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

by Chris Philbrook

  They rolled in, two cars thick, no flatbed, halfway through another rainy fucking day. We were inside, either in firing position or just staying out of the rain and laying low when they arrived, and when they pulled in, they did the same thing they’ve done before; get out, and put up a half-assed perimeter while Fire Chief Bum Chuckles lights up another fucking cigarette.

  Lung cancer will get him LONG before the zombies do.

  He wouldn’t come inside. Made me go out in the rain.

  “So what’ll it be, good friend?”

  “We’re not fucking mates, mate,” he said back. “But one day you can buy me a beer.”

  “Fuck you. I’m not buying beer for a dude who makes mead in his goddamn basement. You can serve me some of your finest vintage and we’ll tip ‘em up together.”

  “What’d you keep?”

  “Huh?”

  “When you cleared out my place, and loaded up all my stash, what’d you keep for yourself, or your people?”

  “Nothing. Every drop we took from there came here, and left with you and your crew. I wouldn’t steal shit from you. I’ll loot a dead guy’s house without a second thought, but I wouldn’t steal from a living person. Not my cup of tea.”

  “Wasn’t your cup of mead, either.”

  “I like mead. I’ve had enough in my time to know it can be good shit.”

  “I’ll get you a bottle of my melomel. Made it with berries I picked myself. Took silver in several competitions.”

  “I look forward to it, proud papa,” I said as the rain got a little heavier. Conversation followed suit.

  “You want to hear what the last thing I need is, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Brilliant. It’s gonna be… strange, yeah? Strange like the story you told about the three person thing. Maybe a bit more fucked. How prepared is your fucking brain for the next level of your story?”

  “Mate, there is no way to explain to you the shit I’ve seen, and the shit I’ve done. There is nothing you can show me, or say to me that’ll throw me for a loop. This whole city is run by a fucking levitating space turtle, yeah that sounds right. You’re all robots, sure, that plotline is about fucking due. Lay it on me, chimney. Give it to me raw, like you got feelings for me.”

  “You have to go alone. I don’t think it’ll work if you bring others.”

  “It’ll work if I bring Kevin. He’s in the Trinity. If it’ll work for me, it’ll work with him too.”

  “You can try. Your waste of time if you need to go back alone. Look, there’s a… there’s a building ruin. Used to be St. Peter’s Parish church. Near a school, also a windmill northeast of here. Holmes Avenue.”

  “We’re going there? What’s gonna be in the ruins?”

  “I’m not asking you to go there on a treasure hunt. Just go there. Once you get there, if it was meant to be, you’ll see why I sent you. It’s no lark.”

  “Okay. Is there anything else I need to know?”

  “Bring your fucking guns, but you don’t strike me as the kind of group that leaves them behind. Am I right?”

  “I’m American. I shit Tannerite and dream about guns.”

  “Cheers to that, whatever Tannerite is. And so long as you’re the one holding the pea shooters.”

  “Doesn’t make difference. I tend to wind up holding all of them by the end of most of my dreams. So far, so good.”

  “You ever have nightmares?” he asked me.

  “Only when I’m awake,” I said. Felt witty. “You ever dream about a white room? Round table with weird stuff on it?”

  “Never.”

  “I was hoping for a different answer, but thank you.”

  “I tend to disappoint. Look, safe trip there. No rush. What’s there isn’t going to walk off.”

  “It’ll be a day or two at least. We’ll make a trip of it. Pack some sandwiches. Meet you here after?”

  “Just get to the place. Like I said, may take you a couple trips before what you need to do there becomes apparent.”

  “Real fucking enigmatic, Bell End.”

  “Chief Bell End to you. Keep it formal,” he said, and went back to his car. They left seconds later.

  It didn’t occur to me until later in the day today, after we got back aboard Reuben James, that for our entire conversation, he didn’t relight a cigarette. Buuut… I could still smell smoke. I remember this. Clear as day.

