Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 7): The Trinity

by Chris Philbrook

  Zombies have no concept of quality of life. They walk, they lunge, and they eat the living. If you throw a rock at them, and your aim is good enough, you will hit them with that rock. Ducking is not a part of their very limited skill set. If you aim a M249 SAW at a large group of them, and hold the trigger down until an entire belt of ammunition has been expended, you will hit them with every single bullet you fire out of that gun.

  If you’re really good at shooting the SAW, and you can walk the tracers right along a path that follows the head level of all those undead, you can blow those heads off with an alarming and satisfying regularity. Even if you miss the head, you’re ripping arms off, cutting torsos in half, and blowing legs apart, rendering the remnants of the undead horde almost entirely neutered.

  Mike was almost completely correct. It took Ethan and Roger less than ten minutes with their SAWs on the humvee turrets to put every single walking undead standing on the bridge leading to Bastion down. It helped that the people inside the wall carried a stereo outside and were blasting loud, obnoxious pop music. It took the remaining members of Kevin and Michelle’s group an hour to wander into the enormous pile of bodies and smash skulls apart, killing those that didn’t die from the gunfire. It was the better part of another hour for them to walk along the wall that encircled Bastion and put down all the walkers that had turned into swimmers.

  Mike was not correct in that once the undead were put down, all that was left was the burning of the bodies, and the drinking of the beer.

  Not everyone drank the beer. Roger and Ethan left the group and asked to be led to the makeshift clinic on the abandoned and repurposed school campus. After watching Jaden lose his leg in a terrible vehicle rollover in Morocco almost a year ago, and being unable to save that leg, both men had a powerful need to fix hurt people. Knowing that someone was hurt nearby, neither man was able to enjoy anything until they dealt with the injury, or at least had a better idea of what was going on.

  “How long has the bullet been lodged where it is?" Roger asked Lindsey, the older woman who was the most adept medical practitioner the folks at Bastion had.

  “Well, he was shot early in October. Shot in the back of the neck. He had some settling issues with the bullet, and boys I am not trained to do surgery. I’m learning as much as I can as fast as I can, but I’m afraid I’ll kill him. That bullet is just a millimeter from very important bits,” Lindsey said. She was sipping a tea and looking at the powerful man all this fuss was over. Ethan and Roger thought the man in the bed with the untrimmed Mohawk hooked up to the medical equipment looked a little odd, but very normal. They were expecting a much different person. Someone with fewer tattoos. Someone more remarkable maybe.

  “Good news is we can operate as soon as tomorrow. You have blood or plasma if he tanks? We have a little bit of plasma if need be,” Ethan offered.

  Lindsey had good news for the two new men. “Yeah, we’ve got quite a bit. We did blood type testing right before he went down and now we’re really ready to take donations if we need to. He is O negative. We’ve been gearing up to do the surgery, so we’re pretty ready.”

  “Tomorrow then,” Roger said.

  “Yeah, let’s see if the big guy is ready to sit back up, and get this show on the road. We didn’t come all this way to not meet the guy. Guess we can save his life while we’re at it,” Ethan joked.

  “Of course, we could kill him while we’re at it too,” Roger said blandly.

  “Occupational hazard,” Ethan said.

  The two men left the clinic to prepare for what would be the biggest day of their life.

  Outside, new friends drank in celebration, unaware of the challenges and sorrow that was to be their future. Their very near future.

  November 19th

  I know this sounds really clichéd right now, but I kinda feel like I am either dreaming, or like, waking up from a dream, or that my dreams are kind of coming true. We have not died, and not only that, we have taken in a group of people here on campus that have a man and woman among them who claim to be the other two members of the Trinity.

  All three are here now. I really think they are telling the truth. It’s almost like you can sense how right it is. It’s weird.

