Midnight (Adrian's Undead Diary)

by Chris Philbrook

  I let Patty take a bunch of the new food as a trophy into Hall A. Didn’t need to store it all in the cafeteria, and I think it really did help her confidence as well as Chuck’s when she came in with a big armload of food. It’s a tangible reward for the risk, and having Charles know that what we’re doing has benefits is important. Plus as it turns out, Chuck is into fried Spam, and we got several cans of it.

  The rest of last night I finished watching Trigun, and I cleaned the weapons. I’ve been doing all the gun maintenance myself. Eventually I’ll have to teach the girls how to do it so I don’t have to clean their shit. But like I said the other day, I do enjoy cleaning the weapons.

  Slept fairly well. Had a little bit of a hinky dream about Cassie. She was being all weird and standoffish in the dream. It was another one where it was like she and I were living together in hall E, like I’d saved her “that day” or something. Wasn’t a bad dream per se, but it certainly left a strange taste in my mouth.

  As I said we decided to shit can going out today. That was fine with me. I did my two campus patrols on foot with the bow, and even got up the gumption to make some trips to the gas station again. The plow fuel tank was low as well as the Tundra’s so I made sure that was all topped off. It’s such a pain in the ass to drive off campus. I’ve got the vans parked forming a blockade, and every time I leave, it’s back up a van, get out, back up the other van, get out. Drive truck through, get out. Move van back, get out. Move other van back, get out. Such a pain in my ass. Wish I had something a little more effective, and easy to move. I might want to find a single semi truck to use as an obstacle or something.

  I also took the time to check out the heating oil tanks for Hall A and E. They’re definitely getting low, and we’ll need to address that within a week or two. Luckily there’s a shitload of home heating oil all over the place. Almost every house has like a 250 gallon tank in it, and I’d bet I can get a shitload just on Auburn Lake Road. Siphoning it might be a bitch, but I’ll figure it out.

  Brian and I had our official radio call a few hours ago at 6pm again. First thing he said was that he was sorry for acting like an asshole at the meeting the other day. He admitted he was wrong, and that we had just as much a claim to the fire trucks as they did. First come, first serve. He actually made a good analogy with hunting. If I come on your land, and kill a deer, I deserve to eat it. Whether or not you have five people, ten people or a hundred people. I did the work, and it’s mine now.

  I told him I understood, and we dropped it. I think he was genuinely sorry too. We bullshitted and exchanged some stories about the “good old days” before the world shit the bed. You know, when he arrested normal criminals instead of fighting off hordes of the living dead. It wasn’t long before we got on the subject of doing another trade. He approached the subject asking if we could spare more food. I knew right then and there he and his people were probably not as well off as he’d like us to believe. I had him by the short hairs.

  I told him we could spare some food only for one or two things. We needed more solar panels and the expertise to hook them up to the batteries. We also needed ammunition, and more food of our own. If he could pony up those things, we’d be more than willing to trade food. Since it doesn’t make sense to trade food for food really, we wound up settling on the following:

  Six more solar panels, delivered here. 12 batteries to put in series to store electricity, and the cables, regulators, etc to use them. Two technicians along with the panels and batteries, and the time to hook up the gear so we have a battery system. As long as the sun shines and the panels and batteries last, we will have electricity. 12 rounds of 12 gauge buckshot, and 40 rounds of 5.56mm.

  Now that’s what he offered up to me. Here’s what I offered back to him in return;

  4 jars of the jam/jelly we’d just gotten out of that colonial house, 4 cans Spam, 36 cans of assorted vegetables and soups, 4 bars of soap, 2 tubes toothpaste, 4 containers of shampoo, and one bag of dog food (which I’ll get tomorrow from the farm on Jones road. I remember seeing the food in a closet the dog couldn’t open. That or any of the houses I saw dead dogs at really)

  And that’s it. Didn’t seem like a huge price to pay for what amounts to permanent electricity, and a pretty big bump in the 5.56 stocks. 40 rounds is almost a magazine and a half. I’m thinking they got an adult sized fucking ammo dump out of the police station when they emptied the arms locker.

