Dead Cities: Adrian's March. Part Four (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 12)

by Chris Philbrook

  She didn’t give any other names. Their ‘leader,’ the dude with the halligan tool, she referred to simply as Chief End. When I asked her what his first name was, she said Bell, and laughed.

  Bell End. Dick head. Chief Dick Head.

  So that totally wasn’t his real name, but more on that later.

  She had a… like a guarded aspect to her. Like she was afraid of saying too much, but also trying to ask just enough questions to pry information from us. It was an interesting exchange. She definitely spent time asking us how we felt about Bell End, and I got the impression that she was going to use whatever responses we gave her to help formulate her own opinion of her leader.

  Yet she said they’d been together almost since day one of this. So strange.

  Anyway, she had her squad of cars park at the end of the semi-blocked street, and she walked in with one armed friend, and those two met us right outside the fire station as we worked on getting the trucks up and running. She and her buddy hung out for maybe 45 minutes with Hal and I, eventually leaving us with the information that he’d meet us tomorrow afternoon, back at the fire station.

  I thanked her, sent her away with a gift of a few chocolate bars we’d stashed, and the moment her cars were gone, I grabbed Hal by the arm, and we went looking for photos of Chief Cock Tip.

  On the wall, upstairs in the offices/dormitory section of the fire house we found a series of pictures depicting the station’s teams over the past few years. Standing in the back was the clear form of Chief Throbbing Mushroom.

  At the bottom of the picture were the firefighter’s names.

  Station Officer Tobias Wiltshire. Chief Thrusting Tool in the flesh. His secret, for whatever reason he kept it, was mine now. Did he want people out of the fire station to really preserve the gear inside it, or did he want his identity kept from them? Why would he care about people discovering that he was a firefighter?

  Fuckery is afoot, Mr. Journal. This man is an enigma, and I am a former serviceman who aims to get real confused, pretty angry, and likely lash out as a result of trying to figure him out and failing.

  Guard your buttholes.

  I still kinda like him. (this statement not related to my immediately prior statement regarding butthole security) He’s… I dunno. Something about him. He seems on the level in a way I haven’t put my thumb on yet. That, or he’s a fucking major league con man.

  Jury’s out.

  We did some work on the ladder truck (Crystal confirming Bell End’s assertions about missing parts) then headed home.

  We had a single moment of pucker factor when we saw a lone zombie walking south not far from the fire station. Half his midsection smooshed and torn apart, he pressed south at a lethargic gait, picking up speed and urgency when he saw the ambulance. I said we should stop and put it down, and we did. Kevin closed in with his halligan, and brained the fool with ease, even with his faster reflexes. Kevin’s hot shit.

  Advance scouting party from the waves of undead surely heading our way?

  I think so. I feel it coming like a storm over the horizon. The air is changing.

  We’re headed back to the fire station tomorrow to do more work, and to do some looting/checking in the vicinity. There are a great many things we need, and this is a pretty large city, filled with a great many things.

  Also, William said our fuel stash for the helo is getting dicey. Just the few runs he’s made to support us getting the ambulance have eaten into our stores too much for his liking. He checked in with me on retasking some of our ground assets to make a plan on getting more fuel. I told him to work with Captain Rosario on it.

  Ground transport is still our priority, but we will need that helicopter in the air without doubt. Without doubt.

  *cue some fucking music about flying valkyries*

  -Adrian

  October 16th

  Met with Fire Chief Smegma yesterday. I think I caught a little cold, or maybe it’s allergies, hence my delay in reporting. As you’re well aware, Mr. Journal, when a man catches a cold, or, GOD FORBID runs a fever, all things must come to a screeching halt while he recuperates. Get the fuck off the happy train, and sit for a bit in Crankyville, population sicky poo me.

  That’s an exaggeration, but I did feel like roasted mangy asshole last night with sinus pressure, sore throat, and post-nasal drip. Joel swept in like Nurse Nightingale, giving me about eight kinds of zinc, vitamin C, chicken soup broth, you name it. I was treated like a delicate Faberge egg.