  The guy calling himself the Warden is an old Army buddy of Adrian’s. His name is Kevin Whitten, and I know he’s legit, because Adrian wrote about him right here in the diary. Woot! He did private mercenary stuff when the world went belly up, and he and his team of mercenaries basically fought their way out of Jerusalem, through London, out of a huge military base in England, stole a plane, landed in Morocco, killed a ton of zeds, and rescued the chick named Michelle who happens to be the other member of the Trinity. Oh, and he picked up a handful of smoking hot military guys on the way.

  Sorry Dad. Probably didn’t need to hear me use the words “smoking hot” ever.

  Michelle is awesome. She reminds me of this like, super introspective and smart woman who is also super pretty. She’s like smart, and gorgeous, and has golden blonde hair that I am really jealous of, and she’s funny, and caring and it’s weird. I get how she can be the third. She’s amazing. I haven’t talked to her enough yet, but so far, those two seem cool.

  I haven’t counted how many new folks they brought with them, but there are a lot, and they have a huge crap ton of stuff. They have an entire old semi gas truck filled with diesel. We are set on diesel for a hella long time. They have a ton of beer, which means Blake’s cider project is now a distant thought. Blake is still making it by the way.

  They brought two more humvee trucks, and theirs have turrets on the top with fricking machine guns. They have MACHINE GUNS! Several! And boxes and boxes of ammunition and medical supplies and parts, and body armor, and just wow. Bigger boxes like crates actually.

  They have two large trucks that I know Adrian calls box trucks. They’re like tractor trailers, but they are all one piece not two. They don't hinge in the middle. Inside of them is most of that beer, and all their supplies. It’s so awesome. Did I mention they brought a huge truck of diesel yet? It’s so awesome.

  Two of the Army guys, woops, Air Force guys are like, super soldier medics, and yesterday they operated on Adrian’s neck with Lindsey. They made the operation out to be serious, but attainable, and I image they have done similar procedures in the field. I was talking to them briefly, and they are trained to do complete internal surgery in the field. Like, remove your gall bladder in a field. It was a confidence booster to hear them talk about the surgery in such a matter-of-fact way. I waited and waited in the clinic area for the surgery to end with almost all the new folks and most of the old folks, and after about two hours, they emerged victorious. The bullet was removed! Adrian will survive.

  Here’s the weird part: Ethan and Roger, the two Air Force guys, said that the bullet had been pushed away from the artery or vein as Adrian healed. It was also away from his spinal cord as well. As it turns out... there was no good reason for Adrian to be in a frigging coma. It’s like he’s been sedated all this time. I think everyone there sent some strange looks at Lindsey out of the corner of their eyes, but Michelle started talking about how he’s been doing work, "On the other side,” and how, “God works in mysterious ways,” and stuff. I know I don’t like the religious mumbo jumbo, but the chick has a point. Weird stuff has been happening for a damn long time, and it makes a whole lotta sense for the big power in the sky (or the Devil down below) to keep Adrian knocked out so they could make a huge run at us.

  I just hope Adrian has been able to do something productive with Gilbert and Gavin while he’s down. I also hope that he wakes up shortly. He was already better today, moving about a bit more, and his color was also much better. Less pale gray, and more reddish. He has lost a lot of weight while he’s been down, so when he wakes up, he’ll be tired and sore I’m sure. Poor dude.

  What else… Um.

  Tomorrow we are heading to Gavin’s tower to clear it out. They’re still pretty surrounded, and they n
eed some help. Luckily, the new people are like, really good at shooting and whatnot, and they’re all about helping. I’m stoked.

  I forgot to mention they helped clear all the zeds at the gate, and on the road, and around the wall, and all that. Machine guns for the win! And they didn't even need them! We are still dealing with a slow trickle of undead down the road, but it isn’t anything like it was before. Almost like they gave up or something.

  Oh, the new people are going to be in Hall C. There’s no lights or power or a wood stove yet, but they have decided to get a generator, get a wood stove, and get it fixed up in short order. I have complete faith they will make it happen. Until Hall C is good to go, as Adrian might say, they are staying all over the place in the other buildings. Some of them have expressed an interest in helping to staff Gavin’s tower too, which is great. We could use the help.

