Midnight (Adrian's Undead Diary)

by Chris Philbrook

  We are rolling out early early in the morning to get to Westfield and to get us all into position. We are rolling fat as hell on this. Everyone is going and we’re all bringing a full combat load in the event shit hits the fan. We’re leaving the truck behind at one of the houses with Patty in the event the truck is attacked. Gilbert, Abby and I are taking the snow machine to different places and setting up. Abby’s going in the chicken coop, I’ll hopefully be in the barn, and Gilbert will be in the tree line with his AK.

  One way or the other, tomorrow this bullshit ends.

  If I live, I’ll put an entry in as soon as I can.

  -Adrian

  February 20th

  It’s over…..

  He’s dead. And so is he. That totlally sucks my nalls. Lol. Balss I mean.

  Not as hapy as I thought I’md be, but whatever right??/?

  I’m a little drunnk……

  I’ll chitty chitty chitty chat sometime when I get home and wake up. Hope I can find a good place to seep ere. Kinda of a packedhouse and stuff.

  Fucking A mr jornal. Fucking a dude.

  -adrian

  Tyrant

  Oliver McDowell’s heart hammered in his chest like it was about to explode. He watched the woman who had been talking a second ago crumple to the ground not six feet from him. Ollie knew he was next. He knew it as sure as he knew his red hair was receding, and that his waist had swollen over winter. No work on his dad’s fields made for a fat Ollie.

  The former National Guardswoman Tera had just been shot in the chest by a man that was bounding through the snow directly at Ollie. He had burst through the door of an abandoned house in this empty city. They were on a suburban street in his hometown of Westfield, in one of the prefabricated developments that had grown right up next to his dad’s farm. The entire city was now dead or gone save for perhaps forty survivors. They rest had all been eaten by the living dead, frozen in the winter cold, or killed by each other over the meager scraps left behind by the living. Ollie knew the man running at him through the snow would kill him. It wouldn’t be the first time a rogue survivor had killed someone in his group.

  Ollie looked ahead, down the road and watched the pretty young blonde girl pull a pistol just like his from her waist. Moments before they’d stopped to help the girl, and now it seemed they’d fallen into her trap. She pointed the gun at him and gave him the most serious face he’d even seen a teen wear. Her long, wild blonde hair whipped in a sudden gust of late February air. His pistol hung limp in his hand. Once he realized he’d have no chance of raising the gun in time, he let it fall on the snow with a faint crunch. He was literally scared solid.

  The giant man reached the street and Ollie realized the man was a brute. The stranger was over six feet tall and broad from shoulder to feet. He wore a black tight fitting cap and his dark brown hair poked out from underneath. He looked much cleaner than the other survivors Ollie had met recently. Maybe he had soap. He pointed a military style rifle at Ollie’s chest and walked slowly across the front of the pickup, approaching the adult farm boy. Ollie could hear the woman, Tera, rolling around on the ground on the other side of the truck. She was whimpering in pain, and Ollie was sick deep down. He knew she’d die shortly.

  “Watch him.” The man barked out to the girl as he slung his rifle on his back. He reached underneath his thick winter jacket and produced a small bag of medical supplies. He attended Tera for a second, leaning her against the tire of the pickup, but she went quiet almost immediately. Ollie knew Tera had died from the gunshot. Now they had the horrible waiting. How long would it be before she stood back up again as the living dead? Sometimes it was a minute, sometimes it was several, but it was never long enough for Ollie.

  “Fuck!” The man yelled out. “God fucking dammit. Shit. Shit. Motherfucker.” The big man stood and looked down at her. He continued his tirade of wretched language, looking down at the dead woman, angry that she’d died. Finally he grabbed her handgun off the packed snow in the road and fished her two spare magazines out of her jacket pocket. She was armed the same as Ollie was.

  The large man abruptly reached his full height and came around the truck at Ollie. Ollie couldn’t help but take a few steps back, fearful the man would punch him, or stab him. Instead the man reached down and scooped up the pistol Ollie had just dropped off the ground. He checked to make sure it was loaded, and that the safety was on. The man slipped it into his jacket pocket with the magazines he’d just taken off Tera’s body.

