn’t have to, protecting the freedom and liberties our ancestors fought so hard to protect? I bet your old man fought against the Nazis, right?”

  Nate nodded, his gaze intense. “He did.”

  “And I bet it was those stories, that camaraderie, that fighting the good fight and so forth… that was what put you in the service, wasn’t it? Your granddad probably fought in the Great War, your dad fought the second time around, and you felt you had to honour them by following in their footsteps, right?”

  Nate’s face betrayed genuine surprise. Lockey shoots, she scores. Told you I could read people.

  “So, let me ask you this, Nate.” I looked him dead in the eye. “What would your grandpappy and your pops think of you leaving innocent women to be tormented by a despot tyrant? What would they think if they knew you had the power to act, but still did nothing, because it wasn’t ‘your problem?’”

  That one stung, his own words returning to haunt him.

  How to Shame a Soldier’s Honour, by Erin Locke. In all good bookshops from Thursday.

  Also, probably the title of a porno somewhere.

  I decided to press my advantage. “Nate, this world is dying or dead, and the people that are left should be working together to build something new, to fight against the dead. These people need a hero, but there aren’t any heroes left.” I punched him playfully on his thick arm. “So, I guess it’s up to us.”

  “Say for a moment I entertained this,” he said eventually.

  It was hard not to do a victory twerk in his face. I knew he was in, but I thought the twerking might undo all my intelligent argument and salient points, so I just did an imperceptible shimmy in my chair.

  “If we do this, we have to do it smart, and we have to do it right.” He gave me a stern look that said his next statement was entirely for my benefit alone. “Which means not going half-cocked like some dumb comic-book hero.”

  “Comics aren’t dumb,” I said. “The characters and themes contained throughout history since their inception have often been symbols of the radical and divisive social change of the time. The X-Men as mutants endured bigotry, their creation inspired by the civil rights movement. Black Panther and the She-Hulk reflected the difficulties endured by ethnic minorities and women. Comics are just as important to history as any other literature.”

  Nate stopped, staring at me like I had been possessed by some kind of demon and it was another voice emanating from my body.

  “Though, in your defence, some were hit and miss,” I mused aloud. “Hellcow, for example, was a vampire cow. Bessie was bitten by Dracula himself and once teamed up with Deadpool. A vampire cow? That’s pretty dumb, to be fair.”

  I think Nate relaxed then, as he realised I hadn’t gone anywhere.

  “You’re proving my point, Erin,” he said, knowing that every time he used my first name it scratched at my nerves. He had a way of saying it that made him sound like a dad. A proper dad, though, not the asshole wife-and-daughter beating druggie I had. “You need to focus and do this my way, or we’ll both end up dead, and then your precious hero complex will be no good to anyone.”

  Son of a bitch. Seems Nate is pretty good at reading people as well.

  I nodded. “Okay then, what’s the plan?”

  Nate snorted. “Erin, we’ve only just got back from this whole mess getting started. Let me eat, sleep, shit, shower, and think. Rushing anything is the best way to get everyone killed.”

  Stupid logic and sensible approach.

  “Well, as long as we’re going to do something, I’m okay.”

  “You know, Erin, you really are insane,” sighed Nate.

  “I prefer ‘happy with a twist’, to be honest,” I replied with a straight face.

  Freya remained quiet as Nate and I discussed this, admitting to me later that she felt a bit useless as she couldn’t contribute. I reassured her that her work here was just as important and all the inventory she was doing on the mass of spreadsheets on this laptop was vital. We have to know exactly what we have and how much of it. Just because she’s no fighter doesn’t lessen her value in any way. When Nate and I returned, she took some of the stuff we brought back and made tasty-as-hell pasta bake with canned tuna, canned vegetables, and covered in cheese that was still in date.

  I’m going to miss cheese so much when it’s gone. My heart breaks at the thought of no dairy in my life.