  Wow, too cool.

  I am now starting to worry about Adrian when he wakes up. I wonder when Mallory will talk to him about everything, and I hope he takes it well.

  We’ll see. I’m still really excited. I feel like I’m like, missing tons of stuff!

  Abby

  November 20th

  I am profoundly tired. It has been a very long, and strange month for me.

  I’ll write more when I have more strength, and I’ve eaten something. A day or two. I have quite a few tales to share.

  I hope you haven’t missed me too much Mr. Journal.

  -Adrian

  November 22nd

  As much as I love Abby, she has done a kind of shit job staying detailed here. I can’t fault her. I didn’t even really ask her to do this, so when I told her my password to the laptop, I’m surprised she was able to put two and two together to figure it out.

  Well, she’s a smart one. I shouldn’t be too surprised. From what I’ve gathered, Mallory tipped her off and they worked it out together. Yay for smart chicks.

  There is an enormous amount of information to cover. I will not be able to cover it all in this entry, so don’t get your expectations up too high. Since I came to the other day, all I’ve done is request people to come to me in this fucking bed in the clinic room nonstop. I am starving for information. Absolutely fucking starving. I’ve been doing so much on the other side with Gilbert that I lost sight of all the things that were going on here. Not that I would’ve been able to see what was happening anyway. Mr. Journal, the world on the other side is a frustrating place. It’s like living on the other side of a two way mirror that you KNOW things are happening on the other side of, but no matter how hard you try and look, you can never quite make things out on the other side.

  It’s fucking infuriating. Made me want to smash bricks with my face.

  Sigh.

  I can tell the tales of the other side another day. Frankly, what I learned there won’t be relevant for at least a week or two, probably more, so there’s no rush on my part to spill those beans. Most of what I think I remember is disjointed, and dream-like, and I don't quite remember which is coalesced hope in my memory, and which is an actual event that happened. Mr. Journal, you’re just going to have to wait. Patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait, etc.

  What I do want to talk about is the sudden arrival while I was unconscious of a large group of men and women that have apparently turned back a new tide for us. I feel like this is it. The culmination. The beginning of the endgame. I feel that way because two of the people who arrived in that group are the other two members of this Trinity.

  It’s weird to write that after all this time. I’ve been hearing about it, dreaming about it, seeing it, I dunno. Just thinking about the fact that I am not insane, and that Gilbert was correct all this time about it, makes my skin fucking crawl. I feel like I saw a UFO. Saw something that was previously only talked about as a myth and now suddenly made very real.

  What stops my skin crawling, and puts a smile back on my face, is that the man who is the Warden is my good friend Kevin. Kevin Whitten, from my Army days. Kevin that I threw myself on a stake for Kevin. The guy I’d die for Kevin.

  When I woke up and saw his face, and realized that I was awake and not dead, I knew immediately that he was involved. There’s just no way in hell that he would be HERE, NOW, and not have something special going on. The world is too big, and we were too far and too long apart for him to just randomly appear.

  The other person who is supposedly (read: actually) in the Trinity with he and I is a really pretty blonde woman named Michelle Lewis. I haven’t had the chance to talk to her much, but she has a PhD. In religion or some shit. I really fucking hope she isn’t one of those preachy twats. If she starts going on and on about Jesus or Buddha or forest spirits I’m gonna snap and punch a bitch.

  Deep, calming breaths. I’m not actually going to punch her. I might get snippy with her and be rude, but I won’t actually punch her. Falcon punch her perhaps, but not in the face.

  She really is pretty.

  From what I’ve been able to gather from Kevin and his group, they were in Jerusalem June 23rd, doing PSD work for some dickface Senator. During a speech shit went south, and they extracted to an airport where they were put on a plane to England. They landed in London, choppered towards another base, but one of the people on the helo was bitten, and they had to put down. Kev made it sound like a soft landing, but the look on his guy’s faces as he told the story didn’t agree with that. Not many folks survive helo crashes though, so I imagine it wasn’t all that bad.

