by Carl Meadows
“Recon, Erin,” he said in a tone that brooked no further debate. “I’m going to come out here over the next couple of weeks, watch the settlement, and listen to the radio. I’m not getting involved in this fight until I know how to fight them.”
I huffed. “You can’t listen to the radio in the Humvee and watch from this hill at the same time.”
“I’ll come stay out here as well,” declared Alicia. “I’ll listen to the radio in the Humvee in a safe location and take detailed notes while Nate has eyes on them, and I can talk to Nate on our radios and relay the comms on our secure channel.”
It’s terrible to say it, but I felt like punching her in the nose at that moment. It was two on one and I wasn’t winning this. Nate’s expression said his heels were firmly dug in and I’d be the unstoppable force striking against his immovable wall if I pushed any further. It would just devolve into arguments and finger pointing, so this time, I gave Alicia a visible eye roll that said, “Of course you fucking will, suck up,” and let it drop.
I was in a bad mood, Freya. I feel bad about it now, but at the time I was pissed. No excuses, except that I have huge personality flaws that make me who I am, and I can’t change them, as I’d lose the core of what makes me… me. As long as I’m not an extreme asshole, I’m okay with it. I’m not one for hiding how I feel, for good or ill. Honesty is my jam.
“I’ll stay at the school a while then,” I grumbled. “However many days it is since we’ve been out searching, I imagine there hasn’t been much in the way of runs beyond their gate, so I’ll back up Dean in house clearing and resource gathering. You two can have your little cult-watching vacation. I’m not built for sitting around scratching my ass crack.”
I was pissed, okay? I can be a bell end when I’m angry or frustrated.
Nate just raised an eyebrow, and the conversation was over.
So, here we are, back at the lodge and tomorrow, Nate and Alicia are going out on a long watch for a week or so. I’m going to take my laptop over to the school and hang out there for the week. I’ll reacquaint myself with Dean properly, maybe back him up on some missions to collect fun stuff.
I’m a bit pissed not just at the inaction, but also Nate’s unwillingness to buy into my theory of Captain Evil’s existence and general fuckery with this ongoing bullshit.
Yes, Nate is super logical and rational, and nothing I say is either of those, but then a zombie fucking apocalypse isn’t exactly logical or reasonable, is it? I’d say it was a good reason for taking a step back and evaluating your standards of what’s considered “rational.” Never mind the fact that the undead are obeying Evil Moses.
Gah, I’m frustrated. These people are bad news, I just know it. We’ve seen evidence of their shitty nature in that massacred community, and when they tried to cart Dean and the kids off to their weird settlement. They are not good people, and they’ll continue to be wankers if nobody stands up to their bullying ways.
I’ll leave it with Nate and his little shadow. Maybe him staring at that undead sentry wall doing the bidding of Evil Moses over and over again will change his thinking while we’re apart. I’m going to devote my energy into something constructive and work with Dean on gathering resources.
Tonight Freya, I am in a royally shitty mood. I wish my little homeboy Particles were here, though he probably still hasn’t forgiven me for the hot dog costume and abandoning him at the school. It’s healthy when Nate and I disagree as we both need to have our say, but this is the first real time I’ve felt like he’s sided against me, and Alicia being his little cheerleader got under my skin way more than I should let it.
I’ll get over it. I’m only human though and I feel a bit down about the whole conversation, especially after recounting it here, so I think I’ll sign off. Tomorrow I’ll go over to the school and hang there for a week or so and try and find my mojo again. I’d really like a game of Mario Kart with Charlie right about now, as that always levelled me out. Kids have a way of giving your perspective a shot in the arm.
Before I somehow manage to make you miserable wherever you may be with the little dark cloud following me round, I’ll say my goodnight and switch the lights out on this thoroughly shitty day.
Love ya.
NOVEMBER 25th, 2010
PROGRESS
Last couple of days have been pretty cool actually. Reconnecting with Dean has been awesome, as he’s just so good at staying calm and a great communicator. I could easily see him talking someone down off a ledge. He’s got such a calm aura about him similar to Nate, but with distinct differences.
