Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8)

by Chris Philbrook

  I asked Danielle to hand write us a note to show them saying that she was safe and sound (minus the perforated intestine), and that we were telling the truth. Doc Lindsey handled that task admirably once again. She and the girl have formed a pretty intense bond pretty quickly. Michelle has had a hand in it as well. Both women have spent time in the clinic talking to her about the plight of their group as they survived up north and during their trip down to this part of the state. Michelle told me some of it, and I tell you what, how these people survived up to this point would make one HELL of a movie.

  Their brazen, foolish attacks on us make a lot of sense when you compare their desperation versus the potential danger. It looked a lot like do or die to them.

  We rolled out in a fairly standard group. HRT plus two humvees. We didn’t want to appear like we were rolling in, ready for a fight, but we also wanted to project enough force that the three would KNOW that if they started something, it would be foolish. It’s a fine line to get someone to respect the force you project versus being entirely intimidated and scared by it.

  The neighborhood was almost identical to the neighborhood the duplex I held up in. The three house stretch was exactly as Danielle described, and we stopped across the street from it, parking our three vehicles about twenty yards apart. I got out of the vehicle on the passenger side (Caleb was driving with me in the HRT) and walked behind the engine block to go around the front.

  I no sooner got to the very front of the fender of the ambulance when we heard the BOOM of a shotgun blast coming from the middle house, the one identified by Danielle as being the house the three would be in. A millisecond after the roar of the shotgun I heard and felt the pinging of the pellets crash into the door of the HRT right near me. I knew there would be a dozen or more tiny dents in the metal after. I crouched and from what I saw, we all took cover. Caleb nearly plummeted to the ground through my door to take heavier cover behind the truck. It was kind of funny to watch my brother do a forward head roll out of a tall vehicle, and smash into a pile of snow on the ground a few feet below. It’s always scary to get shot at, but you get your laughs where you can. Better that than crying about it.

  I went on the comms and asked everyone to hold fire. After a full minute of quiet, I screamed as loud as I could at the house, “HELLO! WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU! WE WERE SENT BY DANIELLE!”

  Silence of course. I hollered the same exact thing again, and added that I had a note from her that explained everything. I even dug the note out and waved it around above the hood of the HRT like the white flag of surrender. Silence once more. Kevin suggested we simply wait and give them time to think, and that seemed decent. He also had Joel and Fitz running down the street and through the woods to get behind the house to ensure they weren’t running off through the back.

  It was almost exactly when Joel said he was in position that a window in the front of the house creaked open, and a woman’s voice hollered back to me, “Who are you people?”

  I explained who we were. Survivors trying to reclaim town, and survive. I also explained that we were the people they had been attacking, and that we had injured some of their folks in a fight the other day, and that we had their injured back at our place, and we were taking good care of them. I also told her we were offering to take them in. That, or at least tell them that they were welcome to stay in town, as long as they weren’t violent any more. We wanted to at least be cooperative, instead of antagonistic. I didn't use those words. In the moment I wasn't nearly as eloquent. Hard to be eloquent when you're yelling over the hood of a huge, rusty armor-plated ambulance.

  The woman asked for the letter, and I stood up to walk it to her, but Caleb yanked me back down behind the HRT. He said to me, “Hell no, I got it,” and took the letter from my hand. After sliding his rifle around to his back and making sure he didn't look any more dangerous than he already did wearing body armor, he jogged pretty fearlessly through the slush and snow across the street and up the yard to the door, which opened for him. I saw the tiny glint of black gun steel poking out at him, and guessed that the woman had her scattergun leveled at him, should he do anything funny. I don’t think she realized just how many weapons were aimed at where she was standing in the dark house. If she pulled that trigger, she’d have more holes in her than the plot of a Michael Bay movie.

  Lucky for her, a hand reached out of the door, took the note, and Caleb walked away cautiously, keeping his hands in very visible places. We’re fortunate I guess in the fact that Caleb is a good looking guy. It never hurts to send a reasonably attractive messenger.

