Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 10): The Last Resort [Adrian's March, Part 2]
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Celeste was so impressed by Thorpe and the visit north, she’s already made up her mind as well.
As in, regardless of what MGR, Spring Meadow, and we decide to do, the Factory and all its inhabitants, supplies, and gear have decided to opt-in on joining the NVC. They’ve already told them that when we meet on the 3rd there, they are welcome to tour, and they want paperwork ready to solidify the alliance.
Needless to say, that was a fat load of shit right square on the bowl of corn chips and it sent the whole meeting into a tizzy. I don’t think I’ve heard that many swears in a two hour period ever. Ever, man, and that’s saying something if you consider the people I call friends.
If you overlook their ability to make a decision for themselves, their departure from our group splits us geographically. Spring Meadow is beyond the Factory. Also, we installed a repeater tower for our radios there, which will ‘fall into the hands’ of the NVC. Hector and Celeste assure us that they have no plan to betray us, but that was rebutted (by a VERY pissed Patty) with the question of, “what will you do when and if they declare war on us?”
Hector said they’d abstain from any engagements, and not one of us thought that’d work. If they allied up, and then didn’t do what was needed when they were called on… they’d be treated as traitors and they’d be right in the mix as an enemy of the NVC. They picked a side, and they’ll have to step up for it if called on. No dice, bitches.
Oddly enough, I didn’t get that angry. I knew this was coming. I don’t how, but I knew it. When I saw Hector talking to Vega I had this sick feeling in the pit of my gut that those two were going to be something. I was right. I say that knowing nothing about Vega that’s negative. Thus far, he’s been a legit good guy. Hasn’t given me a single reason to think he’s a douche other than he puts head to pillow within a mile of Captain Pasta, who I loathe. I should add that I do NOT believe that Pasta will redeem himself like Captain Snowpants did. Lieutenant Daniels turned out to be a stand-up guy for the Westfield people. I wish he’d survived. But he didn’t. Good people tend to die nowadays at a pretty fast clip.
Lots of feelings of betrayal aimed at Hector and Celeste.
MGR is with Bastion, period. Mike and Patty spoke with resolute firmness on that. Everyone living in the apartment building/fortress, as well as the homes and businesses that we’ve recovered at its feet the last year are all ex-Bastionites. They live and die as we do, and just might before it’s all over.
Here’s the kicker. We here at the brain trust are like 75% leaning towards allying with the NVC. Kevin’s against it on principal, but Michelle and I are for. I know, right? Me, for it? You wanna know why?
I can’t stomach another war. I just can’t. I don’t want to risk everything we’ve achieved here, and lose more friends and family.
I know we might need to give up some autonomy (read: a little autonomy)to maintain peace, and for now, for once, I am okay with that. I’ve also been listening to the people here the last month. Really listening. Like I said, since Angela’s death people have lost their will to fight. They want peace. No more fighting. We did enough of that when the dead were here, and we want to be done with it now that the living are left to our own devices. The NVC has been good to us, kind, calm, and reasonable at every turn with the exception of Pasta. I think we can deal with Pasta.
So what should’ve been a three hour meeting turned into a six hour meeting, and that turned into an overnight stay at the Factory. Michelle and I sat on a thin mattress talking about the whole affair most of the night in the room they gave to us. Exhausting to think that hard about anything for that long. The only thing I’ve put more thought into was my dick as a teenager, and that didn’t seem nearly as hard, pun intended. Then again… well, I’ll skip the excess of dick jokes.
But we emerged with a plan. On the 3rd we meet with the NVC and the Factory departs our family (figuratively) to join them after a tour. They go with gritted teeth, but our blessing. I say that knowing I’ll have to leave Kevin behind that day because he’s itching to knock Hector’s teeth down his throat. And he will if I let him get too close. That kind of Kevin is the other kind of family man some might experience.
After that, we will have them tour Spring Meadow on or about the 7th. If that goes well, we’ll have them tour MGR on or about the 15th. If that goes well, we’ll invite them here to tour home base sometime soon after that. If nothing fishy has arisen, and they are willing to entertain some kind of way to handle Pasta, we’re in.