  Not because it was the presence of cigarette smoke without a cigarette present, but because the smoke smelled off. Chemical-ish. Like… when someone stupid tosses something weird in the fire pit while everyone is trying to roast marshmallows for s’mores and it gets nasty-smelling.

  That fucking asshole. Same prick who eats all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms.

  Anyway, it was strange. A little of it is still in my nostrils now, I think.

  We didn’t plan a trip to the church tonight. I’m gonna sit down with my brain trust tomorrow and figure something out. I’m bringing Kevin, because this feels important, and I don’t think it’s smart for me to go alone. This guy seems to be on the level, but there’s still no way for me to glean whether or not he’s telling the truth. Everything up until now could just be an ornate act on his part to get me dead.

  God may work in mysterious ways, but the Devil is a nefarious cocksucker.

  -Adrian

  October 25th

  It was too selfish of me to ask for the ambulance. We’d put so much work into getting it up and running I just couldn’t take it to go to the church. I had no issues with hitching a ride to the fire station, then going on foot from there, but I wouldn’t go the whole way.

  Rewind; we returned to the fire station and retrieved the ladder truck on the 23rd. I didn’t write an entry because I was tired. We parked it in one of the warehouses inside our perimeter, nearest to the metal working business so I can get my Mad Max on. They’re working on designing armor and upgrades that’ll give us a tactical edge in high-volume undead environments. They’re predicting 8 to 10 days until it’s ready. The ambulance also needed some extra modifications, based on how we’ve been using it, and how we’re likely to use it. Both vehicles have been under the cutting torch or being welded on since then. It’s a project. I’ve asked for a lot.

  But today, we went to the fire station early on. Had to shoot our way through a small number of undead, and we got to use the new push bar on the ambulance to straight on smash down some joggers in the way. It’s not a pure plow blade like the old HRT, it’s more of a brush guard with a projected bar at knee height. Keeps them from getting tangled up in it, and knocks them down pretty efficiently.

  At least that’s what today showed us.

  We left the fire station for the church immediately. Kevin and I had stayed up late last night going over the plan to get there repeatedly until it was memory. We only had to cross a mile to get there. Back to the A270 roadway, then north on Holmes Avenue. Mostly suburban terrain with houses, small businesses, parks, churches, etc. Proper English suburbs, I reckon.

  The Brighton Mile. Not quite Mogadishu, but you know. Kind of like Kevin and I’s Route Irish days. Go as fast as you can, but here, try to also maintain as low a profile as possible. I would’ve gone at night, but with the fog we’ve been having, our NVGs would be rendered useless. This was the best of several bad ideas.

  It was not an easy run, and it took far longer than it had any right to. At a trot, the mile should’ve been like… fifteen minutes. We’re in good shape, and traveling relatively light too. Ten minutes could’ve been it.

  Took us an hour and change due to the undead.

  I won’t lie, and I won’t spend forever giving all the gory details, but we were heading into the forefront of the surge that’s surely coming south. Fifty, at least. Just on the one street. We also had to move very cautiously as we made our way past houses or in one case an intersection that clearly had post-undead fortifications. Last thing Kevin and I wanted to do was get in a tussle with someone armed
and hunkered down. We crawled under a couple of car accidents in places, climbed over trucks here and there, cut around through backyards a couple times, hopping over wooden fences, stone walls, and in one case, a wrought iron, spike-topped gothic barrier wrapped around an overgrown garden straight out of the Amazon jungle. All that. Grand fucking time. Tore one of my favorite pairs of pants. Sigh.

  Each and every step was contested quickly by the undead. No breaks.

  We had to be guns-free, and even with suppressors, M4s are loud enough to draw attention. Granted, far quieter than just shooting the weapon normally, but they aren’t silent. This ain’t the movies.

  We just had no choice. Too many undead in multiple spots for us to take down with the halligans, so we just... we just shot. Two magazines each, counting the misses we had. Then, we got to the windmill Bell End told us about, and the undead… cleared out.