  It was maybe ten minutes before we heard from them again. The same female voice yelled out to me asking, “How do we know you didn’t force her to write this?”

  I thought about it, and came up with a decent solution that I thought would appease her, “Would you like to talk to her? I can get her on the radio in just a minute or two.”

  “Yes!” she yelled back at me.

  I thought some more before replying, “Alright, but no shotgun. I’ll come to the door, but if you point that weapon at me, I’m gonna think you’re up to no good, and so are my friends. It’ll make for a very unsafe situation for everyone okay? So no gun for you, no gun for me, and you’re welcome to talk to her.”

  “Deal!”

  I left my M4 on the seat of the HRT, but left my Kimber in the holster at my side. I took Caleb to the door with me, and he kept his rifle on his back, slung far out of view. The woman who came to meet us was small in stature and about fifty. She was the woman we were told was the “aunt” character. Her name is Diane, and she’s just as thin and frail and sad as Danielle was. Graying hair, sunken eyes and face. She had a thick smoker’s cough too. Reminded me a lot of my own aunt's coughs. At least she didn't smell like butts.

  She came to the door with no shotgun in her hand, which was comforting. I introduced myself pleasantly, hands raised and a smile on my face, and she gave the Mohawk a strange look. It’s hard to take someone with my haircut seriously. I accept that.

  I shook her hand gently, apologized for the whole mess our groups had been through, and explained to her that we could get Danielle on the radio back at Bastion. She said, “Okay do it,” and I got on the walkie. Abby and Patty were running the show back at home, and Abby was able to get out of what she was doing and run over to the clinic. After a short explanation to Danielle about what was going on, and a short explanation by me to Danielle about how important it was that she not give our locations away over the radio, we put the two on, and they spoke for nearly twenty minutes.

  Many tears were shed by Diane and Danielle, not surprisingly. Diane motioned after maybe five minutes for the others to come to the walkie, and a young boy of maybe 12 and the kid’s mother, a woman of perhaps thirty joined her. The kid looked like death warmed over, and the mom the same. I don’t think any of them ate for shit the past few weeks, and it showed. Bony shoulders and cheeks.

  The radio reunion was a huge success. Before they even got off the comms they had decided to leave with us on the spot, no hesitation. They packed their shit with our assistance in about fifteen minutes, gave us their guns willingly, without us asking for them, and almost with joy, relieved to be free of them. They packed in to our rides, and we all rode back here.

  You can imagine how the physical reunion went in the clinic. Hardcore waterworks. Of course it was marred heavily by the sight of Ben’s unconscious form in a bead nearby, but it was still joyous nonetheless. There was clear celebration.

  We brought them some fresh food, fresh water, and even some coffee and tea, and made sure they didn’t gorge themselves. Roger and Doc Lindsey gave them an intense physical going over to make sure they weren’t sick, and Roger said he thought Diane had either a bitching case of bronchitis, or maybe some kind of heavy duty chest or head cold. Turns out she doesn't even smoke. Not that there are many cigarettes around anymore. We’re making her stay in the clinic for observation until we’re sure what’s up with her.<
br />
  The kid is a sweetheart and reminds me a lot of a toned down Randy. Like what you’d get if you scared the asshole out of Randy. Abby I think saw the same in him, and I watched her watch the kid for some time. I think she excused herself from the situation towards the end because she couldn’t handle the resemblance. The kid’s name is Warren. Warren’s mom is tall, almost six feet tall, and if you can overlook her emaciated body, has an athletic look about her. Her name is Jackie. She has short brown hair and like I said already, is super thin. She’s pleasant though, but reeks of being tired for too long. She has lines of worry on her face no one her age deserves.

  We put the two of them in Hall A with Angela and Amanda and Danny Jr. They’ll keep an eye on the new arrivals while Diane gets better in the clinic.