  Felt nice, to be honest. I would’ve asked for a spa day to take some of the stress off, but any facial I got on this fucking boat would’ve ended in sticky fistfight and me crying a lot. I feel much better today, and the break I took helped. I think it was allergies, I do.

  Anyway, Chief Bell End arrived yesterday morning, in the soft English rain, in a single beat-up sedan, streaked with rust and dents, all alone save for his big swinging Prince Albert. The last couple visits, while we pulled security, we pushed the wrecks off English Close so we had a wider street to leave with the ladder truck and pumping engine when they’re ready to go. As a result, he was able to drive right back up to the fire station without issue. He parked in front of the transparent garage doors, and slid out. I greeted him in the parking lot. Before he said anything, he fired up a cigarette and sat his halligan tool on the hood of his car.

  “Sorry about my absence,” he said. (Don’t forget to insert an Austin Power’s accent for him in your imagination here. Immersion is crucial for the proper Adrian experience.)

  “Shit happens,” I replied with a knowing smile. No plan survives first contact. “We were talking about side quests. What can we do to help you?”

  “You must be total shit in bed. Skipping all the foreplay and going right for the arse.”

  “I’ve received few complaints, but I’ve also been lied to,” I laughed. “Sorry. There’s a lot at stake here, and I know we’re on a clock. Pleasantries almost always end in interruptions by the fucking wandering, curious undead. Slow may be steady but there’s something to be said about getting shit done.”

  “Who’s keeping time? You have a manager somewhere that watches you punch in an’ out on a time clock?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I like complicated stories. Plenty of time to hear one right now,” he said, sitting on the hood of his shitty car. The suspension creaked under his weight.

  Do I tell him? What do I do? How do I play this? How long did I have to think about it before he realized I was trying to figure out if I was going to try and mislead him?

  “This is a story you either believe instantly, or one that makes you want to brain me in the head through a theoretical tinfoil hat with that halligan. It has been described as unbelievable.”

  “I’m shit with names, so start with your handle again, and I’ll decide what’s unbelievable.”

  I’ll make a note here: he was utterly, and completely sincere. Not dismissive in the least.

  So I told him. Took an hour to cover the basics. You already know the story, long-form, so I’ll skip it here. I left the ending as: and now we’re here, trying to find the members of the trinity, and I believe I might be one of the three again. That’s why his help was so important.

  He finished an entire pack of smokes, one right after another as I spoke; I couldn’t help but think over and over how little he seemed to care about running out of them. There are no more tobacco farms, no cigarette factories… so what he’s got, he’s got. No cares or worries about running out. Maybe he wants to finish them all. Quit because there’s no more supply. Whatever.

  “That’s right batshit.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  “Tell that pseudo-Jesus farce a lot, do ya?” he challenged me, but I didn’t buy his… disbelief.

  “Not as often as those around me seem to want to tell it. I’m sick of hearing the damn story. I’m still living it and most days I’m pretty sick of that too.”

  “Let’s ass
ume you’re telling the truth, and you’re doing the good work you say. Whether or not you believe you’re one of the actual saviors of mankind, sent by God-on-high or if your threads are all coming undone, if you actually did the good you claim to have, then you should be worth helping, yeah, Mr. Ring?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “Quid pro quo, though.”

  “Transactional relationships are my favorite.”

  He laughed. “Had a few dates like that.”

  “You’re on one right now, beautiful,” I said, and winked. He laughed with me, and fired up yet another butt.

  He exhaled his smoke then spit. “Look, we’ve been at this since the same day you started it too. We’re tired. We’re hungry, we’re thirsty. You can help us in ways we can’t help ourselves. I’d be a fool to give up a resource, without then getting something that’ll help my people in return.”

