Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 5): Wrath

by Chris Philbrook

  I suppose it didn’t help that I am back to being scared shitless to sleep.

  My ribs yesterday were tender, but manageable. It was sort of a stepped up “stitch in the side” sensation. As long as I kept my chest taped up tight, and didn’t huff and puff too much, I was fine. In good news, putting the IOTV vest on and cranking it tight was an improvement. I put the same vest on I was wearing the day I got blasted, and it still shows the signs of the impact. I look at it as being “field tested.”

  I knew exactly where the farm was, and I also knew just about where the country road was Blake said he was using to get into the area on. The drive through downtown was amazingly devoid of activity, which was a nice surprise. I will say it was very odd to drive in the dark. I haven’t driven with the headlights on for… shit. A long frigging time. Creepy. Ever drive your truck or car down a road that has a lot of deer related accidents? Every second and every foot you go you’re just waiting for one of them to leap out into that little island of light right in front of you, and destroy you and potentially your car?

  Felt a lot like that, only with zombies.

  Fortunately as I said, I think I saw maybe three or four undead, and they were mercifully all off the beaten path. I made sure to keep my speed high enough on the open stretches to more or less ensure that I would lose them. Last thing I wanted was for a few motivated motherfuckers to follow me up in the woods while I was trying to be low key.

  The dirt road Blake has been driving on is an old logging road that comes out in someone’s backyard. From the street it looks like nothing, but once you’re on it, it’s a pretty robust road you can drive on. I was able to drive the Tundra out there with no problems, and was able to go right to the spot where Blake’s prior tire tracks came to a halt.

  Right there as well I saw signs of his foot traffic. He had heavy large feet that had pressed his footprints into the soft earth, and it didn’t help that he left behind food wrappers. Infil and exfil on this kind of thing means you leave no signs of your movement. It left me a little fucking loopy having to leave the truck on the logging road at all. I drove it about a hundred yards back, parked it, left some signs that I was heading into the woods in the opposite direction, then moved down the road to his spot, cleaned up after his mess, and shadowed his old trail straight to the top of the ridge he’d been using as a hide.

  Once again, opened and abandoned cans of food, as well as a shit pit not ten feet away from where he had been. I moved about fifteen yards into a spot I felt was as good or better, and got myself situated.

  We have a lot of rock walls in the east. It’s a relic from the old colonial days when property boundaries were marked with them. Of course things change over time, and now there are hundreds of miles of abandoned, crumbling stone walls all over the place. I remember as a kid my brothers and I would be wandering for hours into the woods, and no matter how far we went, or how lost we got, there were always rock walls. It used to mystify us.

  I set up behind one of those ancient stone walls, and set up a nice sniper hide. I rolled with the Savage and the M4 and the distinct hope that I had to use neither. From where I was I could see the main road the farm was on, the front of the property with its large fence, as well as the main buildings. Only a small area right behind the structures was out of my LOS, and I felt good about my position.

  It was a profoundly long and disturbing day. First off, lying on my stomach was very uncomfortable. Remember my joke about having to chew ibuprofen? Wasn’t far off from the truth. I think I took two an hour the entire day and wished several times I’d brought something a little stiffer instead. I gotta be careful with that shit though, I can tell that the painkillers are getting under my skin. When I skip one or two, I get sweaty, and I get really fucking irritable. I must be getting to that almost in addiction area.

  Sorry. The Farm.

  The entire day spent there was like a movie version of the pictures Blake showed us the day prior. I brought my own digital camera (the one Abby and I found) but I was unable to take any good shots. It wasn’t high enough quality to get anything decent at that distance, so pretty quickly I said fuck it, and just scoped the compound out.

  During the dark hours I observed one guard moving about. Male, late twenties to early thirties carrying a standard issue AR or M4 rifle. He had a tactical vest and some kind of commercially available body armor. When the light came up and he switched out with his relief, I could see his magazine pouches weren’t hanging full, which was an interesting factoid. That told me they were either light on 5.56 ammo, or short on magazines.