  Keeping those home fires burning is every bit as important as me and Papa Reaper shooting and kicking the bad things. She just wants to feel like she’s contributing, and I assured her she does, not least because I have a friend to return to that isn’t a fifty-something Terminator. At the moment, Freya is mega-important to my mental health. Her and Particles are my tribe. Well, and Nate too obviously, but he’s like our grumpy dad. Freya’s my sister from another mister.

  Plus, I reminded her, that I probably wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t done her commando strike on Theo as he tried to eat my face. She does not lack contribution.

  Well, I doubt we’ll be doing anything today, so I’m going to help Freya with the inventory while Nate works out the stages of his master plan. I fucking hate inventory like I’ve said, but it’s a good opportunity to do some girly bonding with my home girl.

  July 31st, 2010

  BORED!

  I’m so fucking bored.

  Actually, the correct description would be I’m bored of waiting. I know Nate said we had to plan and do things right, but Jesus, this fucker is slower than a turtle swimming in peanut butter.

  Stupid similes aside, I’m getting impatient. I just want to be doing something. Freya and I have counted everything and no, I’m not recording it here for posterity because that shit is boring. Suffice to say, we’ve got a fat haul of good loot and it’s all checked off. Now, I need to do something productive with my time, even if that’s to just go and find a console and some games so I can Mario Kart my days away while I’m waiting. Fucking love that game.

  Ooh, hang on. Papa Reaper wants a word. Be right back.

  Finally! Something to do!

  Recon and acquisition. Nate’s two biggest requirements before we even consider liberation are communications and hardware. Comms so we can keep in touch when doing recon, and he’s adamant that he’s not doing anything with shotguns and limited pistol ammo. He wants real hardware, preferably a scoped rifle.

  New bombshell, Nate is a trained sniper. Of course he fucking is. Next he’ll be a demolitions expert, or possibly even trained in the construction of a thermonuclear warhead if we can rustle up some weapons grade uranium and plutonium. Pretty sure he’s probably close to finding a cure for cancer.

  I challenged him on it and all he said was that, “Men in my unit needed to cover a number of disciplines for operations behind enemy lines, which is what this will be.”

  If that isn’t black ops speak, I don’t know what is. I fucking knew it.

  Anyway, what we need are walkies, with a secure channel if possible, and some more hardware. Nate wants to hit a cop shop to see if there’s anything left there. That means going into town, which is itself a risk, seeing as how Bancroft will have a major boner for our messy deaths. Further through town there’s a big electronics store on a small retail park, so as a backup we might be able to get something basic there as a fall back.

  Today, I also watched Nate make some homemade smoke bombs, and I was fascinated. Asking why, Nate again shows his super-forward thinking.

  “We’re massively outnumbered and if we’re ever pinned down under fire, we can use these to cover a potential escape.”

  I shrugged, but watched him do it anyway, fascinated. I like learning what he has to teach. Powdered sugar, baking soda, potassium nitrate (which is apparently used for fertilisers and there was a tub of it on one of the nearby farms), and newspaper. He made his mix of three parts
pot-nitrate, two parts sugar, added hot water, added baking soda, and mixed it all up until it was dissolved and made a dirty looking liquid. Pouring it all into a big plastic box from the kitchen, he then separated the sheets of a newspaper and started laying them in, one at a time, soaking everything up. When the liquid was all soaked up, he hung them out to dry outside. Once dry, he rolled the newspaper sheets into a single tight roll, tying it all up with quick rings of duct tape.

  Then the clever bastard made a couple of fuses, getting some boxes of matches and grinding all the sulphuric heads off with a small pair of pliers into the tray, taking a couple of small plastic straws—the thinnest he could find—off some juice boxes we’d brought back on one of our supply runs and scooping up that mixed flammable dust into them and packing it tight. Sealing off the bottom and the top of his new makeshift fuses by wrapping it in a tiny bit of shrink wrap, voila. Fuse just jammed into the centre of the tightly packed new, dried, smoke bomb, and they were ready to go. Honestly, I was pretty amazed. Haven’t seen one on the go yet, so I’ve no idea if it will actually work, but hey, when has the old dog ever been wrong?

