Midnight (Adrian's Undead Diary)

by Chris Philbrook

  That gave me the space to put one down his nasal cavity, ending his ass for good. I entered the garage where I had more area to move around. The third zombie was stumbling over the dead body of the first one I had killed, which gave me time to draw the sword. In a pretty slick maneuver I swung the M15 on the sling around to my back, and drew the sword. Wish I had a camera, because that shit was a MOVIE MOMENT. Ramp up the slow motion, queue up the hardcore techno music, and flash some pectoral muscles into the fading sun. I felt like a fucking holy ninja or something. As the dead bastard cleared the hurdle of his buddy I backhanded the blade across his face, and chopped it wide open. He spun like a top from the force of the blow, and when he finally gathered himself again, I brought the sword down into his skull, and he was finished too.

  Little bit of a toe-pusher there, but the consistency was thin, and it went down the drain with little work.

  Patty burst into the doorway of the garage, rifle up, and was yelling my name. She couldn’t see shit though, and luckily didn’t shoot me as I told her it was okay. I could practically feel her heart hammering from ten feet away. It took her five minutes to calm herself down. Her eyes looked like they were fixing to pop the fuck out. Before I pushed into the police station side, we cleared the whole fire house. I checked the bodies of the zombies I’d shot, and with a little research, it was clear they were firefighters. I actually recognized the first guy I shot from his driver’s license picture. He lived in my condo complex. One thing awesome about fire fighters... they always have a Leatherman. I got one off of each of them, including a little belt holster for them. I feel dirty as shit taking stuff off dead bodies. Just wanted to put that on record in case anyone is actually reading this.

  Extremely long story short, we ransacked everything that we thought would be of value. That wasn’t a whole lot. The place had already been hit, which makes sense. There were three of the nice Motorola radios and chargers to match. We got a pretty decent amount of bandages and wrappings which was nice. The biggest and best thing we got though, were the keys to the trucks. They were in a locked key box on the wall near the door heading into the garage. McGreevy didn’t have the key, so I had to smash it open with a fire axe. Oh yeah, we got a few of those, and we also got half a dozen substantially sized fire extinguishers, which was pretty badass.

  Oh yeah, other bad part…. With no electricity, the garage doors wouldn’t open. Luckily there was a manual crank Patty found, and with a little bit of effort, we got it up. I started the ladder truck, and pulled it out and around to the lot on the side our two trucks were on, and parked it. We shut the garage door afterward.

  Now the municipal station is really cut into four parts. From the overhead, the five fire truck garage doors are on the right wall of the building, pointing and exiting to the right. To the left of that is the fire house. On the far left of the building is the police station, and in the middle of that is another small garage where they park cruisers. It has one garage door that opens to the back of the building, so it’s not even visible from the street. I think they use it for booking. We’d cleared the entire right side of the building.

  Patty covered me at the interior door that headed to the booking garage, and I started moving in that direction. The garage was empty. Like, fucking really empty. Someone had come through and cleaned the joint out big time. I used McGreevy’s key to open the police station side and with Patty at that door, I cleared it out. The police station side was about the same size as the fire station side. It was devoid of danger, and within ten minutes, we were clearing the place out. I should mention we brought bags with us to put stuff in, but in both places we found enough bags right there to use. Red paramedics bags in the fire station, and a few gym bags in the police station locker room.

  In the police station we found three more of the nice Motorola radios, as well as the chargers for them. So my radio mission has been a success. That gives us a grand total of six radios, with six chargers to match. Very nice. Oh! The other cool thing is that the radios in the police station had smaller transmitters that attach to your collar, or your shirt. You know how cops always have a radio on their shoulder? Those things. Will be pretty sweet when we’re on the move.

  The gun locker in the Chief’s office was cleaned out. Spotless. Obviously someone had come through and cleaned it out. Also, I should add that the Chief’s desk was also cleaned off. The only thing left behind was his name plate on the desk. Chief Brian Moore. Cool guy. Pretty young for a Chief of Police, but when your dad was a Chief in town, and your family has been in that town since God made little green apples, that’s how shit works.