  Any motherfucker that’s been behind the sights of an M4 in a situation where putting that front post on someone is going to happen knows you bring every fucking bullet you can carry, and then one more. Maybe they had a central ammo store so they didn’t have to carry it all the time? If that’s the case, then they’re just lazy. Any way I look at it, it’s good news. Lazy, or insufficiently stocked.

  His relief was a woman armed the same, with similar magazine counts. After her there was another man, and after him another woman. I’d seen these people already in Blake’s pictures, so it was no surprise when they appeared. Another little fact that stuck out to me was their weaponry. Both of the women carried M4/AR’s that shared a peculiar collapsible stock. Both rifles were wrapped with duct tape on the stock, and I’m positive they were sharing the same rifle.

  That’s also good news. Not enough guns for everyone, they’re sharing.

  Unlike the day that Blake took his pictures, it was a little drab out yesterday. The women did wind up coming up, but they didn’t stay long at all. They were escorted from the farm house to the barn, where they remained inside for about an hour and a half. At that point, they were escorted back into the house, and I never saw them again, except briefly through a window on the second floor of the big farmhouse. There I saw one of the younger girls change from jeans and a sweatshirt into a kind of ratty looking white dress.

  I didn’t like the body language of the women one bit. These were not women who struck me as friends, or women who were happy to be where they were, doing what they were doing. They had very paranoid eyes, avoided eye contact with the guards, and generally moved about like caged animals.

  Seeing that made me think of poor Blake. I’m less pissed at him now for coming onto campus for sure. If I were him, and I had sat here for days on end like he did, watching my pregnant girlfriend be herded about like cattle, I’d be fit to be tied. Furious wouldn’t even begin to describe it. The fact that he hasn’t gone Lee Harvey Oswald on that farm yet is a small miracle. Really.

  I never saw the old man and woman who supposedly run the joint, and I didn’t see their son either. Officially, I can say that place gives me the motherfucking creeps, and I know as sure as shit whatever is going on there does not pass the sniff test. Something wrong is going on in there, and we need to keep observing this place to make sure that things are kosher. I damn near went back there today to watch more, but that would’ve fucked up at least two other plans.

  I left The Farm a half hour after dark, and made it to the truck with no problems. I did however run into a pair of undead slowly traipsing down the logging road when I left. There were two of them, and I can’t be sure, but I think I saw them earlier when I was downtown on the way in. I stopped the truck, hopped out, and brought both of them down with the halligan.

  I gotta say, the circular approach I adopted early on has been really useful. They can’t turn for shit, and a sharp step around them exposes their lethargy, and leaves them wide open for a halligan to the fucking temple. It’s a nice soft spot, and if I don’t stumble, it’s a damn near guaranteed death blow. Mr. Journal, tell your kids. Circular approach on solitary zombies. Works every time.

  I dragged them out of the way, and drove home. Our Team B if you will, found more fencing in the back parking lot of the pharmacy. Yeah, same pharmacy as the one I damn near died in way back when my crotch got eaten by that fucking dog. T
hey’ve more or less cleared town out up to the area, and if they push forward, they’ll be at the grocery store, and health clinic within days. That could be ugly.

  When I returned they had returned before me, and once I had a slightly more powerful painkiller in me (half a perc, if you’re keeping score Mr. Journal), as well as some hot chow, I told them everything I saw.

  You could draw a line in the sand in that kitchen to see who wanted to do what. On the side of the kitchen with murderous intent were the women. Team Vagina wanted heads on pikes immediately. They were absolutely on board with ramming down that fence, kicking in the doors, and putting two rounds in the face of every person at that farm that didn’t have a baby growing inside them.

  The other side of the kitchen was populated with Team Penis. Team Penis wanted to slow roll it, and wanted far more proof than the meager evidence we’d collected thus far. Gilbert especially was afraid of us moving too fast.

