Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8)

by Chris Philbrook

  It was mathematics at that point. I went through a magazine and a half putting headshots through the window, never even opening the door. Once we were reasonably sure the vast majority of the zombies were dead, we opened the door (or more accurately, let the dead bodies stacked up against the door push it open for us) and we were in the corridor that led straight to the cafeteria.

  Martin didn’t have to seal the cafeteria doorway to the hallway. There were stacks and stacks of tables and chairs blocking it off already. It looked like a pretty classic last stand barricade. There were three or four mangled zombies unable to walk, and we put them down with melee weapons. Fortunately the cafeteria had a ton of floor to ceiling windows, spanning almost the entire room, and the natural light streaming in meant we saved batteries and chemlights. The kitchen was wide open, and after a sweep to clear the space, we checked the kitchen and the stockroom.

  We found nothing. The place had been emptied. Every single last bit of food had been eaten by the people in there. It looked an awful lot like the people in the hospital had fallen back to the cafeteria, blocked off the entrances to the area, and lasted as long as they could. Smart. Clearly the majority of them didn’t make it. Some of them could’ve escaped from the stairwell we came up in, but there’s no way of knowing how many did. Sadly, the vast majority of these people died right here. Trapped in a hospital.

  That’s when things started going to shit rapidly for us. Fitz was searching the body of a cop that had died in the cafeteria, taking his service pistol, handcuffs, pepper spray and all that jazz, when gunfire spidered several of the windows of the cafeteria.

  Fitz was crouched down, emptying the stuff into a small black duffel when he got broadsided by the gunfire. He was right next to the windows, and the shooters outside must’ve seen him. Kevin started screaming in anger, and the rest of either dived for cover, or went to the windows to find the shooter. Ethan, Kevin, Quan and myself all moved fast into shooting positions, and we saw the shooter within seconds.

  I cannot stress to you how nasty we got. All four of us dropped our sights on some motherfucker crouching down behind the trunk of a black Chevy Impala and went cyclic. No mercy. The suppressed weapons made no noise, but the bullets smashing through the glass made a racket. I can’t say for certain how many rounds we sent into that car and the prick trying to hide behind it, but I know I swapped mags once and I was half out at the time, so at least 15 rounds from me. More from the rest of the guys.

  Protip #1: trunks do not stop 5.56.

  Protip #2: no trunk in the world can stop that much 5.56.

  The man dropped to the ground bleeding out. Ethan dragged Fitz into the middle of the cafeteria and started to administer first aid while we searched for more targets. We were perfectly facing the area of the city where Caleb’s living targets were, and from the second floor, we had an excellent elevated vantage point to fire accurately on them.

  I know I put down three. I watched my little red dot walk across their center mass, and I felt the recoil, and I watched them fall. I know three went to the great beyond using a ticket I punched for them. I am fairly sure Quan and Kevin put one more down each, likely more. Had to be more now that I think about it.

  I called out to Quan and Kevin to go help Ethan and I pulled over watch through the windows to cover people outside as well as in. From the ground I worked with Caleb, and had them move out to check bodies and finish off the wounded as needed. We took no more fire from living targets that day.

  Ethan, Quan and Kevin were unable to save Fitz. He took a large caliber round straight through his liver. We can’t put a band aid on that kind of injury and no amount of fluids can prevent liver failure. It fucking blows to lose a good person, especially for no good goddamn reason. Not happy. Kevin's all fucked up right now. He and Becky are with Shelby, trying to take some time to deal with it. The other guys are all messed up too, but they're all professionals. They'll do their job, and cry later.

  No survivors on the street level.

  We managed to accumulate a rather large collection of good weapons and ammunition from the attackers though. Still not sure why they attacked us. If we head back into the city again, we’ll be damned sure to be very careful. These people had decent guns. They weren’t that good with them, but beneficial accidents happen. They were good enough to kill Fitz.

  We got the fuck out after that. Morale was broken. Searching the rest of the hospital was pointless. We wanted to get Fitz’s body back home, and get back to sort through all of our shit. Plus, time was a factor, and the longer we were there, the worse it would be for us trying to leave. It didn’t help either that the locals shot the joint up and made a fucking ton of noise, pulling many of the undead at our noise beacons away and toward us at the hospital.

  The road back to Bastion was flush with the undead. Caleb driving the HRT helped. He’s played an awful lot of Grand Theft Auto, so he’s really good at hitting things with a car. At least he's got that going for him. We completely avoided the first radio we set up on the return trip. We saw more living folks there earlier in the day, and we felt that might have been a precursor to the attacks later in the day. Ergo, we said fuck it, and made a wide berth around that area to skip any kind of ambush they might've prepared for us. In fact, with little to no snow left on the ground we even avoided the trip past the Factory, and drove straight here.

  Our first order of business was stripping Fitz of his gear, cleaning him up and putting him on the fire. Not a good scene in the least. I won’t go into how the guys all reacted to it. How we all reacted to it. Michelle said some very nice words as Fitz went up in smoke. I know this sounds bad, but she really looked beautiful as she spoke. Just beautiful.