  In the police station we got more medical supplies than in the fire station. Go figure. They had a whole first aid kit that was pretty fucking industrial, as well as one of those portable, briefcase sized defibrillators. Kinda cool. To be honest I was really disappointed we didn’t find any non lethal weapons. I was really pulling for us finding a Taser, or some pepper spray, but we couldn’t find any anywhere. In one of the lockers in the locker room we did find 3 sets of handcuffs with keys to match. Those will be handy at some point I suspect. Patty and I called it quits when Charles and Gilbert’s gunfire started to pick up outside.

  When we left through the fire station exit, there were a couple zombies trudging their way up the road towards us. Gilbert was giving Chuck a pretty good shooting lesson, helping him with his posture and mechanics with the Winchester. I could see in the road they had already shot maybe 5 or 6 additional undead making their way towards us from Main Street. The street in the other direction was devoid of anything moving, which I thought was a great sign.

  We loaded the shit into the Explorer, according to our plan. I was to drive the ladder truck, Charles and Gilbert would drive the Explorer, and Patty would drive the pickup with the plow with Abby riding shotgun. Patty was under strict instructions not to attempt to plow, and she was to take up the middle spot. I led with the big rig.

  Now our town’s ladder truck is not the two piece big fucking deal with the wheelman in the back like you see in the movies. It’s a single body, and has a ladder that I think extends up to about a five stories to match the tallest buildings in town. Now I’m not saying it isn’t a beast mind you. This motherfucker has brute force cock diesel power. It was like driving pure testosterone on the way back. It handled like you’d expect though. Felt like I was driving a sluggish refrigerator.

  You know what’s good about driving a multi-ton sluggish refrigerator? It fucking pwns zombies. I made mashed zombie for five solid miles. Most of the dead folks that I didn’t hit with the plow on the way in had turned tail and started to follow us to the police station, but they hadn’t gotten that far. Many had also (amazingly enough) wandered into our beaten down tire tracks, or into the paths I’d plowed, so I didn’t even have to swerve much to hit them all. By the time we made the turn onto Route 18 I think our GTA hit and run zombie headcount was at least 50 or 60. Setting the high score for the win. High five myself.

  Getting the truck up into campus was fine, despite all the ups and downs and my largely amateur plow job. (That sounded very sexual) I drove the truck all the way to the back end of the campus and parked it in the ass end of the staff parking lot where it was out of the way.

  Patty parked the plow where we’ve been keeping it, and Charles went right to Hall A. We wound up congregating at Hall A where (by our standards) a huge celebration ensued. Randy didn’t kill himself, nothing got burnt down, no one got hurt, and everyone was in amazing spirits. To top it all off, Randy even loaded the wood stove and kept Hall A warm while we were gone.

  Talk about a motherfucking huge victory. I mean total WIN! I have an erection. Just felt that needed mentioning.

  We didn’t even use that much ammo either! Wow. Next trip down though, we are going to be boned, I can feel it. The noise we made will without doubt attract more attention from the more dense areas that are just half a mile away. I can just feel it that when we go back it’ll be wors
e. But, that’s in a couple days, and I will worry about that tomorrow.

  After we had our few beers I actually passed out on the couch in Hall A for a couple hours. Adrenaline was gone from my system, four beers had worked their way into my bloodstream, and my body reminded me I had shit for sleep. I had a pretty sweet dream on the couch with Cassie in it. Was really nice. I haven’t had a Cassie dream in some time. Maybe that’s why I have a boner. Shrug. I like boners, I’m not gonna bitch.

  We wrapped up our little after raid party and called it a night. I think we all passed out for awhile. I remembered to thank everyone, and tell them they did an awesome job too. I got a quick ammo count for what folks fired so I had a good idea of where we were, and I headed out to check the fire truck. Inside I found four of the Halligan tools, and another fully stocked emergency first aid kit. Left everything where it was except for one Halligan, which I moved to the back seat of the maintenance truck with the plow. Such a handy tool.

  After I wrap up here I am going to plug in the radios and get them charged so we can start using them to communicate. Too funny. I expect once they’re up and running we’ll want to carry them around with us which is one more thing I’ll have on my belt, and one step further away from ever wearing sweatpants again. Fucking A. I really want to wear sweatpants out and about just one day.