  I’m furious. I really want to be 100% on the side of the women, and go right down there and start asking questions that have one answer. And between you and me Mr. Journal, the wrong answer doesn’t get the buzzer, it gets the loser a free sample of buckshot mouthwash.

  But, as king shit of turd hill here, it would be irresponsible of me to do that. We NEED more information about this. Despite the flaws I saw with their ammunition habits, and the sharing of weapons, the simple fact is, they are set up in a sturdy, fortified place, and they have military grade weapons held by folks that don’t strike me as being new to them. This isn’t a rundown shack in the woods filled with a bunch of moonshine drinking married first cousins and cross eyed babies.

  If we do this, there will be blood, and we need to make sure any sacrifices we make for this are damn well worth it.

  Having said that… the women will not wait long on this. Blake now has internal support here for his quest for Kimberly, and I gotta admit, I’m on board with him too. I think Gavin is an Abby blowjob away from jumping off a bridge at any point regarding anything, and if I sit Gilbert down, and explain to him what’s up, and what the ramifications of losing the female support here are, he’ll have little or no choice but to at least look the other way and let us do this. Ollie is a lot like Lenny. He moves slowly, but when he moves, he’s all in. He remained fairly silent on the matter while we talked last night, but if I had to place a bet, he’ll side with Melissa.

  I slept like a baby last night. Literally the sleep of the dead. Well, I don’t know if that saying is anywhere nearly appropriate anymore. From what I’ve been able to figure out, the dead don’t seem to be sleeping much. They’re dreaming all right, but sleeping? Jury’s out on that.

  Our two fold agenda for today was the 9am meeting on Park Street with the Manning family, and then the noon meeting at the safe house with Blake. Before we crashed we went over everything, and I overruled the majority and said that if the girls wanted to come back here, they were welcome.

  Gilbert put up a little bit of a stink about that, going back and recanting his “more mouths to feed” logic from the other night. I flat out told him to kiss my ass.

  I said, “Gilbert, what do you want us to do man? They need a safe place to be, and I am responsible for killing a big member of their family. I owe them as much. If we have to, we’ll eat a little bit less. I’ll eat a little less. I’ll fucking eat tree bark if I have to. We need to do right by these people, and I’ll be damned otherwise.”

  Gilbert had the weirdest look on his face when I lit into him with that. He sort of smiled, shook his head, and shrugged. It was an odd combination of frustration, and respect. Fucked if I know. Crazy old bastard. Sometimes I think he is playing Devil’s advocate just to make my life harder.

  I went out today to meet the Mannings. I needed to do this first hand, and I am glad I did. We rolled heavy in the HRT, Gavin’s Dodge, and the Tundra. All of us went with the exception of Ollie and Melissa, who remained behind due to the crop obligations of one, and the miniature person in the tummy of the other.

  I drove the HRT, and we split up evenly amongst the other vehicles in the event we needed to carry extra shit, or had a problem. The trip in was clean. Just a few undead moving about here and there, very reminiscent of the activity levels we were experiencing a month ago, prior to all the other survivor’s moving about. It was nice. Nice to be out, and nice that it wasn’t a fucking shit show.

  I parked the HRT in the street right near the front of the green house we were headed to, Gavin parked his truck about fifty feet down the street past me, and Patty pulled up 50 feet short. We established decent blocking positions, and I headed inside with Patty. The other three numb nuts remained outside to keep us safe.

  Before I got the chance to knock Lindsey opened the door for me, and greeted me with a sad hello. Lindsey looked maybe 40, and I bet she’ll clean up nice and look her real age, which is probably closer to mine. She has really long strawberry blonde hair that looks as fine as corn silk. She’s got freckles. Lots of them. She’s really pretty, and she’s just like I imagined she’d be.

