Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8)

by Chris Philbrook

  He’d been bitten three or four times in the chest and neck, and he was covered with fresh, sticky blood. He hadn’t been dead for long. When we rounded the corner I was the one facing him, and once I was sure he was dead (look for the whites of their eyes, as the old saying goes), I put that red dot on his face, and sent him back to oblivion where he belonged. I hope these people are getting rest wherever they are. Shooting him was not pleasant for me in the least. All I could think about was how Alex would feel.

  We moved down the road to the clinic and I prepared for the worst. We swung around the building to the entrance that I went in through back when I was clearing the building originally. It was the door facing the admissions building, near the bridge and campus exit. The door was ajar, and after making a quick plan, we breached our own fucking clinic.

  I am not sure how much detail I can even go into here. It was fucking carnage inside. Blood and gore all over, glistening in the light of the growing dawn. My friends. My people. Death everywhere. I hollered out for anyone alive to reply, and from the upstairs we heard a woman yell that she was in an office. The same office Abby holed herself up in that day. Funny how things come full circle.

  In the open clinic area on one of the beds was Jenna. Jenna was hooked up to an IV bag that Roger must’ve gotten on her. She sat up when we came into the room, and got off the bed, dragging her IV hangar behind her, slowly opening and closing her mouth, her face twisting into that same silent rage I’ve seen so fucking much. I liked Jenna. She helped me so much, and she was a real asset for us here. I didn’t have the heart to physically hit her in the head, so I simply lined that red dot up one more time, and sent the back of her head all over the bed she died on. She’d been bitten several times.

  I hate my life sometimes. A lot.

  Here’s a list of the confirmed dead, all from inside the clinic. Our locked doors and reinforced windows held all across campus, protecting everyone that stayed inside thankfully:

  Julie, Martin’s wife. Deceased.

  George, Alex’s partner.Husband.Deceased.

  Andrea, Lindsey’s daughter, age 6.Deceased.

  Jeffrey Daniel Langston, not quite 1 year old.Deceased.

  Doc Lindsey.Deceased.

  Veronica of no last name, age 5.Deceased.

  DianeDeceased.

  Sgt. Roger HallidayDeceased.

  Kyle FishmanDeceased.

  I could cry. I will cry. A lot. The heartbreak here right now is motherfucking epic. Everyone has been touched by this, and it will take a long time to shake off the aftereffects of the deaths of so many loved ones. Things we could’ve done differently, finger pointing, all that jazz I’m sure is not far off. Anger and rage will be right after that, and we need to keep emotions in check as best as possible. Michelle is soothing nerves as best she can, and Kevin is putting everyone straight to task with Fitz. If people are busy, they are less likely to shut down, or freak out.

  In the upstairs office we found Becky, Shelby, Ryan and Chester. They are the lone survivors of the carnage in the clinic. Right now they are in Joel’s care in Hall D's kitchen, and Ethan will be returning from MGR tomorrow morning to assist. We are going to lose them too if we don’t get some serious fluids into them. They are fading fast, and we are dangerously low on IV bags. We can’t get fluids into them fast enough. They can’t keep them down when they drink.

  I know there was an ambulance on the side of the road between here and Westfield. It’s off the road in fact, down an embankment on a side road. I saw it when I was walking around on the other side with Gilbert. With any luck, the ambulance will have enough good IV bags to get us through the sickness here, and buy us enough time to formulate a serious plan on how to get more medical supplies for the future.

  I talked to Joel about whether or not we could make our own IV bags and they looked at me like I’d grown a third eye. We have no sterile environments to make any in, and without very specific raw materials, we would essentially be making germ and bacteria bags for direct injection. We’d kill people faster by giving them homemade IVs. I figured it was worth asking. No stone left unturned.

  We’re leaving first thing in the morning to check on that ambulance. The weather has been clear for a day now, and the roads are probably good enough. We’re going in just the two humvees as soon as Ethan gets back here from MGR to beef up our numbers. I’m hoping we find the ambulance with no trouble, and it is still filled with usable medical supplies.

  And hope. We could seriously use a huge bucket of hope right now. We’re running on fumes at the moment and could use it.

  I’m very much out of sorts right now. This is one of those things that's going to stick with me.

  -Adrian

  February 2012

  February 1st

  Do you remember when I stashed an “oh shit” bag halfway between here and Westfield? Back when I was doing my recon work when Sean was still alive? Mr. Journal we were right near there earlier today when we left to scour for my ambulance.

  Our team heading out today was myself, Kevin, Fitz, Abby, Hector, and James. Hector and James really wanted to go to get outside the wall, and the rest are pretty self explanatory. We’d been leaving the Westfield soldiers behind more often because they’re less used to breaching operations and house clears, and because they’ve gotten into a great rhythm with the security at the school. Not to mention Hector has been tapped for vehicle maintenance and James has been in the woods hunting. This was their opportunity for a change of pace.