  Fitz will be missed by all.

  I already said the shit was a haul. Meds, blah fucking blah blah.

  As I said Kevin’s been incognito with Becky and under the radar since the trip. We’re all giving him space. Emotionally we’re all fucking wrecked right now. Ever since the damn clinic night we’re all beaten up, now even Kevin more so. It blows.

  We’ve withdrawn from the world at large quite a bit. Laying low, sorting our shit and trying to be supportive of one another. Focus has shifted back to the school and helping Michelle, as well as helping Ryan and Becca on the hydro gear. Hector, Martin and Blake are doing oil changes on our vehicles, and assessing our fuel supplies. Low on gasoline, if you’re keeping track Mr. Journal. We looked at some gas stations we drove by on the way into the city the other day and all the lids were off the tanks. Not a good sign at all.

  With the relative success we had the other day at the hospital, I think we’re able to mount a small unit insertion into the city. Deep into the city. I don’t think I can do it alone though. I will need some help setting up distractions. I think I’m getting close to closure. I think I can finally do this. I think I can get over Cassie if I can just find her body, and put it to rest. Move on. Restart my life for real.

  In the cafeteria, on the table next to where Fitz died was a small single stem vase with an unopened, bloodstained card near it. It had a cheap silk rose in it. Whoever had bought it picked it up out of the hospital gift shop the morning everything went to shit I'm sure. A gift ungiven. I snagged it, the flower and the vase for whatever reason at the time when we were clearing out. I put it on Michelle’s desk this morning. It’s not the best gift, but it’s something.

  It’s Valentine’s Day after all.

  -Adrian

  February 16th

  I’ve made the decision to go into the city to Cassie’s work.

  I have sat up the past few nights, soul searching, sleepless, thinking long and hard about it, and Mr. Journal, fuck it. I need this. I need this because I need to move on, it’s the right thing for me to do, and Michelle is right. I’ll never be able to fall in love until I move on.

  I want to be in love again. Not like Mallory and I’s relationship either. That was based on lust, and desperation, and not wanting to be alone. She and
I didn’t meet under the right circumstances, and we certainly didn’t do things the right way when we were getting our ball rolling. I don’t regret Mallory and I for the relationship. Not for a moment. I regret Mallory and I because of my emotional detachment, and the way my lifestyle and choices compromised her ability to trust me and love me as a person.

  Mallory if you ever read this, I’m sorry. I wish I'd been a better man for you.

  This evening I asked some of my closest friends to a private dinner in the upstairs of Hall E. There’s an open space up there that used to be a common area, and I wanted privacy and their opinions on how I could do a run into downtown in the city as safely as possible. My initial plan was me alone, but very quickly that got shot down.

  I am part of a Trinity, and the other two insisted on going with me. I complained and complained, but the two of them simply would not take no for an answer. I told them I’d just slip away in the middle of the night, but both Kevin and Michelle said they’d simply follow me. They knew where I was going anyhow, and if we didn’t roll together with a solid plan, by leaving alone I’d just be guaranteeing that they’d arrive at the same destination in a much less safe manner.

  Within ten minutes of me telling them I wanted to go alone, the idea had blossomed into a full-fledged, Bastion-wide operation.

  I could not allow all these people to help me on this without some secondary benefit. It was unwise, and simply retarded. Selfish beyond belief on my part. The question became what secondary benefit would be enough to make it worth it, and what secondary benefit would motivate people to help me on this? It had to be meaningful, and real. Something worth dying for.

  Nothing I could retrieve from the office building where Cassie worked would be worth it. Stacks of white copier paper, and files on her company’s clients would do us no fucking good whatsoever. There were a few restaurants in the area we could raid, as well as some surface street businesses that arguably could something left. Nothing concrete came to mind. It became apparent to us that the assistance they provided during my “quest” or the benefits gained in preparation for said “quest” would be the activity that gave us the secondary benefit.

  This would need to be done in stages to work right. No run into the city could be done without massive front end work to draw large amounts of the dead out of the center of the city. Putting Lady Gaga and Steely Dan on a CD player and hanging it from a few traffic lights simply wasn’t going to cut it. We knew from our Diane and Danielle that some areas of the city were literally shoulder to shoulder with the dead, and moving that crowd out of the way, or terminating them entirely would be essential for any level of success. I didn’t want to die carrying this task out.

  But where to draw them to? And what to do with them once we got them there? We didn’t come up with a concrete answer tonight, but over the course of the next couple of days, that’s one of our brain trust's problems.

  Something we all agreed we wanted to achieve in this: capture and fortify the gated community we saw south of the city. It’s a second settlement we can theoretically guard, as well as being very strategically positioned for us. It’s within radio range, positioned in an altogether different cardinal direction of the city, has tall brick walls surrounding we think ten to twenty houses, and has a very sturdy iron gate that we can park a truck behind to secure. Once we’re in the place, we can clear each of the houses at our own speed, and viola… we’ve got Bastion 2.0 in a whole new place. Water will be a concern (what's new?), but with the large yards and the fact that it is gated, we can easily plan an ass ton of crops in the spring, and by summer’s end, have a local harvest on-site to sustain whoever decides to move there.