  Oh, other sad news; Ben was…. assisted along to greener pastures at noon today. Diane, Warren and Danielle said there was little sense in saving a life that would be full of suffering, and when no one here objected (Michelle included, which I was a little surprised by), Roger cooked up something to put in his IV that’d give him a quick and painless death. His body should be just about burnt to ash by now out on the pyre. It's sad that this man's life will only be remembered by a small footnote in my little diary here. I don't know him, but he had courage when it mattered, and that should be remembered.

  Not much else new. As you can imagine, MGR has been quiet since we took in the new people. A few sightings of undead, and far to the south they can still see a couple of plumes smoke from other survivors, or random fires, though these are spread out and look pretty distant. We’ll need to investigate those soon I imagine.

  Our plan for the moment is this: take a few days of slowness to check over our new additions. We need to properly vet them, let them meet us, let us meet them, and then see if they’ll fit in. If all goes well, they can stay here, and hopefully become productive members of our growing society. They better be productive, because we NEED to produce. If they don't fit in, we'll look at giving them a suitable door prize, and a graceful exit. We can set them up as a satellite place ala the Factory, or simply move them to where they'll be a better fit, like the Factory, or MGR, or something else.

  If the weather holds or gets better we’ll go back to finishing the waterfront tower. That’s another week or so of work, depending on how much time we can devote to the labor. We’ve got school to run, MGR to restock and staff properly, and a shitload of work on hydroponics to get done as well. We NEED to roughly double our hydro food production I think in order to comfortably survive winter. Having the two women help Ryan and Becca seems to be helping speed it along well, but no matter what we do at this point, it’ll be tight. We will have some small plates over this winter, no doubt about it. You should see Ollie's face right now every time the subject of food comes up. Being the father to a newborn is a bad enough job in the state of the world we're in, but the guy lost his father just recently, and he's more or less our go-to guy for food. No pressure bud.

  Hard to say how things are going. Well I think. I feel like we’ve dealt with a huge problem (for the moment) and we’ve brought something good to light. Michelle seems very, very happy with how things panned out, and was practically beaming at how I handled it. Turns out, she might actually think I am not a creepy perv.

  It’s not all bad.

  -Adrian

  January 24th

  Things have been quiet here on the home front. I’m happy to report that we are currently enjoying a period of rest, and productivity.

  Unfortunately, that time has shown to me without a doubt that we are in deep shit when it comes to food. Jenna has been on top of our consumption like an ace, and I am not liking what I am hearing from her. She's like the bad news fairy for me. We’re pissing through milk faster than our cows can make it, and none of our female cows (heifers? I don’t know what the right word is) are pregnant at the moment. Ollie has been trying to get them fucking, or inseminated or whatever to keep it rolling, but no luck just yet. After all, if there are no baby cows, there is no milk.

  Our chickens continue to crank out eggs at an acceptable pace, and they’re making chicks at a nice rate now, so we are upping our chicken consumption. Right now as a whole, we are eating two chickens a week on campus, and I made the call to go up to three a week for the next four weeks. Hopefully that doesn’t outpace our chicken creation rate. I’m not happy about having to do it, but it is what it is.

  James has been outside the wall with his bow every single day looking for deer, or moose, or any kind of game at all, but he hasn’t seen shit. He’s done a really good job up to this point getting us some venison on the regular, but lately it’s been nothing. He is taking Blake and Joel across town to the area near The Farm to hunt in the backwoods out that way. As best we can tell, since our run-in with them, there hasn’t been anyone out in that vicinity for any stretch of time. Theoretically, the deer should be there, frolicking in the forest, begging for us to shoot them and eat them. They could be wearing signs around their necks by now that say as much.

  Delicious deer. Two deer would almost completely offset our food shortage for a month. Just two deer. Hopefully James bags one in the next day or two and makes my overall level of stress and worry drop.

