Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8)

by Chris Philbrook

  “I’ll go with Adrian,” Michelle said.

  After a moment’s conversation Hal added, “We’ll go with Kevin. He’ll need cover to fix whatever is wrong with the explosives.”

  Adrian nodded, feeling his waist for the walkie that was miraculously still attached. He pulled it free and started talking, “Agnes, you there? Anyone receiving this?”

  “Yes Adrian go ahead,” the tall woman responded, her voice scratchy from the distance. She sounded less awkward.

  “Our vehicle has been hit by some kind of explosive device. We’re on foot. If you can pass the message along to the others and get them informed that’d be great. We’re two blocks due west of the hospital parking garage. If they send anyone, have them get into radio contact with us when they get in the area.”

  “Okay I’ll call them right now,” Agnes said. Adrian turned down the radio as he heard her pass the message along to people who he couldn’t hear.

  “I thought you said you didn’t want anyone else to risk their asses for this?” Kevin said, checking to make sure his weapon was still working.

  “I don’t want anyone risking their ass for me. I want them to come pull your asses out of this fire. I could give a shit if I burn and rot,” Adrian said, motioning for Abby and Hal to get ready to open the double doors at the back of the ambulance. “Here, take this,” Adrian said, freeing his Kimber 10mm pistol and magazine pouches for it from his thigh and belt. He handed them to Michelle and helped her strap the weapon on.

  “Thanks. I don’t really know how to use it though,” Michelle said, looking at Adrian’s big brown eyes, showing him her fear of the weapon.

  “The safety is off. Point it at what you want to shoot and pull the trigger. When it clicks dry, push this button, pull the empty mag out and put a new magazine in. Then hit that button. Even if you can’t hit the head the muzzle velocity of the round should send them stumbling for a few seconds. It’ll give us time.” Adrian showed her how to swap the magazine quickly before sliding the pistol into the holster. Michelle nodded, fearful of the weapon of war.

  “Ready?” Kevin asked.

  “I didn’t bring any condoms. Oh well, let’s go anyway. Any port in a storm.”

  “Let’s rawdog this motherfucker. Fucking A. Abby, Hal, lead the way.” Kevin shouldered his weapon as the young couple lowered and lifted the rear doors of the lopsided ambulance simultaneously.

  The crowd of undead at the rear of the ambulance were still yards away, except for two who were danger close. As Hal and Abby raised the barrels of their rifles up to take them out, they were blinded and deafened by the road exploding again. Thirty paces out and on the other side of a parked car the pavement and part of the sidewalk vaulted into the air, sending a pair of the dead pinwheeling into the air, their bodies mangled. Most of the dead bodies approaching the tattered group of survivors were tossed to the ground from the explosion.

  "Holy fucking shit!" Abby screamed as she shielded herself from pieces of falling dead body, and black chunks of scorched asphalt. It rained down with loud plunks on the now flipped over ambulance. It was a stroke of mercy that they were all still inside the vehicle. Were they out, they'd have been hit by falling debris.

  "Mines? What the bloody fuck?" Hal yelled out as the undead got to their feet.

  Two undead had made their way to within feet of the back door. A male and female zombie were shambling forward, teeth grinding and fingers clawing, dressed in blood soaked business casual. Hal acquired one face, pulled the trigger, found the second face and did the same. The undead couple weren’t even face down on the ground by the time he was out and looking for more targets. After a quick 360 degree check of the environment he dropped to a knee and started firing as fast as he could find heads to shoot at. The explosion had only bought them seconds.

  Abby and Kevin were on his heels, covering his back and taking down their own targets. Adrian walked into the sunlight out the back of the ambulance, holding Michelle’s hand without realizing it. The air smelled of cordite, ozone, and burning flesh. He watched as his three shooters absolutely decimated the thirty or so undead surrounding their position in the street. He suddenly felt a perk of hope in his heart. We might be able to do this.

