If things are quiet, we will peel off a few HRT folks to check out the plumbing supply place and see what is left there. Our basic assumption is that the store will be untouched, or at least most of it will be there. I can’t imagine there are many settlements like ours that have the need for the stuff like we do. If there were more settlements like ours, I'd imagine by now we'd have crossed paths with them. We’re hoping to come back on another day, and take what we need from there.
We’ll fill out the other people and where they are riding as the plan gets fortified. We needed a good dry run though to get everyone in the mindset, so yesterday we had an all hands dinner, and told everyone what was up, and that we wanted volunteers for the run. Everyone’s hand went up, which was encouraging. From that dinner, we set up the plan to return to Lenny’s today, before the new MGR folks left to go there.
We did the run more or less exactly as we planned the warehouse operation. Two humvees pulling up blocking positions, the HRT doing its loop, but instead of the semi we had the dualie and the fifth wheel trailer for the cows. It wasn’t exactly a carbon copy of what exists at the warehouse, but the mindset and practice of moving fast was helpful. All in all, it went very well.
And by very well, I mean shitty. One humvee parked too far away, one humvee too close, Martin took too long to back the trailer up to a pseudo dock, and we had no way to practice a breach action at Lenny’s place. We definitely need a good building somewhere to practice. I’m thinking we take that team out and hit some large houses just to get some lead downrange and get the blood moving. Even if the damn warehouse is empty, I want no mistakes. Fuck that noise Mr. Journal.
The more we sweat in this training, the less we will bleed outside the wall. It’s an old saying, but it’s very true.
Returning back home we did a quick debriefing with the various teams to get their feedback, and to critique their work. I really hit hard on the details, as did Mike. Little mistakes need to be addressed just as much as the big ones. Some of the folks didn’t take the criticism well, but once we explained how important it was to be mistake free, they more or less got on board and understood we aren’t trying to ridicule, we are trying to come home alive.
After the meeting Dwayne, Renee, Mike and Patty left for MGR. What a weird moment that was. The folks close to those leaving were sort of sad and awkward, but it was also sort of exciting at the same time. It almost felt to me like we were sending a ship across the ocean to colonize a new land. The ALPA seeds were thrown into the wind, and they were taking root elsewhere.
Almost like humanity was taking a little bit of the world back from the dead.
That felt good. I’m going to remember that.
Mike and company took a small minivan that was here on campus as their vehicle. They left with about five gallons of gas in the tank in the event the vehicle had the tank drained via theft, or if the van was stolen. We had them take 500 rounds of 5.56, as well as two bolt action rifles and a hundred rounds for the two of those. They have food for roughly ten days, as well as water for about four days. We’re figuring we will restock them about every three days or so. In my wildest dreams I am hoping we’ll get enough hydro gear from that plumbing shop to set up another hydro setup there so they can be far more self-sufficient. Water will still be an issue, but what’s new? We’re anticipating a return to MGR on the 8th.
Oh… our radio protocol is a single “all is well” message at 1am, and 1pm each day. Every subsequent day the message moves up one hour, and every week we will reset the time so it can’t be easily followed. We will return the message with a “that ends well.”
I thought it was clever.
We are doing more runs to Lenny’s farm tomorrow to get the rest of the cows. We won’t have the MGR people with us, but that’s fine. We can do enough dry runs of practice to get folks more comfortable with the plan, and break the proverbial ice. At the very least, it’ll mean time outside the wall for them, which might make them less shaky later on.
After that, we’re focusing on weapons training and driving in the event someone needs to take over for a wounded person. Fall out drills, as it were. Lindsey has agreed to give a first aid seminar to everyone as well before we go, that way we can apply tourniquets, and folks know how to give basic combat lifesaver treatment. I’m planning on helping her with that, as I was combat lifesaver trained when I was active duty.
Fun stuff.
-Adrian
August 7th
So we had a premature ejaculation last night.
And I mean that in the least sexual way possible.
Jenna, one of the girls that came over from Westfield somehow had a handgun. As you might recall, she was living with Lindsey and the little one at the Jones Road farm, and sometime in the middle of the night she thought she heard something outside the farm, and decided to investigate the issue with her brand spanking new .44 revolver.
It should be noted that Jenna MIGHT weigh 125 pounds. I think her revolver weighed ten pounds, and shot two pound bullets for Christ’s sake. That hand cannon is big enough to shoot cocktail franks out the end of it. Apparently she went downstairs, and heard something move at the back door, and kaboom, now there’s a fist size hole in the back door, and Jenna’s got a sprained thumb and index finger.
Lindsey shat a brick, radioed for assistance, and a handful of us responded in force, only to find there was NOTHING going on. No footprints, no signs of life, nothing. Probably just that damn skunk that nearly sprayed Ryan the other night. Or maybe a raccoon, or another of the dozen small animals that have started to appear around here.
The point of this whole ramble is that gun training is sort of a big deal, so that became our yesterday instead of runs to Lenny’s farm. Needless to say, Jenna no longer has her .44, and now she’s received some gun training.