  So they’re coming here on the 29th to complete their trade with us. We made strict and mutually beneficial rules for how they’d arrive, and how many people they could bring, etc. I’m starting to feel good about all this. Starting to get the genuine impression we might be able to have a long term relationship with these people, especially after we get the agricultural thing going in spring. If we can plant different crops and actually get them to grow, we’ll be golden.

  After the radio call I ran down to Hall A and talked to the Williams clan. They had been listening on their radio and were stoked, although they thought it was a lot of food to give up. Patty however pointed out my little garden was coming out good, and so was hers. We’d be growing food in no time flat and anything we traded we could replace eventually.

  We also agreed that tomorrow we’d hit the last two houses on Route 18 as well as stop and find that dog food somewhere. Come to think of it, that’s actually good news. If they need dog food, that means they have a dog. If they have a dog, that means they haven’t eaten it yet. So I guess they can’t be that hungry. Or it was a bluff.

  Busy day again tomorrow. Exciting stuff. Talk to you soon Mr. Journal.

  -Adrian

  January 29th

  Man what a whirlwind. We’ve been super busy here on campus. Yesterday started out with a nightmare, but it turned into a bit of a good thing.

  Abby and Patty wanted to head back out to hit the last two houses heading west on Route 18 yesterday. I was all for that. The girls were feeling good about themselves. After all, we’d cleared three houses in a day, gotten a really substantial amount of food, and they’d dropped what? 10-12 zombies to boot? That’s like a positive on almost every level. I mean yeah, Patty almost died, but honestly we had it handled. Lol. Sounds funny.

  The girls actually came over to Hall E and woke me up early. Well, they did as well as Otis sitting on my chest slowly kneading me with his little paws. His purring vibrates my rib cage. That’s his subtle way of telling me that his food bowl is empty. I think the girls were excited. They were banging on the door something fierce and hollering up for me to, “Wake up lazy pants!” I mean it’s nice to be woken by two ladies, but I was getting some decent sleep for a change. I skipped the morning shower after letting them in, and I downed a cup of instant coffee. Still not using the super fancy coffee maker I got out of that house on Auburn Lake Road. Seems stupid if I don’t have milk to steam.

  A few snacks later, and I was geared up and we headed out. I think it was 9am. Just as we were getting into the truck to head out, we heard this terrible smashing noise from maybe a quarter mile away, down the Auburn Lake Road. The girls held fast and I drove the truck to the bridge. Gilbert came over the radio asking what the hell was going on, and a minute later Brian came over the radio asking if we needed help. I told them to calm down. Once I got to the bridge I saw what happened.

  Remember those trees we pre-cut for the Westfield ambush? It was a little snowy on the night before the what? The 28th?, and the trees were chock full of snow, and when the breeze kicked up, it took one of them down across the road. Fucking tree falling down. I radioed that we were fine and that a tree had fallen down. I zipped back to the ladies, told them what happened, and we scored a chainsaw and went to the tree. After an hour of chopping the limbs off and getting it cut down to size, we got Randy and Gilbert on moving the fresh firewood back to campus for splitting. Crisis turned into supplies. Yay. Although that does make me worry about the other trees we prepped to cut. Shit I don’t even remember now how many we did. I’ll have to
check that in a bit. (Kinda cool that Brian responded so fast from across town. Does seem to say something about his character)

  We made the trip down to the last two houses and started the house clearing process. I let the girls do more of the work while I watched and pulled security. The only thing I really wanted to do myself was the actual door kicking, and room clearing with the shotgun. They don’t have trigger time with a shotgun time yet and they’re not quite ready for going into a house solo. I did bring Patty inside with me on one house and Abby the other, so we’re getting them good experience.