  Speaking of the windmill, it was creepy as old man balls. My balls, soon enough.

  Legit in the middle of the road, where they paved around a brick and stone, largely windowless structure, topped with a black windmill, all of it surrounded by a nest of wispy fog. It spun in a breeze we couldn’t feel.

  Beyond that, no more than a hundred yard later, at an intersection, was the church.

  Surrounded by a hip-high stone wall, with a cemetery near to us, the stone structure, with what I think was a residence behind it, had been ravaged by fire. What had probably been a stained glass window was melted empty, leaving only a scorched arch. Much of the outer stone had fallen inward, and the whole place was just… I mean it looked like Dresden after the bombs.

  What I did immediately notice, was that at the front of the place, half blackened by the fires that took the place, was an ambulance just like ours. Doors open, gutted by looters and weather over years, it sat there, dead as the people who drove it.

  I knew then, that Bell End had been here at some point. Maybe on That Day. He either drove that ambulance, or worked in the back of it.

  So, with the patience and caution of a bomb defuser, we checked over the ambulance for supplies, then tread over the church grounds, looking for more. Trying to find that something strange that he promised us. We entered the dying structure where we could, climbing over toppled walls, and burnt beams, one of us covering the other at each turn. We saw two dozen scorched skeletons in the mess, half in the church, half in the residence behind it. Both buildings wrecked by fire. We also saw something like thirty or forty bullet holes, which told a different story. Another… maybe ten bodies in varying degrees of decomposition scattered around the property too. More recent deaths.

  But, in the end, after hours of combing over the mess, we saw nothing strange beyond what I just said. Bell End was right; maybe I had to go alone? Maybe us radio-checking back over and over were scaring away the weird things he wanted us to see. Leprechauns? Boggarts? Honest politicians?

  The one confirmed, freaky fact: we were not bothered by the undead when we were on church grounds. None came onto the church grounds, nevermind even coming into our line of sight. Empty, save for the rain and fog that teased us.

  Nine hours. We spent nine hours on the church grounds, looking at every single place we might find evidence of something strange, but nothing. Not a damn thing. So, we headed south back to the fire station, and our friends.

  I can’t explain it, but the trip south was quicker than the one north. I guess it’s because we cleared the route earlier, but I can’t help but think that the great powers that be might have made a tiny appearance today. Maybe not a center-stage lightshow moment, but… I think the orchestra might’ve gotten some extra conduction, if you get my drift.

  While we were away my crew worked on the pumper truck, and dealt with a trickle of undead coming into the area. Say what you will about Team Paranoid Tree, but they can get it done. Maybe I’m jealous of them. They were Rangers. Actual, serving Rangers. They took that extra step I was denied. That extra step I fucked up on.

  My fault. It was my fault.

  My jealousy is just as much frustration with myself as it anything else.

  They did great work on the truck. Once we get the replacement parts from Wiltshire, after this ‘strange’ task is handled, we should be able to just drive on out with it.

  It’ll be a good addition for our convoy. Access to hoses that can get us water when we find it fresh could be huge down the line, and it’s big, with a big passenger compartment. Our English Trinity of vehicles.

  Road back to the port was clean and free of threats, and the weather cleared a bit as well. Gate had a quiet day, and we were able to help about ten people. Far less than what we’ve been experiencing, but I’ll take it. Ten in safe, ten out safe. Little victories.

  I’ll sleep well in a bit. Otis is crawled up my ass here in my bunk, antsy, and unhappy about something. He’s been confined to this small cabin for too long. Tomorrow is a day off, and I think I’ll take him somewhere else on the boat. Galley down the way or something. Give him a grand tour of a different room, and some treats. See if I can scrounge up a few new toys for him too.

  Not being a good pet dad. Own that, Adrian.

  Like I said, rest day tomorrow.