  The motivation to take over a fairly well secured settlement will be very popular. If only to use as a big old Plan B should this place burn to the ground, or we get overrun by Jinx Fairies. Either way, it’ll be good.

  We can use the new settlement as a staging ground for incursions into the city as well. We can send one group in from one location, and a second group in from a second location. Distract the undead, divide and conquer, all that jazz.

  Sound good so far? No? Yeah. It is a bit of a reach, eh?

  I can’t think of much beyond the second settlement that’s worth working for. Quite frankly, that’s huge in and of itself. Now the second large reason to do this is simply for sheer eradication’s sake. Eliminating the undead for the sake of eliminating the undead. If we can figure out a good plan and work on it for a few days to get it rolling, we might be able to lure out a buttfuckington of zombies, and get rid of them en masse. Kevin and Martin and all them have been working on a plan for this for over a week now, and they’ve got some good ideas that might be worth putting to work. We simply cannot shoot them all. We do not have a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition left, and there is simply no way we can risk trying to kill that many undead with melee weapons. More on that later.

  When it was all said and done at the small table meeting I told everyone that their help was amazing, and how much I appreciated them all as friends and family. Abby and Hal (who incidentally sat next to each other at the small dinner, and are clearly giving each other the “look”) both said they would come with me. Actually Abby said she’d go, and then Hal said, “Well if she’s going, I’m going,” and that was the end of it for that pair. Mike and Patty said they’d love to go, but they thought they’d be better off staying, and we all agreed. So that makes five. A small fire team, but one of good experience. Michelle is a little bit of a bump on the proverbial log, but for some reason I really feel that she needs to come for this. Savior of my soul that she is supposed to be.

  Speaking of Michelle, once everyone cleared out and started heading either to their individual rooms here in Hall E, or back to their rooms scattered across Bastion, Michelle was the last to leave. She lingered upstairs, gathering dishes and empty glasses, picking up, and then she brought everything down to the kitchen where I was putting the small amount of leftovers we had away. We had this really awkward moment when she was done, and I was about to head upstairs. We hadn’t spoken at all since I gave her that flower, and to be honest, as elementary school as it was, I knew it was a big gesture on my part, in the wake of her drunken confession at the shindig we had. Assuming of course she even knew that I was the one that gave her the flower…

  “So I had a question for you,” she says softly so that no one else on the first floor can hear her. She wasn’t quite looking at me when she spoke. I think she was still washing a cup at the time. My heart got all giddy.

  I stopped doing what I was doing, leaned over near her, danger close, and said back, “Yeah? What’s the question?”

  She stops, thinks for a good long moment of awkwardness, and then says back to me, “I got a small rose on my desk the other night. A silk one. A little bleached from the sun but still very pretty. Any idea who might’ve given that to me?” As soon as she finished saying that, she looked up from the sink and right into my eyes. God, Mr. Journal that woman is just captivating. Her eyes were almost, desperate to hear me say that it was me, and yet also afraid to hear the answer if it wasn't. It’s hard to explain just how much she was saying with her eyes. Or how much I was reading into her eyes.

  “Well, when we were out the other day I grabbed it off a table at the hospital. I didn’t know quite why I grabbed it at the time. When we got back I figured I’d give it to you.” I was blushing. Hot faced like a motherfucker. Nervous. Had that little butterfly feeling in the pit of my stomach. Fear too maybe.

  She smiled. Just a tiny, knowing smile that told me she already knew I was going to say that. “I thought as much. Does that mean we’re Valentines?” She looked at me again, this time a tiny bit more playful, smiling.

  I couldn’t help but smile back at her. I said, “Well I realize you are probably more used to dating guys with Master’s degrees, and Argyle socks, but in an apocalyptic setting I felt pretty good about my chances. I have fresh water and a kitty cat, and can s
hoot a gun straight. Hope I wasn’t out of line giving that to you.” Go with humor. Always my first response. Well, humor or threats of violence. This seemed like a humor moment.

  Michelle looked at me for a few seconds, put the cup she’d just washed in the dish drainer, and dried her hands on a towel. I was leaning against the counter next to her, trying to stay close so our voices would be low. With her newly dried hand, she reached up, gently ran her fingers around my ear in the sweetest way, making my skin prickle up, and said, “Not out of line in the least Adrian Ring. You and I can be Valentines any day,” and she leaned in and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek. One more smile later, she put her coat on, and left the dorm for her bedroom near Syl’s in Hall C.

  I’m in deep shit with this woman Mr. Journal.

  Deep shit indeed. I don’t want to push it down the drain though. This is the kind of shit guys like me need to get in.

  -Adrian

  February 18th

  We have a plan. It is without doubt risky, but if it works, we’ll be heroes. Cape and all.

  Kevin, Mike, Patty, Michelle and Abby went around the past couple of days and built support up with the locals for a deep incursion into the city. I am shocked to report Mr. Journal that everyone was willing to lend whatever assistance we needed.