  “Hey there, you have any idea who the two of us are?” The man asked Ollie. Ollie was completely terrified of this man. He was cold, hard, and his voice was unflinching. The wrong answer would get Ollie killed, he just knew it.

  Ollie swallowed and stammered out the response he thought was least likely to get his face punched in by the huge man, “I have no idea who you people are.”

  The big man cracked a smile. Ollie was reminded of the Cheshire Cat, “I’m Adrian Ring. Your council leader Sean Stockwell has attacked my people twice now."

  This was it. Ollie knew this was it. He had lost all chance of getting out of this alive. His bladder started to empty as he spoke his thoughts aloud to the murderer that faced him down, “Oh my word. You’re the crazy man that killed all of our people at Christmas? You… you’re a fricking monster! You just killed Tera too! Oh gosh no, oh shit.” When Ollie swore, it was serious business. Swearing was a “behind the tool shed with the belt” event at the McDowell farm.

  The man’s face softened somewhat, but Ollie was still scared. This man had just said he was the person Ollie’s group had attacked when their people had been murdered a month prior. He was the murderer Ollie’s council leader had spoken to them about. The Adrian man spoke again, “Look man, what’s your name?”

  “Oliver. But everyone just calls me Ollie.” Ollie was starting to slip into a state of shock. The smell of urine in his jeans almost made him blush. He hadn’t pissed himself since middle school.

  Ollie, I am really quite sorry that this Tera lady got shot. But you can probably figure out that she was about to shoot me, and I had to shoot her to stay alive. I’m sure as a reasonable man you can see that if you can shoot someone before they’re about to shoot you, you need to do the same, right Ollie?

  Ollie nodded. He couldn’t harm a human being to save his life. “Uh yeah, sure I guess.”

  “Excellent Ollie. Here’s what you need to know. We want nothing to do with any more violence. However, your leader Sean followed people on Christmas from here to where we live, and then attacked us to get our food. Now we’re hungry too, and you don’t just attack people and take their food. You start peaceful trade, or barter, right?”

  “Yeah I suppose, but Sean said you attacked them when they followed the people who left Westfield. They were trying to help those people and you attacked them.” Ollie was feeling a little more assertive now. He didn’t appreciate being lied to.

  “Ollie that’s complete horseshit.” The man’s face went stern again and Ollie remembered he’d just pissed himself because of this man. He looked around nervously, hoping salvation would come marching by, but instead the man continued talking, “If you know this Sean man like I know him, then you know he’s feeding you a pile of bullshit. He’ll tell you anything to get your people to hate us. Shit Ollie, your people blew up the gas station near where we’re holed up the other night, and then the next day they blew up a huge building in town too. Over a hundred people have died because of Sean, Ollie. That’s a lot of blood spilled over nothing.”

  Ollie knew Sean was a politician before the dead took over the world. And the one thing his father had taught him about Sean was that he was a politician, and all politicians are not to be trusted. Ollie didn’t know what to believe. “I knew about us attacking that gas station, but we didn’t attack any other building. That’s news to me. Don’t forget sir, you shot and killed three of our people yourself that night.”

  “The three people with empty guns you
mean?”

  Ollie had no answer. Why would they have empty guns? Why would anyone bring empty guns to something like that? Why would this big man lie to Ollie?

  “Yeah Ollie, they had guns, and I shot them because they were still there holding them. But when I checked, their guns were empty. Any chance those people that died that night were maybe against Sean’s ideas at all?”

  Ollie tried to hide his face by looking down at the ground. He noticed the expanding dark ring of urine on his jeans. He knew the three people who had died that night. They weren’t fans of how Sean ran the school they were all living in. The remnants of the town, including a few members of the local National Guard armory were all locked up and living in the old high school. The same one Ollie had graduated from just ten years ago.