  With three souls in each vehicle all heavily armed and pretty experienced, we felt good. Kevin also mounted M203s on his and Fitz’s M4s, so we had some serious squad support weaponry if need be. The roads heading over to that neck of the woods was decent. A little slippery, but not bad. The ambulance was right there on the side of the road, buried under the entire winter’s accumulation of snow. The tree cover on that spot was heavy as well, so there was little to no melting. Also, like a collective bunch of fucking bosses, not one of us remembered to bring a snow shovel. All we had were entrenching tools from the humvees.

  We parked in the road, which of course hadn’t been plowed at all the entire winter (no surprise seeing as the DOT hasn’t been in operation of late). We had to rotate out the shoveling duties due to how hard it was to chip out the icy layers and thickly packed snow. It was shit work. We were grunting and groaning to the nth degree, making a ton of noise, and we managed to draw in two zombies in the seven hours we were there.

  I happened to be pulling security both times the walkers came at us. Both came from the direction away from the main road, and they were struggling to trudge through the snow to get to us. I think it’s funny that the undead always use roads and streets to move. You’d think as mindless creatures they’d simply move in a straight line towards noise, ignoring the constructs of human society, but noooo… They always seem to stick to the roads. Residual memory? Effects of the evil powering them?

  At any rate, I watched as the two male zombies shuffled their way towards us, knee deep in thick, crusty snow. They fell over at least three or four times as they came up the road. At one point Abby was standing next to me watching, and she shook her head sadly and walked back down the embankment to the ambulance. It really was sad and awkward and whatnot. I finally put rounds through their heads when they got to about thirty yards away. Made no sense to risk them getting any closer even if it would've taken them ten minutes to get to us.

  The good news out of the shooting of the zombies was that they were the drivers from the ambulance. They had more medical gear on them, as well as the remainder of the keys to the compartments in the rear of the ambulance that were still sealed. We did of course have to shoot a patient that was long dead and strapped into the back of the ambulance though. The guy had a bite wound on his arm I believe, and I’d guess he turned on them, caused a ruckus, then caused the crash that killed the two EMTs. I don't know why trying to piece together how people died is something I think about so much. O
veractive imagination.

  We did manage to salvage a lot of medical supplies from the mostly tipped over van. Our largest need was met only sparingly. We desperately needed IV bags to get fluids into the bodies of our sick survivors, and in the ambulance we found only six bags. Fortunately, Ethan said the bags were still good, so that’s something. Those bags will get us through a couple of days as we essentially force feed fluids right into their bloodstreams. Better than nothing.

  After we got everything out of the ambulance, we stopped at the house I stored my shotgun and Sig at, and retrieved them. They need some tender loving care to get rid of some rust, but they’ll work fine with some attention. It was nice to see the Sig again.

  On our return we got the supplies to Ethan and Joel, and they did what they could to tend to our sick. By the time we returned the clinic had been cleaned out. I could see the smoke rising from the back of campus from the fresh flames on the pyre. The bodies had been moved.

  Ugly work I imagine.

  Bastion is on its end, on tilt right now. Martin lost his wife of fourteen years. Fourteen fucking years. He’s been with his son, lost to his emotions since everything happened.

  Lindsey lost her six year old daughter. I don’t need to explain to you what that would do to a mother. She’s living right next to Angela and Amanda in Hall A right now instead of the farm on Jones Road so she has company and is surrounded by support. I bet Doug is weeping somewhere.

  Jeanette lost her baby boy. She’s also with Amanda and Angela. The Westfield people as a whole are hurt very very much by the loss of the child that was named after the man that helped to lead them. That baby was a symbol, and now he's gone.

  Everyone misses Doc Lindsey.

  I miss little Veronica. She was a bubbly little girl that died far before her time was due. She had no family we could find, no name, and she left the world just as anonymously as her family did. The only thing that marks her life now are the mentions of her in this fucking journal. Pathetic. Inadequate in every way.

  Diane, the woman we believe brought all this upon us is also dead. I wonder if this is karma for having shot at us when we arrived to try and rescue them? I wonder if this is karma for us too. I suppose this is all moot.

  Roger is dead. He was such a good guy too. One of the nation’s most highly trained military men killed in his sleep (we think) by someone who died under his care. We really needed him here, and it’s clear now how close Kevin’s group really was. As a team they survived some hellish circumstances, and traveled an awfully long way to get here. They are all in mourning over his loss.

  I don’t think I need to explain how badly Kevin is missing his buddy Kyle. Kyle was Kevin’s driver on their last op in Jerusalem, and he was an excellent team member before that, and since then.

  Alex has shut himself away trying to get over the loss of George, his boyfriend. His husband. Michelle has been trying to talk to him to get him to come out and be with the rest of us, but he can’t sustain it. Ten or fifteen minutes of attempted socialization and he overloads with emotion, falls apart, and leaves. He just can’t take it. He and George had been together for years. All of them happy as I understand it.

  Michelle shut the school down for a few days to let everyone digest the past couple day’s events. Ollie has rolled down the amount of labor he is asking of the younger people as they struggle to cope with the sudden large scale loss of life. We’re an emotional wreck right now, myself included. The less I think about what just happened, the better off I am.