  I hate writing details. This is getting like a fucking textbook. I’m not writing bloody history, I’m writing a tale for the ages, so I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to fuck this off about what we’re going to do, then tell you what happened in a colourful and sense-overwhelming display of bardic magnificence. That’s more my style. Details are so… Nate.

  If you’re reading this, Nate, then yes, that was an insult. You big wrinkly scrotum face.

  Love yoooooou. LOL.

  Who am I kidding? One thing I know for sure, Nate would type on a keyboard with one rigid finger and his tongue sticking out one side of his mouth as he makes his “thinking face”. There’s as much chance of Nate using a computer as Anne Frank having a hankering for the drums.

  We’re rolling out. Hope I don’t die. You’ll miss me.

  August 1st, 2010

  SHOOTY McFUCKFACE

  I’m not dead! Nor is Nate! Winning.

  It was a close-run thing though. Bancroft really does want us dead and yesterday he nearly got his wish.

  Yes, yesterday. I’ve come to discover that morning is my writing time at the moment. Particles making “nom nom” noises as he munches his breakfast, me with a hot cup of coffee, and this little white digital page for me to tap away on, is my way of processing what happened before. Anyway, I’m doing pointless details again. You want to know, dear reader, why we nearly died, don’t you? You don’t give a crap about me having a brew and my dog’s breakfast, do you? No. You want a bard’s tale, so here it comes.

  Nate and I weren’t planning on hauling boatloads of loot, and the pickup was now known by Machete and the other cronies, so we decided to take one of the cars here at the lodge. Being super conscious of the environment as they were, there was a bunch of hybrids left behind by the lodge’s guests, so we took one of those. This time I insisted on driving, because if the shit hit the fan and we had to floor it, I had way more experience than Nate at high speed driving. There was some arguing, a lot of threats and finger pointing, and other such tomfoolery, but eventually Nate gave in. I think my “you’re the better shot if we get in some shit” argument swung it. He couldn’t argue against him being a better shot, could he?

  The Prius was a nice car. Yes, you’ll notice the correct tense I used there was the past tense. We’ll get to that.

  Anyway, it was a nice car, and really quiet. If you eased off enough and went to a crawl, it was purely electric and stalked like a four-wheeled ninja.

  The cop shop was in the middle of town, so the risk was high, meaning both of us were sat with clenched arseholes as we cruised the roads. Luckily, I know the place like the back of my hand and knew most of the roads through the estates. It was an eerie journey and the first time I’d coasted through town since the world shat out a razor blade.

  This town was always bustling, always active. Cars on the roads, people on the streets, kids on their bikes, chavs hanging round shops like bacteria; the usual everyday humdrum of human existence. Instead, there were lone undead shuffling, or small milling packs, sometimes even the dead pressed against the windows inside their own houses, jaws snapping at the outside world behind their prison of glass.

  There must be so many individual horror stories inside those houses, I can’t even begin to imagine some of them. Men and women, young and old, and children. My heart collapses every time I think of kids trapped in bedrooms, a screaming end to their lives as their hungry undead parents try to claw their way in. The people they trusted most in the world, their protectors, now just glassy-eyed monsters wanting to rend and tear.

  If I think too long on those imagined stories, my chest feels tight and my eyes start to burn. Just awful, so I’ll move on with the tale.

  There didn’t seem to be any major packs gathered anywhere, so I think we got lucky, but getting to the police station meant exposing ourselves a little, as it was on a main road through town, near to the shopping centre. All around are taller buildings, which made Nate twitchy, and with good reason.

  As we approached the little turn that would take us to the station car park, a rattle of three bullets raked the arse end of the Prius on my side and I felt the tyre go. One minute everything was fine, the next there was a bang, a metallic thunk, and the shatter of a rear door window as three bullets raked in a line from tyre to window in a snap.