  Both houses had no undead, but one did have dead bodies inside. I wound up getting the back door open and dragging the corpses outside so the women didn’t hurl all over the place. One house was a double wide mobile home, and the other a small cape with an addition on the side for a new family room. The mobile home had a suicide in it, which is a mixed blessing. The person did it with a 20 gauge pump shotgun, and where there’s one gun, there’s usually a few more. We picked up the 20ga, another 12ga pump, and a pair of muzzle loaders. Good thing about that is the black powder. They had 24 12 gauge shells, and 24 20 gauge shells. Nice haul all things considered. Fair amount of food too. Well, there were 8 cans of clams, which is… weird. Not a huge fan of canned clams. They were probably chowder enthusiasts.

  Few good supplies, more gun cleaning stuff there. The cape was empty of people dead, undead, or otherwise, and had a reasonably good supply of food inside. I think we salvaged about 24 cans of food out of it, which was nice. I did notice the back door was already kicked in when we did our search, and the house was completely devoid of valuables. By valuables I mean electronics, jewelry, cash etc. I bet some asshole from one of the houses nearby stole it. Come to think of it, one of the next houses down the road is the house where I got my Xbox and PS3, and the big TV and all the movies. I wonder if that guy was the one who broke in there? Food for thought. At least whoever did it left a lot of food behind. Mostly soups and broths, but those have their uses. No clams either. WIN!

  I think we were doing the house cleaning thing for three hours when we wrapped up. We’d lost time on the fallen tree that morning, and we’d taken our sweet ass time getting those two houses done. I actually showed the girls some basic CQB tactics, and explained the idea of violence in action. Doesn’t really apply versus zombies, but it’s still valuable to know. I also showed them how to slice the pie, which scared the beejesus out of them. Look that shit up Mr. Journal. Savage way to end someone’s life.

  We jaunted back towards campus, and I decided to take a short detour to see how many houses we had skipped over heading east, and we found three just between the gas station and the log cabin that the assholes who attacked Gilbert were living in. We made a plan that within a few days we’d head to hit those, and that seemed to excite them. We stopped at two houses I thought I left dog food in during the clearing out process. I was wrong about the first house, but we went to the Jones Road farm, and there was definitely food there. We hadn’t plowed that road out though, so it took forever for us to push all that snow out of the way. Two feet of snow does not give up the ghost easily.

  We got back to campus around 4pm. Time flies when you’re having fun. We unloaded our haul into the cafeteria like normal, and I decided I’d relax and hit the books. Felt like it’d been forever since I’d sat down and read. It’s at least been three weeks. I wanted to investigate solar power and electricity, and wouldn’t you know, our science section in the library had a few books on the subject. Yay for the green initiatives.

  On my way back from the library I stopped in at Hall A and harassed the Williams folks. Everyone was in great spirits. The girls were really enjoying the fact that they were getting out and being profoundly useful and important. I even think chuck felt good about it because he fed off their happiness, and he also was home spending some decent time with his son. Long time I think since they had time to relax together. We went over our plan for how we’d deal with the presence of the STIG folks here on campus, and once everyone was on point with the plan, I headed home to Hall E. I spent the remainder of the evening reading the solar power books, and wondering what the hell I was going to do with 8 tins of minced clams.

  I woke up this morning super early. I had sexy dreams of unlimited electrical energy, and hot water fueled by the power of the sun. Seriously though, I did. I dreamt about solar energy. That’s what I get after I read through two dry as hell science textbooks. Wasn’t the worst dream I’ve had, that’s for sure. I was up with the sun, which was a little unusual. I usually sleep in until 7 normally, and the sun has been rising around 6:40. It felt early as hell.

  I did a patrol of campus and got my gear set up. My logic for the solar panels wasn’t entirely popular with the Williams clan. They wanted the panels installed on Hall A. I wanted Hall E. They said well there’s more people here, and blah fucking blah. My logic was that Hall E was larger, and only had heat if it had electricity. Hall A has the wood stove, so if they lose juice, they’re still fine. If I lose juice, I gotta relocate. AND… Hall E’s windows are already boarded up, and the back deck has the steps removed, so in a last ditch situation, we’d come here anyway.