  At her hips, attached to her on both sides like human barnacles were little Maddison, and tiny Andrea. I can remember what Doug looked like, and the girls have a lot of resemblance to him in their faces. They’ve got their mother’s hair, long and bright, but they look like their father.

  Judge me if you want, but when I saw those two little girls for the first time, and I knew they were now in my hands to keep safe, I smiled that smile I was talking about earlier, and oh boy, did those tears start running.

  Ah fuck me Mr. Journal. I lost it. I just started saying how sorry I was, and how much I wanted to do the right thing, and be a good man, and so much angst just let loose and purged and just wow. It was a sight to see I’m sure. Lindsey was sweet. She stepped out onto the concrete stairs, and just put her arms around me, and rested her head on my chest, and told me everything would be okay.

  Of course she was crying too at that point, and the girls had no idea what was happening, and like a lot of kids do, when mom or dad cries, they start in too. Shit Patty was a wreck before long too, and there we were.

  Three adults and two little girls standing on an empty street, in a dead town, in the middle of nowhere, crying. Mourning the dead, mourning our mistakes, and comforting each other in the hopes that we could do something positive with what was left.

  We stood like that for some time. Minutes, an hour I don’t know. Neither Lindsey or I wanted to be the first to let go. Eventually the Ranger wannabe somewhere inside me kicked in and told me we weren’t safe standing there, and I let go of her and ushered us all inside.

  Lindsey offered us some water, which we politely refused. The water was dirty. Watching the little girls sip a cup filled with water that had debris in the bottom of it curdled my guts. We’ve got so much fresh water on campus.

  I asked her about Doug, and she told me about their marriage, their life together, and the two girls. Maddison is very good at English, and little Andrea colors in the lines better than anyone ever. She produced a stack of tattered coloring books to prove her prowess. They were very good.

  Eventually Lindsey got the two girls to go off with Patty, and as soon as it was the two of us, she asked me about my dream. I’m very uncomfortable talking about these dreams. Stranger or friend, for some reason I feel like a fucking crackpot. But, I told her. I felt honesty was the best policy, and if she didn’t think I was insane after Abby told her everything, then I figured what could the worst outcome be?

  When I finished telling her everything, right down to the specific ways Doug stood, and talked, and how he pronounced certain words, she just nodded slowly for a few seconds. Finally, she said this:

  “Adrian, that was real. I’m certain of it. That had to have been Doug. Only he would’ve said those things, and the only way you would’ve know we were here was if he told you. If Doug trusted you enough to ask you to help us, then I need to trust you and your people.”

  And that was it. S
he asked what her living options were, and I told her about the campus, and the dorms, and the area, and after ten minutes of debating the various benefits of each place, she decided that she did not want to be right on campus yet. But, she wanted to grow some vegetables in a garden to help with the food. Lindsey was very concerned about being a burden on us. The best choice, and the safest choice was the farm at the end of Jones Road.

  Think about it Mr. Journal, it’s damn near perfect. It’s more or less on the inside of the semi we’ve got blocking the road, it’s got fertile soil for growing, it’s fenced in, has plenty of space, a pair of fireplaces, is within walking distance, and will allow us to have two fields of crops growing simultaneously.

  Lindsey told the girls, and once they were excited about it, we were off. They had next to nothing to pack. They’d left for the north with nothing, they returned with nothing, and they left Lindsey’s sister’s house the same. I’d like to remedy that. Those girls need toys, and clothes, and love, and my people and I will make that happen. That family has been through hell, and it’s long overdue that they get at least a little rest and happiness.

  They drove their own truck (a beat to shit Nissan, btw) with us back to their house, which is now our safe house. We went inside with them before Blake arrived for our meeting, and they gathered all the things that they had to leave behind when this whole nightmare started. The girls were beyond giddy, but Lindsey stopped and saw the blood smears on the kitchen floor. After that, she had to get outside to breathe.

  Once they had filled the bed of their truck with the things they wanted, Patty drove them back to Jones Road. Blake pulled in moments later.