  “I am not judging you. I will mock you, make fun of you, give you a pile a shit as tall as me, but I won’t judge you for what you’re doing. I’d do the same; fuck, I’ve done the same. I’m fortunate enough now to be able to help others more than they’ve helped me. You know, come to think of it, I think since this all started, I’ve tried to help others more than I’ve asked for help.” I shrugged. “Tell me what we can do to help you, and we’ll help you. Getting the keys and the starters and whatever else you’ve pulled out of them for these trucks is great, but if you need a hand, take mine.”

  I reached out, offering him a handshake.

  “I don’t shake hands, nuffin personal,” he said without any delay. “Bad luck with my fire crew.”

  “Juju I get. I’ve got plenty of it myself. No harm, no foul.” I took my lonely, abandoned hand back. “What can we do for you?”

  “I need two things. They’re in different places, and they’re pretty unpleasant and a good deal specific.”

  “Pick one for me to handle first and we’ll make a plan for it.”

  He thought for a minute, debating the merits of his two desires. After settling with a sigh, he started talking.

  “You’re near the docks all the time, right?”

  “Point Hope, we’re calling the port. We own the whole peninsula and have it fortified well enough to withstand a surge of the undead. So yeah, we’re down there most of the time.”

  “Have you been east of the port at all yet? Down Kingsway toward the marina, and city center?”

  “Not that far. Our travels are taking us north from the port. I’d rather not head into the center of Brighton if I can avoid it.”

  “Sense in that. Look, I need you to head down Kingsway to Langdale. On the left headed inland, obviously. Half way up, again on the left, you’ll find my old house.”

  “Okay. What will be dealing with there?”

  “What I cannot deal with,” he said, and abruptly looked away. “Who, I cannot deal with. But if you can manage that kindness for me, you’ll find a small treasure trove in the basement. I’d like you to bring what you find there, back here so Mutual Aid can have it.”

  “Can we transport it all in the back of the ambulance?”

  “The best of it. Enough of it. Your greed might lead you to make two trips, and that wouldn’t be a trip wasted. It’s fragile, so be tender.”

  “Noted. Any idea where we can find some horses around here? Don’t need diesel to keep them running.”

  “No horses, mate,” he said, sad. “We had a few on the farm but they fell. The zeds didn’t want to kill them, but the horses got hurt or ran off when we were attacked while we rode. The dead have been too thick here and they don’t need to try and eat the horses to wind up hurting them.”

  “And your dead are faster than ours ever were.”

  “Faster over time, no less. First year and a half you could walk circles around them, if you kept your distance and didn’t get crowded in on. Climbing a ladder was as good a protection as being in a bank vault. Now… now they’re too fast. And getting more and more cunning by the week. Some of them turn knobs now. Duck under fences, climb over them. A locked door isn’t enough anymore.”

  “Won’t matter if I can do what I came to do.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ring. You seem a good fucker, despite the look of your face.” He laughed, then turned serious. “You’ll be gentle. At my home?”

  “Probably not,” I said, but softly. He wasn’t talking about the fragile stuff in the basement. “You don’t actually want gentle, and if I was gentle, it wouldn’t be humane. But I promise you I’ll do everything I can to make it fast.”

  “For that, you’ll earn my proper thanks,” he said.

  I nodded. “Is there anything I should know?”

  “He was a big boy. Smart as well. He’ll be strong. Don’t… don’t be frivolous with risks.”

  “Okay,” was all I could say. “I’ll have it done within a week. I don’t like to keep things waiting.”

  “We’ve waited plenty enough already.”

  “Is there a way we can communicate with you? Can we give you a radio?”

  “No. Just head here and make a little noise. We’ll hear you, or see you soon enough, and swing by.”

  “Sounds good enough.” Him saying that told me he probably had some kind of eyes on the joint. Or ears. Dunno, doesn’t really matter which.

  Tobias Wiltshire literally kicked rocks for a minute, then nodded at me, his eyes wet. He got into his car, started it, and backed away.

  A few minutes later Abby and Hal came outside, where I still stood, listening to the sound of his car growing more faint with each passing second. Sound carries a great distance in a dead city.

  “What’s he want us to do?” Abby asked me.