But Mr. Journal… Pasta has to go. I don’t trust him as far as he could throw me. I don’t want him near my people, and I certainly don’t want to be associated with that asshat.
He’s poison.
I’m sure that plan will get tossed out the window as events and feelings change. There are a lot of moving parts to this, and the more complicated the machine, the more likely a failure in the system.
Sigh.
All of this is for peace. All of this is to save the lives of my friends and family. All of this is to give my people a better chance at waking up and being happy one more day. Ten more days, ten more years.
What would I give up to ensure that my people get that? A future?
And really, are we giving anything up with this? I don’t think so. At least, I think we can work a deal where we don’t give anything important up. We just check in with another group periodically, and when and if they need help, we offer it. In return, they do the same.
We get to help more people.
Seems win/win.
-Adrian
The Only Easy Day
Late September 2010
“We won’t last long like this,” Thomas said, his dirty lips pressed to the Afghan dirt below. Another mortar shell had just crashed into the center of the base and exploded, sending shrapnel into the air with flesh rending anger. The base’s wooden and sandbagged construction had taken a pounding in the hour the mortars had fallen, but it had protected all the souls inside thus far. Their luck couldn’t withstand much more. The base had gone strangely quiet since the round exploded.
Glen looked up from the shallow depression he’d carved out of the hard packed earth with his knife and nodded. “Open for suggestions.”
Thomas licked his lips and immediately regretted it. The taste was foul. “We need to move on those mortars. We’ll never clear out these fucking undead outside unless we can stand up. The undead aren’t the issue, it’s these fucking mortar rounds.”
“We agree on that. What do you think their endgame is? The zombies will never get inside this base, even with these mortars dropping. You think they’ll adjust fire and try to blast the doors open to make a hole?” Glen’s mind pondered the possibilities.
Thomas’ mind was faster, “No. They probably already tried that. Or at least could’ve. Ellem said earlier that these pricks have been zeroed in for a long time.” Thomas looked up and over to where the ramshackle base entrance was. He could see the tell-tale impacts marks in the earth from mortar rounds that had fallen earlier in time. A week ago, maybe more. “No they’re tried that. They need to get that whole entrance bashed open. Suicide bomber style.”
Glen’s color drained, “A big ass Mercedes truck right up the asses of all these corpses would be just what the rag heads needed. Fuck me.”
“Fuck all of us. We have maybe half an hour,” Thomas turned to where Staff Sergeant Ellem lay in the dirt, perhaps ten paces away and just out of earshot, “Ellem! Are they at the walls yet?”
The dark skinned Marine veteran lifted his head fearlessly, looking for the men who had previously been on watch in the towers. They were in cover and Ellem leapt up, running over to the ladders. He quickly scaled half a dozen rungs and looked out over the flat terrain in front of the firebase. He slid down the railing just as a crack and a whiz sent a bullet through the space his chest had just occupied. The Marine either ignored the bullet, or didn’t hear it. “Forty meters for the front edge. Sixty for the back of the pack.”
“Too Hollywood to suggest that we need a large distraction? Do you have any bikini clad bimbos, or a platoon of clowns we can send out the side door to draw attention?” Glen laughed at his own joke. “What about calling in the Chinook to lay down some air support for us? We’ve got a SOAR bird Tommy. They got miniguns.”
Thomas shook his head, “We can’t risk the chopper getting hit. If it goes down we’re all fucking doneski. Do we have any smoke?” Thomas asked.
Glen shucked his ruck off and fished out two smoke grenades. He sat them on the ground. “Two purple. All I could get from Kandahar before we left. Supplies are running low, as you can imagine.”
The buzzing whistle of another incoming mortar round broke the moment and both SEALs put their faces into the dirt. With another tremendous explosion the mortar round impacted the earth inside the base’s walls, rattling teeth, ribcages, and the patience of the Marines. Somewhere in the base one of the young men started to cry out for his mother. Thomas’ heart skipped a few beats as he heard the Marine’s friends come to his aid, calming him. There could be no panic right now.