  Oh. One thing that I made sure to pay attention to was Chuck’s demeanor post gunfire. I definitely think he’s fine about today. He might still be struggling with the whole PTSD issue, but I think I’ve gotten to the real root of it.

  When he was on his own with the family in Westfield, he had to kill something like 7 or 8 zombies, and he was fine with it. Little mentally roughed up, but more or less okay. Here’s the thing; when he shot at the Westfield assholes during our ambush, they were still alive. He’d just shot and killed living people, instead of dead people.

  Make sense to you Mr. Journal? It’s like killing an animal for food, versus killing an animal for fun. One is a necessity (killing the zombies) and one is an atrocity (killing people). We suffered the same problem in the Army when a kid got killed by a stray round. I mean shit, we’d kill insurgents and barely blink an eye about it, but if a kid got killed….. shheeeeeeit man, we needed therapy. I think that might the root of it.

  Pretty sure. I’m no Sigmund Freud mind you, but I’m pretty sure that’s a huge part of his deal.

  Tomorrow we are going to take a more robust stock of the shit we got today, and generally relax. We don’t have much to do here on campus. I think tomorrow night, if all is well and we’re feeling up to it, we’ll plan our next trip downtown, which could be as early as the 17th. Yeah bitches! Encore up in this motherfucker!

  I am plugging in the radios, putting some porn on the big screen, and doing something about this boner Mr. Journal. Put that picture in your mind.

  -Adrian

  January 17th

  The expression “by the skin of our teeth” comes to my mind right now. That was fucking ugly. Toe pushing of epic levels today. Unlike my last entry on the... what was it? The 15th? I am not recanting yesterday’s mundane bullshit in detail. I’ll keep my notes on yesterday short and sweet.

  I charged the radios, handed one to Gilbert, kept one for myself, and gave another to Chuck and Patty. We searched through the stuff we got at the station. It was good and useful. No one got hurt, no one argued, we didn’t see any zombies, or assholes trying to kill us.

  I slept poorly last night just the same as the night prior our last raid downtown. Nerves once again. I might start taking something to sleep better at this rate. Something like four melatonin, or that tryptophan pill. I think I have those somewhere.

  Just the same as our previous run downtown we woke up to get on the road by 7am. I went with the same weapons load out, and everyone else carried the same stuff. With our radios we were all high tech and shit though. We did a quick comms check, and made sure everyone was on the same channel. We did the exact same vehicle set up as before. Abby and I rode in the plow on point, and the others went in the Explorer doing caboose duty.

  Things went smoothly to start, as you’d expect. You know what pisses me off? Everything went fucking perfect, but we were fucked over by random bullshit. It’s always the unexpected. The one fucking thing you don’t plan for packs your fucking fudge. Fuck. Grr.

  Sigh.

  Weather has held for us. In fact, it’s been damn near 50 degrees at high noon or so, and the snow has been attacked by the sun pretty effectively. That means the areas I’ve plowed are now almost bare pavement. That made driving a lot easier. We made our way down Route 18 same as the last time, and wound our way down to the main street area. Unlike last time though, the roads were entirely bare of undead. Seemed like good news, but it worried me. Don’t know exactly why, but the hairs on the back of my neck were on end as soon as we made the turn onto Main Street. Abby even asked me what was wrong. I guess I just looked weirded out. Told her to pay extra attention, and she got a little nervous.

  We didn’t see any undead at all until we reached the grocery store region. It was a thin herd in the road, right where my Camry was disabled, perhaps 10 to 20 bodies at most moving around. Likely they followed towards our general direction the other day, and either lost our noise trail, or got distracted by something else. That’s my guess. With the roads a little more bare, I was swerving slowly here and there to hit a few of the dead people that I would’ve skipped the other day. I wound up hitting the better part of the batch in the road, and we kept on moving to the police station.

  Now just as I was about to take the left hand turn onto the street the station is on, I realized that about maybe a tenth of mile further down the way on Main Street I could see a pretty good sized pack of the motherfuckers in the road. Now I mean shoulder to shoulder. I’d guess a solid 50-80 zombies. Like I said, it was a tenth of a mile. That’s like... A twenty minute shuffle for a zombie at least. I figured it was plenty of time and space for us to get in, get the truck, and get out.