  Strangely enough, I don’t feel like I failed this time. So many of our bad incidents have felt to me like they were my fault, but I really feel like this time we made good decisions. If anything, I feel like our medical people underestimated the seriousness of the sickness that we’re dealing with. I’m not laying blame here Mr. Journal. Our medical people are top notch. But, we are not in a real hospital, with full diagnosis equipment, and a real lab to run real tests. It’s a lot of educated guesswork. Things like this are going to happen no matter how many precautions we take and no matter how good we are as people.

  Where do we go from here?

  We need more IV bags. We also need more medicine. We also know that there are no good places to find these things in town, or in Westfield. Furthermore, there are no good places to find these things in any of the small towns around here. We’ve already cannibalized the pharmacies and the local clinics.

  Our last resort is the city. The same city Danielle and Diane told us were overrun with a mountain of the dead.

  Our discussions about what that means will be tomorrow morning.

  -Adrian

  February 2nd

  After conferring this morning, we decided we were going into the southern fringe of the city early tomorrow.

  We are going to the Factory first to drop off some supplies they need, and then we are heading south down and around the city through the suburbs. Once we get a fair distance south, we’re cutting across the edge of the city and then heading north to a moderately industrial section of town near the airport. There’s a fairly large pharmacy there, as well as a small medical supplies business in an industrial park just off the airport perimeter road. There aren’t a ton of houses there either, so we’re hoping the body count is manageable.

  With the snow on the ground, the undead should be slow moving, hopefully buying us time to shoot any large hordes of them efficiently and safely. We plan on raiding the pharmacy of whatever it might contain, then hit the medical supplies business nearby for the same.

  If things get hairy, we bail. We’ll manage the illness without the supplies. Or we won't.

  We are taking the two humvees, plus the HRT. We’re rolling with nine shooters, three per vehicle. Kevin Fitz and Quan are all rolling with M203s which will be a nice force multiplier, and Joel is rolling with a SAW, which is a huge asset for us. We’ve also got the two turret mounted SAWs on the humvees, which needless to say are going to be a big deal should things get sticky.

  In an ideal world though, we’d be in and out without making any noise.

  We’ll see how ideally things go. I’ll try and check in as soon as I can. After we get back Mr. Journal. Wish us luck.

  -Adrian

  February 4th

  Well. It’s official. The city fucking blows.

  Big time.

  Any kind of clearing action into the urban areas is going to require an absurd amount of ammunition, and careful planning. I think we managed to drop somewhere around six or seven hundred undead yesterday based on the number of empty magazines we counted, and that more than likely was just the tip of the zombie iceberg.

  After visiting the Factory and dropping off some ammunition, water, and some foodstuffs, we moved along due south down the side of the city, then cut east across the very southern edge. Most of the area we moved through was vanilla suburbia. Very similar to the area surrounding MGR in town. Mostly two or three story buildings strung down the main corridors, backed up by neighborhoods of varying monetary valuations. There were a few trailer parks, as well as a few five star neighborhoods. I saw one gated community off in the distance before we got into the area of the airport’s flight path and that made me wonder if that should be our next major operation. Pop the gate, secure it, clear the houses inside… and we’ve got a premade mini-Bastion to work out of, right on the edge of the city. That line of thought also led me to the realization that there could be quite a few survivors in gated communities all across the country.

  Food for thought.

  During the drive we passed at least a hundred undead. Because the roads were still thick with crusty snow still, we couldn’t swerve much to hit them with the HRT plow blade. We also didn’t want to shoot and make unnecessary noise, nor did we want to just drive past them. They would follow us for sure, and we didn’t want to dredge up another massive wall of the dead to drive home through.

  Our solution was to slow down to a crawl, and engage them with our suppressed 9mm pist
ols. We are still heavily stocked with 9mm, and it was excellent shoot-on-the-move experience. I’d wager a bet and say just on the drive there we put down… eighty to a hundred undead. We wasted a fair amount of ammo on misses, but the overall level of satisfaction dropping them cowboy and Indian style from the moving stagecoach was excellent for us. Improved morale ftw.

  The areas closer to the airport were far more troubling. Milling about, stuck in the snow and making their way towards us were far too many undead for comfort. At a point where we realized we would be in trouble if we kept moving without thinning the threat level, we upgraded from suppressed M9s to using our suppressed M4A1s. Far more firepower, range, accuracy, and all kinds of goodness. We were far more able to put lead downrange and we churned through another eighty or so undead I short order. It looks like a complete shitload of people went to the airport before it all went to shit. Makes sense though. Airports usually mean escape. Lots of cars on the road, crashed, pulled over, etc. Traffic was a bitch to weave through.

  At the major intersection leading into the airport perimeter road area, leading to the industrial park where the medical supplies building was, we implemented our top secret plan. “Operation Lady in the Red Dress.” Or if you prefer, “Operation Androgynous Singer That’s Worked Before.”

  From the roof of the HRT I hung a large radio playing… you guessed it, Lady Gaga on a traffic light. The light was clearly too high for the undead to reach, and with the duct tape and strap I used, it wasn’t falling anytime soon either. I set it to repeat “Lovegame” and we got the hell out.