I love Nate to bits, and the calm he projects is absolute competence and surety. If you don’t know him well, he can appear a little cold and distant, like he’s all business all the time. He’s the kind of guy you want around when shit is getting crazy, and he’ll be this little harbour of calm in a storm, shielding you from the howling winds and crashing waves.
Dean’s calm is different. His aura is one of warmth and understanding, like you know you can go to him with whatever is troubling you and he’ll settle your nerves, won’t pass judgment, and he’ll just listen and help you take some weight you’ve been carrying.
Without Nate nearby, Isaac seems to have reverted to being a dick again now that I’m around. Luckily, with the campus being larger and easier for us to space out during the day, I’ve mostly avoided him. I’ve been crashing with Norah in her little house down by the maintenance area, spending time with Mark, Charlie, and my little pug dude, who appears to have grudgingly forgiven me for my crimes. He allowed me to pet him, but he looked at me a few times with an expression that said, “I have forgiven you, but not forgotten, and if you do that to me again, you’re fucking dead to me, human.”
Funny what kind of signals you can get from a dog just through the way they regard you. Pugs are so expressive.
They’ve all been pretty busy on campus while we’ve been out just getting the place sorted and settled into some kind of rhythm. Norah wants a tractor, because of course she knows how to use a bloody tractor, so she can till up some of the greenery around here and get a proper harvest on the go. The vegetable garden we potted up and transported over here from the lodge is great as a starter, but she really wants to get a bigger setup on the go. Dean remembers seeing one on a farm not too far from here, so we’re rolling out to get that very shortly after lunch. Nice easy start to going back out beyond the gate.
Yep, that phrase still works here.
I told everyone about what we’d found while searching for the Resurrectionist settlement, and when Mark heard about the Humvee ploughing through the gate at that small cluster of housing, he decided the wrought iron gate wasn’t strong enough at the campus entrance. His project at the moment is going over designs for new gates. He also wants to set up some kind of mechanism he’s been drawing out that can use deployed police stingers so if anyone did charge at it, they’d get their tyres flattened. Some kind of spring action cleverness for quick release, and winches or windlasses or whatever they’re called, that can be turned to reset the mechanism. It does mean we need to find some of those stingers, so we’ll keep our eyes out for any police vehicles on our journeys out.
There’s lots of little and large projects in that manner on the go, and I won’t list them all because honestly, I get bored writing about them. I don’t know the ins and outs of them all, or how even a tenth of all this shit works. We have labour as the kids can help as they’re all older, and it’s a chance for them to learn valuable skills along the way.
Basically, everyone’s been busy. Maria has converted the school nurse’s office as her little infirmary and has all the medicines firmly under lock and key. Mark’s constantly on the go doing something, Norah is forever busying herself with food things, and there’s a nice little stores setup to organise all the resources being brought in. Zain, the eldest of the boys who is just a month from being eighteen, is a bit of a spreadsheet whiz and has built some kind of inventory control syste
m using something called macros.
Meh. When people start talking about stuff like that, I go all Jack O’Neil when one of his Stargate scientists starts talking. Their mouths are moving, but all I hear in my head is, “blah blah, blah blah blah, I’m hungry, blah.”
Well, we’re going to have lunch, then go and get Norah’s tractor and something called a rotary tiller that needs to be used with it so she can make clod-free seed beds.
Every day’s a school day.
And here, that is literally true.
NOVEMBER 28th, 2010
NOMADS
I’m excited Freya. Today we found some new friends, but also in the process discovered there are some other asshole survivors as well. Nowhere near the problem of the loopy death cult out east, or even the danger of Bancroft’s armed thugs, but they’re definitely a threat to any other local survivors out there, and to us if we don’t stay on point when out beyond the gate.