After returning home, getting some sleep, and making a plan, Hector, Abby and I went back out to the ass end of campus and plastered targets on the trees we’ve been shooting at all this time. Our targets are just colored paper from the art room with head shaped outlines on them, but they do the job.
We gathered small caliber weapons and started the training. We used .22 rifles and .38 revolvers to get folks broken in. It made far more sense to get them accustomed to the loud bang of the gunfire first and then getting them into the larger calibers so they could learn recoil, and the more advanced shit like magazine changes and reloading.
As you might recall, Mike had made a dedicated training program over in the gymnasium at the school in Westfield some time ago when it looked like they were going to be attacked by the returning survivors at the beginning of summer. Happily enough, it appears that Mike did a really good job. Most of the people were very competent with the low caliber weapons, and a few of them professed some skill with more complicated weapons and stuff like mag swaps etc.
They were correct in their assertions. I won’t spend the time to go into every single person’s skill set or experience, but I am happy to say the overall weapons training process was a delight. We had almost no problems at all, and everyone who participated learned a great deal. I did not issue out firearms willy-nilly however. Just because folks can handle one, doesn’t mean they deserve one. It almost makes me want to yank Ryan’s gun back. I sort of gave him his without doing enough vetting, and I almost feel like it was a mistake.
He hasn’t done anything to prove me wrong though, so maybe my faith in him was correct. Guess we’ll find out if he shoots someone here. Not that completely trained and well experienced people don’t shoot others by accident. Shit happens in a firefight.
Training took the majority of the day as we rotated folks in and out. We worked with them three at a time so Hector, Abby or myself were with them 100%. While the folks were not with us, we had them doing their basic tasks around campus, which more or less consisted of working on the wall, and helping Ollie finish the huge string of fences that are now containing all the cows. I didn’t get an accurate number on the
footage erected today, but at dinner Martin said they had a, “Pretty productive day.”
As the afternoon and evening wore on, Doc Lindsey and I switched out to med training, and taught everyone basic combat trauma care and stabilization. Tourniquets, wound pressure, clearing airways, back and neck injuries, how to move wounded people, all that jazz. That went very well, and I’m now extra excited because Doc Lindsey took the time to make small first aid kits for the vehicles that didn’t already have them. The humvees had medic bags already, which are fucking great, and the HRT is an ambulance, but the semi, and dualie had no substantial medical gear, and now they do. Sweetness or hotness, as you prefer your good news.
Now today we did more runs back to Lenny’s farm, and completed the transfer of all the cows back to here. We did the two runs earlier today in the same fashion as before. We rolled up with the full team of folks in their assigned places, and even tried out new placements for folks based on their weapons training, and interest. I think after the second run late this afternoon we’ve got the vehicle assignments more or less fleshed out. I’ll go over that when I have the damn ambition, and the final-final placements done. No sense taking the time to speculate when I have enough shit to do as it is. I’ve got more shit going on than a one-armed wallpaper hanger.
So the runs went far smoother today. What I’m really looking for is confidence, and attention to detail on doing things right, and staying serious. The few times folks have laughed because this is just a run through, I’ve scolded the fuck out of them. This is no joke. I explain to them that when we do this, it’s for keeps, and if they think practicing to get it right before our lives are on the line is a joke, they can stay the fuck behind and I’ll take the people willing to take MY fucking life seriously.
I’m not fucking laughing. I’ll party plenty when we roll back across that bridge and through Ollie’s gate when this is all done.
Where was I? Cows are all here now. Actually that’s not entirely true. Lenny kept two at the farm for milk and eventually to eat. Lenny looked sad. I think he’s had those cows, or at least the job of taking care of those cows for a very long time. Decades probably. I think now that they are gone as well as the chickens, he’s going to be lost. Granted, he’s got the fields to tend to, as well as the teenagers, but that won’t barely scratch the surface of the amount of work that he had to do to keep the farm running as it was.
We said our goodbyes. Oh shit I forgot to mention that we tested the radio power of the repeater, and it reaches out about twenty miles from MGR. That’s a HUGE radio area. It was nice to essentially be in touch with folks the majority of the way to Westfield. I felt like if shit hit the fan, someone might respond. I’m kind of used to having a QRF on standby from my Iraq days, and to be honest, it has been weird knowing that there is… no one out there with our backs.
Just knowing that we’ve got people listening, and that if something bad does happen, someone MIGHT come help is a huge weight off my shoulders. I realize whoever shows up when I call 9-1-1 is going to be rolling into a shit storm. If I need help… it’s got to be bad.
So two runs got all the cows back here, and now Ollie is the one making faces. Along with the cows we had to transport the milking equipment that Lenny had, as well as troughs, feed, hay, washing equipment, and a ton of other things like huge supplies of cow vitamins or whatever, shovels, and brushes, and stuff to wash them and whatnot. There was so much crap to move. Unbelievable how much… stuff goes into having cows.
Ollie said he needs assigned staff to get everything done on a daily basis now. I don’t doubt it for a minute. We’ve got more cows here than his father had due to the animals we got from The Farm, and Lenny couldn’t do it without Ollie’s assistance, and Ollie has more to do than Lenny did.