  “Holy fuck, look at the road in front of the truck. What are those? Is that what just blew up?” Abby said as she pointed down the street. Every five feet or so were small craters or tiny unexploded bomblets. They were scattered about as if they’d been dropped randomly from the sky. They had a faint menace to them, like an angry wasp in the air hovering near your face.

  Adrian took Michelle around the side of the ruined rescue truck and looked. His eyebrows perked up in surprise. “I think those are unexploded cluster bombs. The Spring Meadow people said something about this. Who the fuck approved dropping these here in the city?”

  Kevin looked over his shoulder at the bombs, and then went back to his shooting. “Some retard general most likely. Brigadier General Lead Paint Chips and his aide-de-camp Captain Sex Withmuhsister. Everyone be careful where you step. Adrian, you and your runway model need to get moving.” Kevin snapped off a few more rounds as more undead came into view.

  “Kevin, comms check in thirty seconds. Switch to the military gear,” Adrian said loud enough for his friend to hear him over the gunfire.

  “Roger that. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Make good decisions. Be handsome,” Kevin said back.

  "Anything else?" Adrian asked his best friend.

  Kevin shook his head and shot a zombie fifty yards out. "No, you already said you didn't have condoms."

  "That I did. See you three soon," Adrian said, and he took Michelle's hand. The Souls took off running, Adrian letting go of her small hand to put his free hand on the M203 slung under the front of his M4. He slowed his pace for a few moments, steadying himself, snapping off a few rounds at a few undead that were in the direction he and Michelle were heading. Michelle was taken by surprise at how easy the large man made the shooting look. She always knew Kevin and his men could shoot; they were professionals by trade. Adrian had never shown that level of skill to her before. She suddenly felt the same pang of hope that Adrian had felt moments before.

  The two of them reached a small side street that’d allow them to cut towards Cassie’s place of work. Adrian dropped to a knee and put his red dot over the forehead of a teenage zombie that was missing an arm. From waist to shoe one side of his dead body was covered in dried, crusty blood. He stroked the trigger of his weapon smoothly, and ended the teen’s days of shambling aimlessly. Adrian wondered if the kid shambled aimlessly when he was alive too. “Kevin, radio check.”

  “Loud and clear. Raise hell. See you when this is over.”

  “Roger that brother. Sua sponte,” Adrian said back quickly so he could snap a round off at a zombie that had gotten uncomfortably close.

  “Make it happen.”

  *****

  Cassie walked out of the elevator and into the hallway of the abandoned office building, flanked by her two Lieutenants. Both Melanie and Cassie clung onto a portion of Alan’s shattered arm as if they were weapons to be used against the living. Cassie looked around the empty hallway, her dim intelligence and the guiding will of evil steering her towards the stairwell where she could head lower in the building towards where her love approached.

  Her hunger for him was on many levels, good and bad, and it was powerful.

  *****

  The herd packed into the parking garage was second to none. Kevin had visions of the day Mildenhall fell to the undead as they rounded the corner, but this seemed worse. There were variables here that weren't present in England. A wall of flesh was packed into the concrete structure from front to back, and side to side on each level visible from the ground. Thankfully the undead were preoccupied with something inside the garage, and the trio of warriors had not yet been discovered on their approach.

  “Oh holy fuck,” Hal said softly. He wiped more sweat off his black brow with the back of
his wrist as he caught his breath.

  “Oh shit,” Abby said softly as well. She turned to check their rear as the three gathered ideas for what to do next.

  Kevin slid his weapon around to his back as he dropped to a knee. He sat the AT4 down on the ground and slipped a small pair of binoculars from a cargo pocket on his pants leg. He scanned the structure for a solid minute, looking for a solution to a problem that seemed insurmountable.

  “We still trying to blow that place?” Hal asked, taking a knee and sighting the garage through his rifle mounted ACOG scope.