  “Ollie how many spare pistol magazines do you have with you?” The man asked. That question seemed like a bad one, and poor Ollie remembered he was probably going to die shortly.

  “I’ve got the one in the gun you picked up, plus two more in my jacket pocket sir.” No sooner than Ollie had finished they heard movement on the ground nearby. Adrian spun and looked on the other side of the truck where Tera’s body was. It was twitching. That was the first sign that reanimation was imminent.

  “Excuse me for a second Ollie, I need to deal with this.” The big man fished a small camping hatchet off a belt loop and walked around to Tera’s body. He lined up the hatchet, and brought it down into her head with a wet crunch. A fine spatter of blood hit the big man’s chest, and he wrenched the small hatchet out. He flung the gore off the hatchet as Tera’s body twitched a final time.

  “Ollie can you give me the two mags in your pocket please?” He extended a waiting hand, and Ollie got the two magazines out for the man. He dropped them in his big hand. Adrian put those with the other magazines in his pocket and drew Ollie’s pistol. Ollie’s heart stopped beating. Rather than shoot the redheaded man, Adrian dropped the magazine out of the pistol and cocked an arm back. He gunned the black pistol magazine down the road, over the head of the blonde girl until it stopped about a football field’s distance away.

  Before the magazine even stopped moving Adrian had searched the cab of the pickup truck. He killed the still running motor, and took their radio and keys. Fortunately, the highway robber didn’t take the crate of milk and fresh bread they’d just gotten from his father’s farm not a half hour earlier. If he’d dug into the crate even deeper, he might find the two butchered chickens his father had cut up for the pregnant women back at the school. His dad said protein was important for babies.

  The big man returned to Ollie, and spoke once more, “Ollie by now I’m sure you know that there is nothing stopping Miss Clara from putting all nine millimeters from her Beretta right in your head, right?” He motioned to the young girl who still had her gun pointed at Ollie. When he and Tera had come up on the blonde walking down the road earlier, she’d said her name was Clara. Ollie nodded in response, suddenly remembering yet again that he was about to die.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, and neither does she. Furthermore, I don’t want to steal your food. You’ve got pregnant woman to feed, and I’m sure you’ve got kids there as well, right?”

  Ollie had no idea how the big man knew they had pregnant women at the school. This man must be well connected and have spies searching their town. Ollie nodded at him, too scared to speak.

  “So the food is yours. When we leave here, you’re gonna walk to the keys and the magazine down the road there, and then you come back to the truck. How you decide to tell the rest of your people what happened here is up to you, but I sincerely hope you tell them exactly what happened. Tera was shot when she pointed a gun at me, and I’m regretful it happened. You make sure to tell them I’m sorry for it, okay?”

  Ollie realized suddenly that he was going to survive this encounter. He almost smiled, and nodded again at the big man. The blonde girl started to lower the pistol she had been pointing at his fledgling round belly.

  The large man with the assault rifle on his back leaned in a little too close to Ollie for his comfort, and spoke quietly, “Now you need to pass along a message for me, and I need you to understand fully that I am as serious as someone can possibly be about this, okay?”

  Ollie would not have said no even if his spine had been made out of cast iron. “Yeah okay. Anything you want.”

  “If you need to, you can tell this to Sean. I think you’d be better off though if you told it to someone who didn’t necessarily agree with Sean. Okay?” The man lightened up a bit, and Ollie wasn’t quite as scared. Ollie nodded, hoping the message wouldn’t get him into more trouble than he already would be.

  “Sean has done wrong by me, and he’s done wrong by my people. Now this might no longer be a country made of laws, but justice will be served in this regard. I expect your people to understand that attacking my people for no good reason, blowing up a perfectly good gas station filled with fuel, and then blowing up a building filled with my friends, is entirely unacceptable. I’ve never done anything to you people here, other than this today.”

  All Ollie could manage was a nod.

  “I want Sean. Sean and only Sean. He pays for his crimes against me and my people. I want nothing to do with hurting anyone, but mark my words Ollie; I will tear your school down brick by bloody brick until that man is brought before me to pay for what he’s done.”