We’re tackling the workload issue shortly. For the meantime, the teenagers have been real champs and are stepping up to help him more or less as needed. It may very well be that that is our solution to the issue. Melissa said she’s more than happy to make some special snacks for the kids as payment for services rendered, which might be a great way to work it all out. Communist like a motherfucker though eh?
Tomorrow we are planning a clear over in Westfield to practice for the warehouse. We spent all evening practicing and planning for it, and we are all comfortable with the plan. I don’t think we’ll actually encounter anything there, but it makes sense for some of us to go into a foreign place, and experience the anxiety of clearing the unknown.
We’re hitting the med clinic in Westfield. There are supplies still there and I know there are a ton of pieces of medical equipment that we really need here locally. I don’t think we’ll be able to transport it all back here, but we will take what we can, and move it here tomorrow. At the very least the trip will bring us closer to the ruins of the school, and it’ll be good to see what it’s like down there now. I wonder how many undead have shuffled into the void.
We’re getting closer to hitting Gilbert’s warehouse, and that’s exciting, and horrifying all at the same time. I don’t really know how to feel about it. I really wish that old prick would stop into one of my dreams here and make me feel a little better about things.
I could use a little internal peace.
-Adrian
Becca
Rebecca Ring hunched down behind the fender of the well used Chevy Malibu parked on the side of the street. It was a hot afternoon, and it would be at least two more hours before the temperature dropped and the air became comfortable. It didn’t help that the endless pavement of the small city absorbed the sun and sent it back, baking her from the top and bottom simultaneously, like a virtual convection oven. She narrowed her eyes and looked out over the abandoned surface roads leading into the city. The yards were overtaken by untended grass and weeds, and fallen branches littered the sidewalks and streets. The world looked empty, and uncared for. Where she stood was as far as she or her brother Caleb, or her boyfriend Max had dared to venture into the city since the dead had taken everything over.
It had been a long time since June 23rd of last year. Becca didn’t know exactly what the day was, but she knew summer was nearly over, so that meant either late August, or early September. Their food was running short, and it hadn’t rained in some time, so drinking and bathing water was an issue. No matter how little they ate or drank, it always seemed like they were running out of something. Caleb and Sophie’s five year old son Adam ate like a horse, let alone what the other four adults ate.
Try as hard as she might, Becca couldn't stop reminiscing and dwelling on the events of last summer. Everything went to shit that late June day. Becca was working over the summer as an RA at her college in the city, just a mile or two away from where she was crouched presently. Becca’s parents couldn’t take her in, due to her dad being dead, and her mom living in senior housing several towns over. Her brother Adrian couldn’t take her in either. He and his girlfriend Cassie (who Becca thought was awesome), probably had sex on the living room couch far too often to risk that situation. Caleb, the brother she and her college boyfriend Max had run to when the dead came alive, was only a few miles away, and the four family members plus boyfriend stayed hidden inside Caleb’s condo for months, eating the food they had and raiding the other abandoned condos in the complex.
That didn’t last long. When cold weather came, they needed a place with a stove or fireplace to stay warm, and in the first few inches of that winter’s snow they hoofed it over a mile in the dead hours of night, breath steaming from their mouths and noses as they searched for homes with a way to stay warm inside them. The cold five wound up breaking down the door to a small home on the corner of the first suburb heading out of the city. The noise the busting wood made drew the attention of what seemed like an armada of the dead to Becca, but the frightened family flattened themselves on the dark floor of the home, and the dead eventually passed by, leaving them be.
Becca had never been more afraid than that night. They took precautions afte
r that to ensure they were as invisible as could be. Once they had painted the windows over to make them opaque, and quietly screwed what wood they could over the doors and window frames to shore them up against attack, they finally had a small place to keep warm, and call home. They ate sparingly over that winter. Caleb had a few years in the Marines under his belt, and when he could (and when it was necessary) he slipped out and destroyed the undead in the neighborhood as quietly as he could, carving out a small island of safety around them. When the walking dead and their festering stench were finally mitigated, some small animals returned. Squirrels, raccoons, and the occasional skunk became their bread and butter, but the small critters were frail and as hungry as they were. Caleb’s wife Sophie became quite the wild game chef over the small fireplace, turning the meager scraps into edible meals.
But right now, things were sparse. Becca and Caleb were almost out of bullets for Caleb’s handgun, and they had picked the bones of the suburbs around them long since clean. They’d laid low when the larger groups of scavengers came through, and even had to shoot a few people when threatened. Sadly, those were the best days. The other living people almost always had food and water, as well as guns and ammunition. It pained Becca to think that murder was the most effective way to survive now.
It seemed that war would be fought no matter the state of the world.
Becca looked carefully in both directions as she stood, and slinked across the street to the brown brick apartment building. They hadn’t been inside this building yet, and there was a good chance there was a treasure trove of food inside. Becca hefted the hatchet she’d found a month prior in the side of a dead man's head as she ran to the door. There was an even better chance there were undead inside.
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family Page 18