  They fought on foot, got onto the other bird, and went to Mildenhall in the countryside for a few months. Kev and his team made buddy-buddy with some of the SO guys there, as well as one of the flight crews of a special operations Hercules, and when Mildenhall was overrun by an army of blade wielding undead (revisit: undead showing up here with books) about a year ago, they took the fuck off. Their original plan had to be scrapped in the air I think, and they landed in southern Morocco where a Green Beret base was supposed to be. I guess when they were on approach there, Kevin saw three fires in the desert, and because he’d had dreams of the White Room like I had, he knew they had to check it out.

  The fires were Michelle. She’d lit them with some dead kid that was acting as her guide in Africa. When Kevin and his special operations guys got out to her, she was almost surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of the dead. They scooped her up, and despite some injuries (I guess one of the guys that didn’t make it here lost a leg in a truck rollover) they got back on the bird after refueling and nearly dying repeatedly.

  Bunny hop to the Azores, and when they did a maintenance check after landing, they realized they had some engine damage/required maintenance, and fixing that turned into this huge, drawn out debacle. At that point I guess they were stranded there, marooned with the locals for months on end. They left sometime around the end of June or early July after things got hot with the locals. From what Kevin said, some of the locals had raided the hangars for parts before they landed, and were actively trying to keep them from leaving because the people on his bird had food, medicine, and pretty advanced medical training.

  Speaking of which, the SO guys Kevin teamed up with are Air Force Para Rescue. They’re the behind enemy lines 911 for downed pilots. They get tons of medical training to stabilize and occasionally operate on injured people in the field, and they really know their shit. I should also add, they get the same ass kicking training that guys like Green Berets, or Rangers, or SEALs get, so they are hardcore. Not as much direct action training, but they are not to be fucked with people. They can fuck your shit up, fix you, and fuck you up again just to prove a point. I am so happy they are here. They are a gift.

  Ethan, Roger, and Joel are the three remaining Air Force SO guys. Ethan and Roger operated on my neck. More details about that later.

  Kevin’s team was decimated over the past year and a half. He started out with quite a few people, but a few were bitten, some died here and there… etc. Kevin had his second in command with him, an o
lder ex SF guy named Fitz, and a Vietnamese Army guy who used to specialize in explosives I think. His name is Quan. Kevin also had a kid named Kyle, and one British Marine that has tagged along with them named Harold. Hal is black, which isn’t meant to be a racist remark, just a clarification on what he looks like.

  Does that mean I’m racist Mr. Journal? The fact that I feel compelled to point out skin color when I write about people? Shouldn’t it be enough that I simply say who they are, and what their qualities are?

  Hm. Maybe I’m a bigot, racist, misogynist. Sucks to be me. Sucks to think I’m supposed to be this guiding light for humanity. L fucking O fucking L.

  The remnant of the flight team is made up of the pilot, a woman named Kate (who is a lesbian btw. It’s possible my gaydar is off, but I am telling you, she’s into women. It could also be that she introduced herself as, “Kate, I’m the dyke pilot who landed these pricks here successfully”) Kate’s co-pilot Nick seems like a solid guy.

  When they were in England Kev and the crew managed to go off base and rescue the wife and daughter of one of his men. The wife is a forty-ish woman named Becky, and the five or six year old girl is Shelby. Things have changed since that day, as Kevin is now pretty seriously involved with Becky, as best as I can tell. The two of them were friends through Kevin’s friend (one of the men on his team, which puts him in an awkward position as they dude who sniped his buddy's widow), and it looks like all the bull shit going on brought them together. The end of the world makes for strange bedfellows, I guess.

  After getting their replacement parts after months in the Azores, and nearly wiping out the entire population of an island in the process, they left for America after making repairs. I guess fuel was a concern, and they had to put down at the small international airport in Bangor. They knew they had to stick to the east coast area because of the dreams Kevin and Michelle were having, so they headed south through Maine to Boston, and while there, they tried to get into the city to find Kevin’s mom.