  Ollie’s bladder found more urine to fill his pants with.

  *****

  Oliver was not the brightest man in the world. But he was blessed with the powerful sense that his father was a wise man. After the tyrannical holdup in the suburbs just a mile or so from his father’s small farm he knew his first stop would be home. He had to tell his father what had happened.

  His dad knew something bad had happened when Ollie knocked and burst into the kitchen of their old farmhouse. Ollie stammered out the details to his aging father as he stripped in their bathroom. His father listened as he warmed some water in a tea kettle so Ollie could wash off. He didn’t want to go back to the school smelling like he’s pissed himself. There was a pretty girl there Oliver was trying to court and it just wouldn’t do to smell like pee.

  Leonard McDowell was known around town as Lenny. He was tall, and had thinning hair that was a far gone grey from the ginger red of his youth. His skin was dark from years spent under the sun and his hands were large and powerful. He was the man who was always called to get a bolt unstuck when it was rusted up. Lenny was a recent widower and the primary engine for the McDowell farm. Lenny and Ollie had lost dear Martha just a month and a half ago when Martha had been out trying to plow the driveway with the old farm tractor. She shouldn’t have been out there in the first place, buy Lenny had come down with a bug that had him laid up something fierce that day, and she couldn’t wait for him to mend. They had to clear the driveway otherwise the daily pickup of milk and bread would be messed up, and no one wanted to irritate the Senator over at the school.

  Lenny didn’t like that man one bit. Stockwell was a four eyed, pompous bastard in his book, like every other politician. His wife had gotten herself killed over fear of angering him, and Lenny had sworn up and down one day he’d figure out a way to settle the score with that worthless lump. Lenny listened to his mildly dim boy go over every detail, word for word of the encounter.

  It was a shame the soldier woman got shot, but Lenny thought she was a dyke anyway. No harm in the big scheme of things. He chastised himself for thinking those thoughts. He’d have to pray for extra forgiveness at bedtime tonight. Right after he prayed for his normal forgiveness for blowing his wife’s head off when she was trapped under the tractor in December.

  Ollie spoke nine hundred miles an hour when he was nervous and excited. Eventually Lenny sat the young man down at their fifty year old maple kitchen table, and got him calmed down over a warm glass of fresh milk.

  “Daddy he was gonna kill me. You shoulda seen his face. He was a scary man.” Ollie
was finally talking slow enough for Lenny to piece everything together.

  “Ollie that’s nonsense. If he’da planned on killing you, he would’ve done it right when he shot Tera. No sense talking to someone you’re gonna shoot. He even apologized to you after. This man sounds sensible. He also sounds like he means business. We could make good use of a man like that you know.” Lenny sipped on his own small glass of warm milk. He’d gotten it straight from the cow himself earlier. There was nothing better in the whole world in his mind.

  “What exactly can we get out of a man like that? He kills people.” Ollie was pretty well lost. He wasn’t one for figuring out subterfuge, or Nancy Drew novels.

  “He said to get hold of him on the radio at noon, on the 15th, right?” Lenny’s sharp mind was turning a plan over in his head. This could be good. This could free what remained of the town from the tyranny of a pompous, lying politician once and for all.

  “Yeah. What am I going to tell them about what happened to Tera? If Sean finds out, he’ll want to go war with those people again. This time he’ll set their houses on fire.” Ollie downed the last bit of milk and wiped off the foam on his upper lip.

  Lenny hated to ask his son to do it, but he knew he had to, “You tell them she was bitten. You saw a girl in the road, you got out to help her just like what really happened, and Tera was a damn fool and got herself killed. I’ll go get her body and get it buried proper as soon as you get going. You don’t say a word to anyone about what happened today, you hear? Not one word of the truth to anyone until I talk to this Adrian fella on the 15th.” Lenny pointed his leathery finger at his son like a catholic school teacher would point her stick.

  Ollie nodded, and went to fetch his jacket.