  They gave up. I think having the Glock on my hip helped. I can be very persuasive when I’m armed. Heh. Seriously though they were on board with the idea once I explained it. Plus it wasn’t like we couldn’t get more panels installed.

  STIG radioed us at 8am saying they were enroute. The plan was to arrive at 9:30. If they arrived earlier, they’d radio before pulling up. At 8:45 they radioed, saying the trip to here was almost entirely devoid of trouble, and they were at Jones Road, waiting for our clearance. Abby was going to be outside patrolling campus, and Patty was going to be at the vans with the Tac .22 in case they made a run at the bridge. Gilbert was to stay at his house, and only come down if something were to go wrong.

  I told them to roll the truck to the bridge. Once the truck pulled up, I saw Brian and an unknown man in the cab. Brian hopped out and we shook hands. He seemed excited to be here finally. We bullshitted for a bit, mostly about their trip over. He said there were all of maybe five zombies on the way here, which was awesome. They ran over as many as they could (and they had the splat marks on the truck to prove it) and got here in what amounted to almost normal travel time.

  As per our agreement, Brian opened the back of the truck for me. He had two more people bundled up in there holding the solar panel boxes still. I recognized both guys as Tim and Tom Murphy. I knew they worked at STIG before everything went down, and man was it nice to see them. Tim and Tom were as Irish as you can get. Skinny, pale as hell, hard drinkers, and they loved to laugh. They reminded me of my buddy Kevin something fierce. They were brothers from my side of town that I knew through some of our other friends. Townies to say the least. I greeted them with a mile wide grin, and knew this day was going to be worth it.

  Once I was sure they didn’t have a Trojan Horse to bring on campus, Patty and I moved the vans off the bridge, and let them drive the truck over to Hall E. As we agreed, only two of their men would be armed, and that turned out to be Brian and the other guy in the front, who turned out to be a guy named Darryl. He was a bearded, burly ex-logger that found his way to STIG after “that day” because his wife worked there. He had a police issue 12 gauge and held like he knew how to use it. I was instantly envious of Brian for having so many able people. I was also a little concerned that Brian had so many capable people.

  Here’s how it went down. The techs were not to enter Hall E until the panels were installed on the roof. I drove the ladder truck over to Hall E and got the thing raised for them. They said it was the easiest roof work they’d ever done. Tim and Tom did these installations for a living, and they worked fast as hell. The panels they were putting in were strictly electricity generators. They could put some in that just heated water, but electricity is far more important than hot water at the moment. They brought their own tools and had the panels insta
lled in three hours. During that time, Brian and Darryl were to hang out with me outside watching to make sure the techs were okay. They wound up running some heavy duty cabling down the side of the house and had to drill a hole in the wall to get it through.

  Fortunately, where they had to drill to patch the solar energy into the Hall was near the basement fire door which I’d almost entirely forgotten about. I never use the damn thing. It’s on the side of the Hall where the deck is, and I never go out that way really. So, once they had that panels in, and the cables installed, I let Tim in through that bottom door, and he installed the batteries and paneling and hooked everything fully to the Hall’s power grid. Abby came inside the hall and sat on the stairs to make sure he didn’t try to get upstairs to sneak around. He was inside for about two more hours. By then it was about 3:30, and the sky was getting dark. Clouds were drowning out what little sun we were going to get that day, but Tim showed me the energy being generated on a voltimeter, or voltometer, or whatever it’s called. Point is the needle was moving. He explained how much energy could be use for what, and how much it’d help out the drain on the generator.

  After my instruction on how to operate the panels and batteries and circuits, and a whole bunch of shit I don’t recall, he handed me about five manuals, and we walked out. They were packing up to leave, and I got their stuff for them. I had it all in a large Sterilite container that the kids in a dorm room were using as an impromptu hamper. Brian counted everything, and then he handed me the box of 5.56. I shook everyone’s hands, and thanked them. Once the trade was complete, and they had the stuff in the truck, you could see the tension lift. Just from body language alone Darryl looked so much happier. I’m betting he was completely sold on the idea that this was an ambush and they were walking into a trap.