  “Fuck yeah. Didn’t come to the prom to not dance. The good news is the bottom where all the explosives and wiring are is pretty empty at the moment. If the bombs aren’t blowing, my bet is one of these dead bitches tripped on a wire or something and somehow unhooked the wiring Quan did. If we go in silent, using suppressors and move really fast looking for loose wires, we might be able to do this. Thoughts?” Kevin turned to ask the other two what they thought.

  “I’m game,” Hal said quickly.

  Abby nodded without hesitation. “My AR doesn’t have a suppressor. I’d need to borrow one of your pistols, or one of your M4s. Other than that, I’m down. Adrian needs this diversion, and at this rate, we need it to get the fuck out ourselves.” Abby looked both men in the eye, showing her resolve and strength. Kevin smiled, amazed at how strong this young woman was.

  “Alrighty then. Take Hal’s M4. Hal you take mine and the 40mm grenades for the M203. I’ll go with my M9. I'll do the wiring shit when we get inside. Abby I can carry your AR, hand it to me.”

  “You’re already carrying your rocket launcher Kev. I’ll carry it fine,” Abby replied as she took Hal’s fully automatic weapon from him.

  Kevin handed his carbine to Harold and drew his pistol to affix the suppressor. “Okay. Slide in and out, stay quiet. In and out as fast as we can.”

  The two men quickly got to their feet and began sprinting towards the base of the parking garage, Abby just a few feet behind them. The parking garage’s lower level was half below ground. There was a four foot opening running almost the entire perimeter of the bottom floor that looked into the space that Kevin moved to. The entrance for vehicles was on the opposite side of the massive garage, and slipping in through the gap was much faster. He cleared the space directly below where he’d drop with his pistol, and slung his body through the space. He hit the concrete floor softly, and came up, looking for targets and covering Hal and Abby as they followed his lead. Nothing saw them enter the garage, and the closest zombie was a dozen yards away.

  “Spread out and clear the threats. Let me shoot first. Check for breaks in the wires,” Kevin said softly. His pistol was quieter than the higher velocity M4s.

  Abby and Hal responded by moving in different directions, looking for the wires that linked all the charges planted inside the pillars and supports.

  Kevin lifted his pistol and put the small dot of the front sights on the head of the closest zombie. He exhaled slowly and pulled the trigger, feeling the gentle bucking of the gun’s recoil. His mind registered a fine grey and pink mist blossoming from the back of the skull of his target as it crumpled to the concrete. He heard the metallic ‘ting’ of the shell casing hit the hood of a sedan beside him. He smiled and moved forward, feeling the predator inside him urge him on.

  From far behind him Abigail Williams heard the ‘thwip’ of the pistol going off as well as the metallic clinking of the spent shell hitting the ground. She was shocked at how the metallic noise of the casing hitting the ground was actually louder than the gun going off. Military silencers are quite advanced, she thought to herself.

  Abby’s eyes darted from ground to chest height as the wire dipped up and down. She traced it from pillar to pillar as she moved further and further away from the two men she was with. Abby stopped every few steps to turn and scan the garage nearby. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into a wandering zombie and die from stupidity. Adrian would find her, dead or alive, and smack the shit out of her if that happened.

  Abby came to the main pillar at the far corner of the garage where Quan had left some box connecting several of the wires together. She saw clearly several wires had been yanked or kicked free, and were curled out into the floor of the garage, right out in the open. Abby took stock of the situation and saw nothing even remotely close to the wires.

  Abby reached up and triggered the transmit button on the expensive throat microphone they were all using. She heard her own voice in the tiny ear bud in her right ear, “Kevin I found several wires loose over in the… south east corner of the garage. Near that boxy thingy Quan left. I’m gonna grab the wires and drag them to the box if you want to come over and have a look at it.”

  “Sounds good Abby. Hal can you collapse on that position and provide cover for us?”

  “Aye. Headed your way now,” Hal said quickly.