  I radioed to the Explorer and advised them to watch extra careful for movement on the huge mob, and if they were getting close to us at the station, to open fire with the .22 and thin em out. Patty radioed back in the affirmative and we were moving into the parking lot. Just the same as last time we pulled into the back lot and got in through the fire station door. Abby and Patty covered me at the door as I re-cleared the way to the trucks in the station, as you’d hope and expect the place was still empty.

  I made my way to the appropriate crank in the truck bay and opened the garage door for the heavy rescue truck. It’s basically a massive ambulance. Sort of an ambulance on a dump truck chassis. Lot of cities have the same thing for Hazmat response. Big red bastard. It was also fully stocked when I poked my head into the back, which needless to say, was the fucking bee’s knees.

  It started right up, and I drove it out and around to the parking area where the plow and the Explorer were. I hopped out, took a quick gander at the mob near the end of the street, then jogged back to the garage keeping an eye on it and cranked the door shut. As I was jogging down the hallway to get to the exit where Patty and Abby were, the door slammed shut ahead of me, leaving me more or less in the dark. Same as last time, I forgot my fucking flashlight, and had to inch my way the last 15 feet. The really scary part was as soon as the door slammed shut, I heard gunfire outside. Not a little mind you, but a pretty heavy barrage coming from several different guns. Something had gone wrong.

  I felt my way to the door as fast as I could and hit the plunger bar to open it. Even though I wasn’t in the dark for long, the bright sunlight kinda blinded me for a second. Plus the damn gunfire was so loud I was sort of shell shocked for a second. It was like having a firecracker go off in your face. Patty and Abby were right there, standing more or less in a gun line, firing around the back of the station towards where the garage doors were. To their backs were Charles and Gilbert, firing in the opposite direction, shooting towards Main Street. Not fu
cking cool. Meant we were shooting from a dead end. Surrounded.

  As soon as I got outside I had the M15 up and was trying to get a bead on targets. Chuck and Gilbert were firing into the mass of zombies that was still quite a distance away. That threat could wait. Once the heavy steel door of the fire station shut, I could see where Patty and Abby were shooting, and immediately knew that was the first problem.

  Maybe 30 feet away rounding the corner of the brick fire house was a clump of undead ten deep, and at least a dozen wide. They must’ve come from the direction that was dead empty the day before. My heart started pounding hard, and I started to execute my hasty plan. As slowly and steadily as I could I walked behind the girls and began to move away, firing as carefully and accurately as I could. I hollered out to the women to slow their fire down. Shoot better, not more.

  You know what burns my ass right now? I have no idea how I didn’t see all those undead when I came back through the garage. Maybe because I was walking backwards for a bit? God that’s terrible. Imagine backing up into that.

  I walked about 20 feet away from the door, taking a shot every step or so. My main goal was to distract the zombies and try to split them up. I clicked dry, hollered to the girls I was reloading, and swapped my magazine. Now we’d gone over that when someone was reloading, if you had bullets, you stepped up and fired a little heavier than you were, and made sure that person reloading had time to get it done.

  Patty was closest to me, and there were maybe 2 or 3 zombies damn near in between us. Patty turns, calm as can be, raises the Tac .22, and snaps off 5 rounds crisp and clean. Every one of the zombies just face planted in the parking lot. I think I yelled out something like “FUCKING YEAH PATTY!” and went back to shooting. Later when we got home I realized I had brains on me, but that was better than being dead.

  Now I’m no math major, but twelve wide and ten deep adds up to a fucking LOT of dead people. I’d already burned 30 rounds, and in my head I knew Patty’s two clips would be dry any second, and Abby would be out shortly as well. I don’t know how my head keeps track of this during a fight, but it does. Ask me what I had for breakfast this morning, and I won’t have any idea. Ask me what the last movie I watched was… And I’m fucked. Now I can tell you right now Patty has 3 clips of 10 rounds each and Abby’s rifle holds 17 rounds. I’m fucking weird, I know.