After we’d sorted Norah’s tractor and tiller the other day and brought it back to campus, Dean and I decided we needed to start collecting more foodstuffs and supplies, so we had a pow wow with everyone and decided four of us would head on out, with two experienced guns and two novices in the team. I find it hilarious that I’m considered experienced and a shining example of good sense, as that’s never happened to me in my life before. Still, Dean and I were the two leads, and the two coming out for more experience would be Sarah and… bloody Isaac.
If we were working in pairs then Dean should oversee Isaac and I’d look after Sarah. I had to tell him why and he sighed, shook his head at me, then agreed. Also, Dean said it might be nice for Sarah and I getting to know each other a bit better. We’re both super important to Dean and Maria, so if we could be friends that would make them happy. Perfect excuse for the pairings; Dean gets to assess Isaac because he’s already trained Sarah, and Sarah gets a female role model in the field.
Me? A role model? I’m still laughing as I write this. What a world we live in.
We went out in two vehicles. I took my trusty pickup and had Sarah riding shotgun so we could chat a bit, while Isaac and Dean were in the van.
I like Sarah. She’s witty, really smart – like… really smart – and I discovered a fun fact about her that I’m going to want to see in action. Turns out her mum was something of a piano prodigy and Sarah’s been playing the piano since she was five years old. Music is a passion of hers and she was planning on applying to fancy music colleges after finishing school this year, with ambitions to be a concert pianist. It had always been a dream of her mum, Andrea, and she’d never pushed Sarah into it, but she just loves playing the piano. What’s that old saying? If you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Or something like that.
There’s a big grand piano in the school music department. As such, I’ve made her pinky swear (the most solemn and binding of all oaths) to play me one of her favourite pieces when we get some downtime in the next couple of days.
That drive was nice. I like her. She looks a little awkward because she’s all skin and bone and has that naïve innocent look about her with her auburn hair and freckled face, but that girl is strong, independent, and tough. Girl power for the win.
Seriously, if Isaac messes with the little crush she seems to have developed on him, I will staple his scrotum to my pickup and drag him round campus by his balls. Colourful, I know, but in a short time together I feel like I’ve really bonded with her. She possesses a natural affinity for sarcasm, and she’s got the smarts to do it well. I am officially adopting her as my new sidekick.
Oh my god! She plays piano. A piano has keys.
Locke and Keys! We have a full female action movie duo ready and waiting to be signed up for the new summer blockbuster.
First order of business was heading back to the lodge. I forgot to mention that Nate agreed to the moving of the security system equipment to campus. It has more value here than our little isolated outpost of three people. If they can have a camera at the end of the road that leads to the gate, cameras at the gate, and strategic places around campus, that’s a no brainer. So, before we went house clearing, we headed back to the lodge and spent about three hours there disconnecting, unmounting, and boxing up all the equipment Isaac needed. It was a much quicker and easier task to disassemble than it was to install, which was a bonus. If he can set that system up over on campus, that gives him a good project to be ongoing with here.
Also, while Isaac’s doing that, it means he isn’t coming on missions with me while I’m here, so I don’t have to put up with discovering eyes on me every bloody time I turn around. I’m always thinking, contrary to popular opinion. I’m not as dumb as Nate looks.
Seriously, if Nate ever reads this journal, I’ll be in so much trouble with him.
It was a little before noon when we’d finished that job, as we’d left at 7am. Days are a lot shorter, so we have to head out at the first creeping sign of light if we want to get a full day’s work done before returning home.
We all filled our bellies at the lodge from some of the canned goods there and ate a quick lunch, then we decided to start clearing out another cluster of mid-range houses a little further down from where that little girl under the stairs was.
I shivered as I wrote that. It still upsets me thinking about it, so I’ll quickly exit stage left from that one.