  “You guys found the problem with the explosives?” Adrian asked over the comms network. All three people in the garage could tell he was huffing and puffing hard. If Adrian was winded, Michelle must be dying from exhaustion.

  “It appears so. If you hear the world crack in half in a few minutes, consider that confirmation. You two okay?” Kevin said as he moved slowly towards Abby, his pistol up and ready in the event anything moved. He saw a zombie standing in the street thirty feet away and slowed slightly to pop a round into its head. The pistol recoiled gratifyingly, sending a round into the throat of the dead man. The hit staggered him, but missed the spinal column. He stopped entirely and put a second more accurate round into the corpse’s temple. Kevin was moving before the dead body hit the street.

  “Yeah. We’re running a bitch of a Mogadishu mile though. Getting thick as black flies in spring out here. Any kind of loud ass noise would be highly fucking appreciated riki-tik.”

  Kevin smiled as he reached Abby and crouched, taking the wires she’s collected and looking to make heads or tails of them. “We’ll do what we can brother. Use your suppressor, we’ll start to make noise to help in less than a minute I think.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Great job little woman. You can fight in my squad any day,” Kevin said as he took the wires from the teenager. Abby nodded. Statements like that didn’t even give her pride like it used to anymore, such was her confidence. Now she simply appreciated being appreciated. “Simple fix too. If you want, go help Hal, and pull the suppressors off after the first few shots. Any noise we can make now will help Adrian and Michelle.”

  “You got it Kev,” Abby said. She left Hal’s M4 with Kevin and took off at a jog to join her man, unslinging her AR as she went.

  Kevin took quick stock of the situation and saw the solution. Three wires had come loose, breaking the circuit on the explosives, rendering the detonator useless. Rewired back in, the explosives would be back in business. He started repairing the problem immediately.

  Hal’s suppressor was off by the time Abby reached him. He’d already put two and two together regarding the noise making. He was a smart man.

  “Hey Hal, why don’t you take off the supp— oh, never mind,” Abby said as she reached his position behind the trunk of a Cadillac. “Looks like maybe four or five up there?”

  “Yeah. Not too many. I think taking those down will draw some attention away from Ring and Michelle. Shall we? I’ll go left to right?” Hal offered to his girlfriend. Abby nodded and gave him a playful pat on the ass. Both leaned over the trunk and opened fire slowly, picking their distant targets carefully.

  Their gunfire was very loud, and was heard by more than an army’s worth of the damned.

  *****

  “This three shall fall.”

  “We will see. I have some faith in this one.”

  “But not the others? He is but one, and even if he makes the correct choice today, there are still many who can fail.”

  “Perhaps, but I will be very pleased by the success of this one. He has come far. Further than the others.�
��

  “I will not allow him to succeed easily.”

  “As you should. That is your task. Unleash yourself upon mankind and force them to redeem themselves. You exist to test them. To not do as much would make your existence moot.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Unleash your legion upon him and the others. If he succeeds, so be it. I shall be proud of what he has done, and if he should fail, I shall be proud of the effort he put in. Even in failure he has shown cause for some leniency. We’ve six more souls to attend to.”

  “As you wish.”

  And in the real world, hell quite literally broke loose.

  *****

  Abby lowered her weapon as the last zombie in sight went down in a heap at the bottom of the ramp. She could hear the soft, distant scrapes of uncoordinated feet coming down the ramp in great numbers, but Abby and Hal had plenty of distance on their potential attackers, and the zombies would be moving so slow. It helped that they'd just made a knee-deep pile of corpses for them to navigate over as well.

  “Nice shooting gorgeous,” Hal said.

  "Are you hitting on me?" Abby asked, feigning anger.

  "Absolutely. I'm aiming to get a little naughty here if we survive," Hal said as he pulled a dry magazine and slapped in a fresh one. He gathered up all their spare mags off the concrete floor. Couldn't afford to leave them behind.