  -Adrian

  October 26th

  I’m bored, so I’m going tonight. Had a good day with a very crazy cat, but I just can’t wait anymore. The skies are clear, there’s no moon or fog, and Kevin is playing cards in the galley with some of the sailors. Perfect time to slip out, and make my way north using night vision. Ghost-in, ghost-out. Also, Otis is driving me fucking mental, and I need a break.

  Will write about what happens tomorrow after I wake up. Wish me luck.

  -Adrian

  October 27th

  Ever suspect something for a long time, and when you finally get confirmation about your suspicion, you’re not entirely happy to have had that realization at all? Regret, I think is the name for that emotion.

  It was a strange night, for many reasons.

  I left the gate alone, giving my plan to the guards there. They were to remain silent about it, unless I sent a radio out, or didn’t return by dawn. They were scared out of their damn minds when I asked them to shut up, and even more frightened when I left.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m rarely sure of anything, but I’m gonna try this.”

  Kid… You ain’t been where I’ve been. Thank you for trying to take care of me.

  So I headed north. Several miles worth of trip. Same trip we walked to get to the fire station initially, then the mile beyond. So I jogged at first to get out of the reach of my perimeter guard. I knew the snipers were watching me, and they let me go without mistaking me for the undead (thanks, team) as well as remaining silent on the network, so I could actually leave without a tail.

  Try as I might, that didn’t happen.

  I was about… halfway to the fire station, give or take, following the exact same route I’d taken with my whole family up. I stopped where the fence was, where we’d lost the dogs on our first trip (which by the way, haven’t bothered us since we started plinking them with our airsoft arsenal) and I waited. I thought I’d heard something behind me, so I sat my ass down in a very dark shadow, just behind a small dumpster, and I watched.

  Maybe a minute later, I saw the unmistakable, strong strides of a battle-kitted Hal appear. He’s got his weapon up, and he’s searching for threats, the same I was. Cautious but confident. When he was about thirty yards south of me, I sent out a little radio break, and he paused.

  “Why you following me, Hal?” I asked him, like he was a little kid who’d strayed from home trying to follow his older brother. Pretty much the truth.

  He froze, then triggered his microphone. “You know as well I do why. I saw you slip off the dock as I was packing away my kit. Where the fuck are you?”

  I stood up, and he trotted up so we could talk face to face. I’ll spare you the details, because you already know them; he wouldn’t let me go alone, and
the men at the gates were too afraid to stop him.

  Wise men, those guards.

  I was afraid his presence would fuck up my time at the church, but I was surely glad to have him with me. So we pressed on together, hand in hand, hopping, skipping, jumping, singing songs like two boys in a field on a summer day.

  Except not that at all, and with rifles and body armor.

  We made it past the windmill, which gave Hal the creeps just as much as it gave Kevin and I, I’m happy to report.

  So the church beyond… yeah.

  I’d only be a touch melodramatic if I said we arrived precisely at the stroke of midnight. It was close. I didn’t check the exact time. He and I searched the grounds over under the cover of the bottomless darkness, using night vision sparingly to see things better. We covered each other in rotation, looking for undead that still refused to come close to the church grounds, making sure fresh eyes were pointing at everything at least once, if not three or four times. We weren’t sure what we were looking for, until… you guessed it. Right about 3:33 in the morning.

  I rounded the back corner of the church, near the old residence structure, and sat down on a stone bench. Hal was backing up towards me, making sure nothing was behind me, when I smelled it.

  That… that chemical smell. Same thing I caught wind of when Bell End wasn’t smoking. I spun, to look for the source of it, because I swear to all my saved games on my Playstation there was a FIRE near me, but there wasn’t.

  Then I heard a deep sigh, and a lighter igniting.

  In the darkness, in the shadows of the church ruins, just as it went out, I saw a tiny flame light a cigarette. The vague moment told me it was Bell End, but… I don’t know how he could’ve gotten there without us seeing or hearing him.

  “I thought you’d have to be alone,” he said. “Looks like your friend here isn’t bad luck. I’m thankful. I’m real glad you made this trip.”