  “Out my side!” ordered Nate, flinging his door open and rolling out to the road. “Behind a wheel!”

  He rolled to the front wheel as I instinctively rammed the car into park, dived across the car to the passenger door, and as I slid out and moved to crouch behind the rear wheel, he closed the door behind me. I opened up the rear door and pulled out my backpack (a proper one, not Particles’ carry-bag), sliding my double barrel shotgun from the rear seat.

  Nate popped his head up and another three bullets raked across the front of the Toyota, punching through the engine.

  I was shitting myself. I’d never been under fire from living people before, and let me tell you, it’s no joke. I didn’t know where the bastard was, but he clearly had the advantage on us. I just folded myself as small as I could be behind the wheel, looking to Nate for answers.

  He was cool as ice, a thoughtful frown on his face. He reversed his own shotgun and smacked the mirror off the passenger door with the stock, then moved to the very front of the car, lying on his belly, and edged the mirror out, angling it across the street.

  I waited for what seemed like an eternity. After having six bullets come downrange at us, the silence was somehow worse. I knew the fucker was somewhere, probably staring down a scope at the car, waiting for either of us to stick our head up. There was nowhere to go that wasn’t open ground.

  Eventually, Nate slid back, leaving the mirror in place on the road.

  “On the roof of the court building, off to our right. He’s more at your end.”

  “Marvellous,” I said happily.

  Nate snorted. “You were right about them not being trained. If this is one of Bancroft’s lookouts, he’s probably just a better shot than most, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s using a three-round burst,” he said. “The barrel rides up, which is why we’re getting these rising strings of triple shots. He should be on semi, taking precise single shots. No marksman fires anything other than a single bullet. He’s probably figured that out now.”

  “And that’s a bad thing, I assume?”

  “If he’s a good shot, but he’s not a trained shooter.” Nate rubbed at his jaw. “Judging by where his two bursts started, he’s either just using the base iron sight of the rifle and is shit, or he’s got a scope, but hasn’t calibrated it properly, or doesn’t know how. An untrained shooter probably thinks like a video game; that you stick a scope on and that’s your lot. If you don’t spend the time sighting it in properl
y, the shots will be off.”

  “And that’s a good thing, I assume?” I clicked my tongue. “Nate, I’m doing a lot of assuming here. What’s the play? Are we safe to make a break for it or not?”

  Nate shook his head. “Even a bad shooter can get lucky. He’s not off by much, and us becoming running targets will make it harder, but he’s still got an elevated position. There’s a reason he was put there as a lookout and sniper. It takes patience and the fact that he’s not just peppering us means he’s at least conscious of conserving ammo. The good thing is he’s not firing and displacing, so we know where he is. Do you think you could get up there?”

  “There’s no building I can’t climb in this town,” I said confidently.

  “I’m being serious,” he replied, face solid and stern.

  “So am I, Nate. I’ve climbed every view in this shithole, and what better ‘fuck you’ to authority than climbing a court building? Plus, it’s an older building with bits and ledges jutting out everywhere. For someone like me, it’s not even a challenge.”

  “But getting up there without being heard or seen is,” he said. “And once you’re up there, there’s a man with an assault rifle. You can’t climb with the shotgun in case it bangs against anything. Which means you’ll have to get close and overpower him.” He tapped the knife strapped to his leg. “Or you’ll have to execute him.”

  That word stopped my bravado for a moment. I had no issue putting the undead to rest. Blowing their heads off with a shotgun hardly gave me pause.

  But cutting a throat, or smashing in a skull with a hammer on a living person? Well, that was something entirely different. The walkers are empty vessels, all humanity gone from them, as something dark replaces the human soul to animate the hollow husk of the person. There’s a detachment in killing them, because they aren’t people, they’re things. Things that shouldn’t be here, that hunt and kill with savage instinct. It feels more like a mercy, like you’re letting the soul of that person finally go to its rest, if there is such a thing as the soul.