  “Two errands. First one is going to his old house to put his son down, and retrieve something from the basement.”

  “Is it a trap?” Hal asked.

  “Could be,” I mused. I hadn’t considered that. I’m too trusting. “He was almost crying. It’s a trap only if he’s also a great actor. Doesn’t strike me as being theater-trained, which makes me put my money on it being legitimate.”

  “One zombie in a house?” Hal asked.

  “As far as he said. No telling what the situation on the ground will look like. It doesn’t sound that far from the peninsula. Along the water’s edge, inland a bit. Might be empty of threats with the vacuum we created here. I say we do it tomorrow before the zombies have a chance to return en masse.”

  “Help a dad with his kid? I’m in,” Abby said.

  “You’d be in no matter what, we all know that.”

  “Am I that transparent?” she said, a little disappointed.

  “You’re consistent,” Hal said, and smooched her forehead.

  “I need to be less predictable. I must keep my mystique,” Abby said, then walked away.

  The mystery of that woman does not need solving. She’s perfect just the way she is.

  Plans shifted as we had issues with some mechanics on the boat, and I stayed behind to pull some security and lift heavy things. We looked at the local maps, and checked in with some people who have been at the perimeter fence a few times that live over in that direction, and it looks like a clear shot over and back.

  We go in the morning, same crew as usual, minus Crystal. No need to bring our best mechanic into the wild unnecessarily.

  -Adrian

  October 17th

  Killing someone’s kid should be harder for me than it is. Point blank reality. I should struggle with it, but I don’t. I can’t tell if that’s my failing as a human being, or an adaptive trait so I can maintain sanity, and stay alive.

  Is there even a difference in those two things?

  Everyone is someone’s child. EVERYONE. I am, Abby is, Hal is, Kevin is, Fagan is, all of us grew in a womb, and had parents in one way or another. Some of us had shit parents, but in the end, we are all someone’s child. So… everyone I’ve ever killed, every zombie I’ve ever shot, or brained with my sword, or an axe, or my halligan�
� was the termination of a line that came from parents. Who had parents, and then more parents. I have become death… or something like that.

  If you think of the math in a large enough sense, then you get removed from the brutal proximity of those feelings. That… dirty hands and feet moment, where it’s happening TO YOU, or to a loved one, and not to someone on TV, or in what we used to call the news. City bombed flat in Afghanistan? Hundreds dead? No big deal. Ramen for lunch.

  Car accident on your street corner, little kid gets hurt? You lose your appetite, and can’t sleep for a few days.

  Proximity.

  Langdale road was narrow by American standards. Two cars passing would have to be careful to not hit the parked cars on either side. There were quite a few parked cars, and more than one car accident. At one point in the road, near where Fire Chief Dick Head’s house wound up being, were cars intentionally turned sideways to block the road. Someone attempted to seal off a portion of the street to fortify it, but things didn’t pan out for them. Bodies were everywhere. Most of them were dead in the permanent, non-bitey sense.

  A few were dead in the bitey sense, but spaced out far enough that we were able to take them down with melee attacks, and in one moment of ass-clenching, Kevin had to double-tap a pair of feral undead that pushed through a set of double doors, fell off a second story balcony onto the roof of a van, then into the street almost right on top of us. We were pushing cars out of the street and BAM. Two undead getting to their feet right on us. He snapped off his shots without hesitation, danger close to Hal and Fagan, but it’s Kevin. Despite his south Boston upbringing, and fistfights in the alleys of said locale, the man has the hands of surgeon. After we all calmed down, we got back to work.

  I love my people.

  Bell End’s Homestead was similar to all the other houses on the street; two story homes, lots of windows, upscale, it seemed. Many of the cars parked in driveways (parkways? Gardens? Yards? Whatever they call them here) were expensive. BMWs, Mercedes, even a Ferrari and a few Range Rovers. Most with flat tires, half-hidden behind overgrown grasses, and saplings that had taken root in the wrong place. Same as Bell End’s place.