Sarah and I were out front in the pickup as we turned into the circle of eight houses, with Isaac and Dean behind in the van. Both vehicles stopped as we saw a group of about twenty people in the small circle, all their eyes fixed on one house. They were dressed in puffer coats and other jackets for warmth, all with hoods up over baseball caps and beanies. To a man, they carried a selection of savage looking weapons in their hands. Machetes, heavy one-handed hammers used in construction (I think they’re called club hammers or lump hammers, real skull-cracking beasts), hatchets, those curved ice axes that climbers use that look more like a small pickaxe, fire axes, and a whole host of other vicious looking weapons.
In fairness, every one of them was useful for braining zombies, which is probably why they had them. They hadn’t bothered with things like baseball bats or that kind of stuff. This selection of weaponry had clearly been accrued over time with the purpose of killing the undead efficiently with single head blows.
Most worrying was that the two apparent leaders carried basic firearms in hand. One guy carried a Mossberg pump, but it was a UK legal one that could only hold three shells, so had probably been found in someone’s house that was part of a clay pigeon shooting club or something. The second guy had a small snub nose revolver, a little “Saturday night special” piece of junk that definitely wasn’t legal.
“There are people in that house,” said Sarah, pointing up to the top front window. Sure as shit, we could see movement, with people at the window’s side peering out fearfully.
“Dean, there are people in that house,” I said into my radio.
“Copy. I think we know who the aggressors are.”
You’re damn tootin’ we did.
The mob of armed men turned towards us as we entered the cul-de-sac. The two with guns stepped to the fore, their obvious intention to intimidate. They could all see by now that the two in the lead vehicle were young women, and they were all male, aged between late teens and late twenties. A few of them shared nods and excited smiles.
“Time to show them their numbers don’t mean shit,” I said. “Ready?”
Sarah nodded. She was scared, as she should be, but she drew the Glock and we both opened our doors, buzzed down the windows, and stood behind the doors as shields. There was a mutter of surprise as Sarah pointed her Glock out from cover, and I rested the barrel of my L85 against the rim of my window.
Dean and Isaac followed suit. Isaac got out with his Glock up and moved a little wider of the van, and Dean moved forward with his G36C up and pointed right at them. Their little snub-nose and three-shot 12-gauge suddenly seemed inadequate in the fa
ce of two semi-automatic handguns, and two rifles.
Seeing this sudden stand off and the chance of salvation, the top window of the house opened and a woman in her early thirties shouted out to us.
“Please help us!” she hollered. “We’ve got a ten-year old boy in here!”
Well, that sorted out exactly which side of the fence we were sitting. I let Dean open the conversation, as I tend to antagonise things.
“It’s time you gentlemen went on your way, I’d say.”
The group looked towards the one holding the shotgun for a response. I should point out that this guy was not a looker. He was fucking ugly – like, old man toenail ugly – as if the content of his mean-spirited character had shaped his features.
“This ain’t none of your business,” Fugly stated with bravado.
“Despite the current state of affairs, I think it is,” replied Dean. “I’m a police sergeant you see, and I took an oath to protect the innocent. It doesn’t matter that the wages have dried up and I don’t have anyone to answer to. It’s who I am.”
“It’s a fucking pig!” shouted one moron from the back. Well, duh. He’s just said he’s a police officer. Spot on observation there, Einstein.
“Don’t have to take no orders from no pigs no more,” sneered the leader.
I almost shot him for crimes against the English language, right there and then. However, Dean dropped the fucking mic on him.
“And I am no longer bound by the laws of this land to use non-lethal force against brainless thugs, so I guess it’s a good day for us both.”
That slapped the cocky smugness clean off Fugly’s face. Me being who I am, I just straight up laughed at Dean’s comeback. It was an absolute peach and such wit should be recognised. He continued to talk while Fugly was still oiling the gears of his tiny brain.
“I’ll give you a moment to gather your wits, as I appreciate it might take a little longer than most, but then I expect you and your merry men to clear out before this sheriff starts shooting. There are two automatic rifles and two semi-automatic handguns pointing your way, and if I give my people the word, we’ll have every one of you down with a bullet in your guts before you can think of that witty comeback you’re working on.”