“Ellem, you guys have any smoke grenades? A tire or two we could set on fire? We need cover to move on these motherfuckers!” Thomas yelled as bits of dust and dirt continued to fall down.
“Yeah we’ve got a few tore up humvee tires we could toss over the wall. We might have one or two smoke grenades too.”
“Good. Get the tires lit and tossed over the wall in the direction of the shooters that are trying to suppress us. We’ll toss our smoke all over the place and try to fool them. We’ve got one chance at this. Let’s make it count, and let’s do it fast.”
The three men got to their feet, and got busy before more steel rain fell from the sky.
Long strips of heavy vehicle tire were set aflame with some of the gasoline and diesel still remaining at the Firebase. They gave off billowing streams of black, lung putrefying smoke very quickly, and were tossed over the ten foot wall by pairs of Marines. The flapping, burning rubber flipped end over end, scattering burning motes and white smoke. They landed outside the wall and continued to burn, creating the first piece of the smoke screen the SEALs would need to make this nightmare end.
It took ten seconds for the insurgents manning the mortars to answer the activity. The sixteen souls inside the base heard the round whistling in and they scattered inside sandbag emplacements and behind as much solid material as they could find. Prayers were abundant. The mortar round exploded a few meters shorter than the previous impacts had, exploding a stack of empty wooden crates and sending shards of wood in every direction like thrown daggers. Two men screamed out in pain as their flesh succumbed to the missiles.
Thomas took control, and screamed orders out before anyone could think to do anything other than what he wanted, and what they needed, “You two! Help those men! The rest of you light the rest of the tires and get them over the fucking wall now!” The two Marines that Thomas pointed to immediately went to help their brethren who had been hurt by the mortar’s impact. The other warriors returned to the base of the Hesco barrier wall and got more strips of the thick rubber set aflame and thrown over the wall. They weren’t getting them very far outside the wall, but they’d still serve their purpose.
Glen helped with the last scrap of burning tire then turned to Thomas, “Give it a minute or two to get smoking real good.”
Thomas nodded and the two men started to strip off their body armor. Ellem stood nearby, issuing some instructions to his men before he turned his attention to the SEALs. His confusion was clear on his face, “Aren’t you planning on going over the wall, why are you taking your armor off?”
Glen answered him simply, “Sergeant this is all about speed. We need to get up, get over, and get fucking moving as fast as we possibly can. Right now that smoke is our armor. All this heavy ass shit is just going to slow us down. We’re dead if we move too slow and get shot, so we might as well move a little faster and remove the risk of being too slow.”
Ellem shook his head at the sailor’s insanity and walked away. Thomas and Glen simply smiled at one another. War was life and death, and sometimes you had to get very close to death to ensure living.
It took the warriors only a minute or two to strip down to just their basic battle dress, magazine pouches, and weapons. They were stripped bare, and looked very out of place in the middle of an unfolding battle. The two men were completely comfortable.
“We hit the crest at full tilt, try to get an angle on the prick on the crest that’s shooting at us. I think there’s just one shooter. We pop his cap, then move on the mortars?” Thomas suggested the course of action as he pulled out the two smoke grenades and handed one to his best friend.
“Speed kills.”
The two men pulled the pins on the smoke grenades and went to opposite ends of the Firebase. As they tossed the grenades over the wall, they simultaneously yelled, “Smoke out!” The dark green cylinders popped loudly as they fell down outside the base’s perimeter wall, emitting a thick and bright purple smoke that obscured vision. The two SEALs met in the rear center of the base where Sergeant Ellem awaited. Thomas spoke urgently.
“We’re going over the east wall and heading due north as fast as we can run to cover to get an angle on the assholes suppressing us. We’re dropping them, and then moving on to the mortars. If we die, you radio for the Chinook and let them know what’s up. Hopefully they can sort this out if we can’t.”
Ellem nodded, “I’m not too worried. You guys seems like you’re carrying cast iron balls.”
Glen smirked, “Well I’m leaning towards aluminum right now. We gotta be light and fast.”