  I’ve tried to have a few meals with the new people since they arrived. Danielle and Diane are both still living in the clinic due to injury and potential illness. Jackie and Warren are in Hall A, and we’ve gathered together in the clinic for lunch and dinner the past couple days. Lunch has been somewhat boring, but dinner has been interesting. I say so because Michelle has been attending dinner to get to know the others, and I like having her around. Michelle is also terrific at asking interesting questions that don’t seem prying, but always manage to get a shitload of information out of people. In another life, she’d be a phenomenal detective. She always seems to know what’s inside someone’s head. It’s creepy and awesome at the same time. She never talks about herself, and that makes her that much more interesting to me.

  The line of questioning that I most frequently want to pry into when I'm talking to the new arrivals is the number of undead that they saw when their group was traveling through/past the city. That information intrigues me. From everything they’ve said, the entire urban area of the city is now overflowing with the dead. Their descriptions say that the surface level streets off the exits and ramps nearer to the center of the city and such were shoulder to shoulder undead in some places. It sounds like there are thousands of them packed into the city. Tens of thousands.

  None of us could come up with a viable reason for how or why so many undead herded themselves into the same area of the world, and then stayed there. It’d take a concentrated effort to lead that many into a place. It’d also take a fucking miracle working ninja (ala Jesus, Buddha, Bob Villa, or Chuck Norris) to lead them into that space, and then slip out without them following you to your final destination.

  Why is the city turning into a veritable necropolis, beyond the basic idea of it having a larger population to begin with? What’s behind all this? When we left dinner earlier tonight Michelle and I stopped to chat about it here in Hall E over a cup of tea. Fuck Kevin but he’s got me hooked on that Chai tea again. Motherfucker. It’s a pretty yummy alternative to coffee, which we are also running low on. Tea on the other hand, we’ve still got a shitload of. Tea bags are everywhere we look it seems.

  At any rate, Michelle and I both shared the opinion that this localized explosion of undead in the city had to be conspicuous. It couldn’t have been done by the living. Just couldn’t. It was either good, or evil. Far too heavy a hand and far reaching an effect for us mere mortals to have orchestrated especially in the light of the trinity being so close. It's a beacon. Gotta be.

  But why? Why would either force gather so many of the dead in a single location? What’s the game? What's the play here? Is evil trying to fortify the city for a purpose? Is good trying to gather them in a single location to free up real estate f
or someone? Us maybe? Or maybe gather them so we can dispose of them en masse?

  Neither of us had any concrete answers. At this point, there’s just too little information. It’s also scary to try and think of how we’d get intelligence. The Factory’s cameras can’t see any of this horde, and sending someone into that area would either be a death sentence for them, or if they were successful, we run the risk of leading a ginormous population of the dead right back to our little town here, which would suck beyond imagination. I’m sure Kevin would love to head in, guns blazing, but that’s not the solution to this. This one will require some brain cells and putting two and two together.

  I like hanging around with Michelle. She’s funny, super smart, intuitive, pretty, etc. More or less the full package. She reminds me of a cooler, calmer Cassie. Well, she isn’t a redhead either, but that’s nothing to hold against her. I've said all this already, but it bears repeating. I’m kinda wondering if she and I are like, developing something. She’s kind of religious and stuff, which is odd for me. I don't do religion. She’s also got morals, which could be a total deal killer in the big picture. I dunno.

  I mean there’s the whole, “I’m a shitty person to be in any kind of relationship with,” factor. I don’t want to burden anyone with the stress, regardless of how horny I am, or how pretty or great they are. I can’t involve anyone in my shit and expect them to just weather the storm. It isn’t fair to them.

  I also sit here after recently talking with Mallory and realize that I never really had… “that” feeling with her. You know the one Mr. Journal? That tingly feeling? That sensation when you see a person that makes you nervous and excited, and warm and all fuzzy and stuff? And that other feeling when you don’t see them? The little tinge of sadness and disappointment and that lingering wonder of what they are doing, and how they are? It’s also mixed with that tiny touch of anticipation for the next time you see them and how great you know you’ll feel.