“Good luck,” Ellem said, extending his hand to be shaken by the Navy warriors. The two men took it and shook it firmly.
“Let’s do this,” Thomas said. The two men slung their weapons over their shoulders and tightened their Nomex gloves as they climbed atop a series of crates the Marines had stacked hastily. Thomas was first to put his hands atop the Hesco wall, and with startling ease, he pulled his body up and onto the thick sand filled wall. He sat and scoured the landscape over the smoke for the shooter’s position, but laid flat and rolled to the edge of the wall quickly. If he could see over the smoke, then the shooter could see him as well. He gave the ground outside the wall a glance to ensure it was clear of threats, and dropped off the side. He was alone with no wall between him and the horde for a few moments while Glen ascended the wall and joined him. He felt oddly exposed. A second later the men were together, their weapons were shouldered loosely, and they jogged to the edge of the base.
Thomas spied a series of large stones that poked through the ascending earth to the culmination of the valley’s low edge. To their west through the tire smoke, tinged with the purple from their smoke grenade, they could see the dozens of undead locals as they shambled forward towards the front of the base. He wiped a thick bead of sweat from his brow and looked to Glen, “See ‘em?”
“Going.” Glen bolted first. Thomas watched as his legs pumped powerfully, propelling him over the rough terrain with confidence and ease. He envied his friend’s two healthy legs.
Thomas waited for three heartbeats to pass before he too bolted. If the shooter could see Glen, they’d be directing their eyes at his very fast movement, buying a few second’s distraction for the slower Thomas to get behind one of the sandy boulders and into hard cover. He went. His calf strained and squealed in pain, but pushed through it, ignoring it, challenging it to be as strong as the rest of him. He looked forward only; searching for the person possibly shooting at him meant slowing down. He dove and rolled behind the third stone, two boulders past Glen. He’d run perhaps a hundred meters.
“Anything?” Thomas asked as his breath return quickly, assessing their next move.
“No shots in our dire
ction.”
Thomas nodded. That wasn’t necessarily good news, it might just mean the shooter was waiting for them to bolt from their now obvious place of hiding. The SEAL rolled onto his stomach and put his M110 rifle out at the base of the rock he hid behind. There was a natural cleft in the stone that gave him just enough space to get barrel and optics through.
Peering through the smoke with his enhanced scope was a challenge. The vast power of the military optics brought the billowing black and purple into his brain vibrantly. He could see beyond it, but the fire’s product made seeing anything in detail impossible. He scanned left to right at the top of the ridge where he suspected the shooter to be to no avail. He could see nothing through the scope that would give him a shot. He hoped the smoke did the same for their stalker.
“Let’s move. I can’t get any shots here. I’ll go first, then you move up halfway after I get setup. Maybe you’ll draw a shot and give me a location to shoot at.”
Glen nodded,” You got it.”
Thomas readied his body into a low crouch behind the boulder. He listened intently to the strangely silent situation unfolding around him. He could hear the crackle of the burning tires near the base, and the oddly subdued din of dragged feet in the sand over it. It sounded like gravel being slowly rubbed on plywood. He sprang. He found the rock he was going to run to and aimed at it, legs pistoning him forward, his hurt leg still complaining loudly. No more than twenty meters into his sprint he heard the gun report of the shooter, and felt the round rip through the air a few feet in front of his chest. The shooter had him in their sights. Thomas pushed harder. His leg transitioned from complaining loudly to screaming for mercy but he ignored it. There would be far worse to bear should he fail to get to cover before the shooter got their mark on him.
Thomas leapt over a series of stones the size of soccer balls and heard another shot. This one buzzed close enough for his chest to vibrate, and he knew he had seconds before the next round ripped through his unarmored torso. He landed on the ground and pushed even harder, reaching down into a reservoir of adrenaline reserved only for the worst of the worst. He covered another ten meters and launched his body into a flat out dive to get into cover behind the stone just as a third shot ripped the sky open. Thomas felt the round impact his body, sending him into a barrel roll as he flew through the air into cover. Instead of landing on his stomach, he crashed to the ground on his back, the air in his lungs violently ejected.