Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (11 page)

I’d like to throw out the fact that there is a 50% chance one of us gets electrocuted tomorrow. There’s also a 50% chance that we fucked it up, and nothing happens at all. Somewhere in the mathematics I know, that means we have a 50% chance everything works fine too. Yay Army math. Martin and Blake also said that they can work on getting some batteries hooked up in series similar to the setup in Hall E, that way we can store juice on the sunny days to use on the cloudy days.

I guess they can do it using car batteries from the vehicles all about. Blake said tomorrow he’s going to go down the road taking car batteries out of abandoned vehicles. Ambitious guy.

Not much else to talk about. More fence work as I said, and the solar panels.
 

Tomorrow I believe Mike is set to arrive here for a trade. Although to be honest, my mind seems to be slipping away, and there’s a good chance I’m full of shit and it might be the 17
^th
. I just remember that it was an odd numbered date, somewhere around the 15
^th
or the 17
^th
. I can’t say for certain.

If he shows up, awesome. If he doesn’t, we’ll just put our noses to the grindstone, and put up more fence after we test the solar panels. It’s like the never ending fucking story here. Fence all day, every day.

Oh, and we also have to staff MGR here soon so we can feel like we actually did that for something other than just rescuing a few folks, which I suppose should be reason enough.

Crashing hard Mr. Journal. I need a day off. I hope I have good dreams here. I’m not wanting to fall asleep and deal with a nightmare tonight. I’m hoping this is the reverse jinx so that fairy can blow me.

-Adrian

The Great Fire

“Jesus Christ they’re fucking everywhere over here,” Mike said to LaFrenz, his younger National Guard private.  After his outburst Mike raised his M4 rifle to his shoulder for the twentieth time that day and snapped off a round at an approaching zombie shuffling down the street.  The high velocity round punched through the skull of the deceased older lady and she went face down on the pavement, gray brains spilling out on the yellow dotted line.

LaFrenz grunted in agreement and fired a shot of his own past his Sergeant’s target, dropping a zombie as well.  “Sarge, where do you think they came from?”

Mike lowered his rifle and searched the area he and his small group of survivors were searching for more undead.  When he saw nothing, he responded to his soldier, “Fucked if I know.  I would’ve thought after last summer’s big push to get all these things dropped in town there was no chance we’d find this many again.  Lisa is gonna shit a brick when she hears how many we killed today. Something is stirring them up.”

Mike was speaking of Lisa Goldman, the physician’s assistant who had been elected as leader of the group of survivors in their town.  Currently they had about sixty allied survivors in Westfield, and they called the town’s high school home. 

It had been just over a year since the end of the world began.  Presently it was June 28
^th
2011, five days past the one year anniversary of the first sightings and attacks of the walking dead.  Westfield had over ten thousand living and breathing residents back then.  Now there were perhaps a hundred frightened, hungry survivors scattered around the empty shell of suburbia, picking the bones of a dead civilization clean.  The rest had either left town or died and became murderous zombies. Mike and Lisa’s group had fared better than most, or so they felt.  They were reasonably well armed, well fortified, and had the support of a well run farm for food, and a few towns over they were closely allied with another group of survivors at a private school where they got fresh water from their artesian wells.

In fact, if it were not for the support of Adrian Ring, the leader of the small group over at Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy, Westfield would have eaten itself alive from the inside out.  Sean, their prior leader had been a cancerous politician, and was setting himself up slowly and meticulously as a dictator.  It was only when Sean failed in two foolish attacks against the school that Adrian came to Westfield, and incited enough rebellion to start a coup.

Now with good leadership in the form of Lisa and the ex-National Guard sergeant Mike, Westfield had but a single major problem on their hands.  The diesel powered backup generator in the school had broken down.  They could live without electricity for some time, but the lack of hot water was becoming a real drain on morale and hygiene.  One of the defining requirements of proper civilization Lisa had said many times was maintaining good hygiene.  Dirty bodies led to dirty living conditions, and that led to disease.  Hot water meant clean bodies, and even though they could light fires to heat water, it was tough to manage the capacity required to clean sixty people with regularity.  In the center of the town it was difficult for them to properly gather firewood and find a place to safely start a fire to boil water in quantities that were efficient.  Bathing sixty people that way was too damn much work.

When the generator broke a few days prior it had taken half a dozen of the survivors looking at the diesel fed beast in the bowels of the school to decipher what had gone wrong.  One of their more nerdy survivors, a large, slightly pudgy man in his early twenties named Chris Sunderman had repaired the machine.  Chris was a bit of an outcast prior to the end of civilization, but his status as one of the few remaining men in Westfield had catapulted him into much higher social status.  It helped that he was an intelligent, tall man with a good sense of humor as well. Mike was thankful the young man had figured the machine’s problems out early. The nerds always did well in the long run.
 

And the meek shall inherit the Earth…
Mike thought.

Mike and LaFrenz had assembled the team of ex-National Guardsman, and the folks who had joined into the security forces of Westfield, and they had begun to scour the businesses and homes that might have the parts needed to repair the massive diesel generator.  They’d gone into areas of town where they hadn’t yet, and as a result, they’d happened upon large groups of the animated dead.  Fortunately, no one had died in the search yet, and in a way, it was a good thing to be putting them down.  With any luck, today would be the day they would find the needed parts to finish the repairs.

Chris Sunderman walked out of a small pawn shop carrying an armload of tools and mechanical bits.  He had a grin on his face a mile wide.  Next to him was one of the newest security people, Mary Roberts.  Mary was a hard edged 22 year old with her hair pulled back tightly.  She carried her rifle with the cockiness of a fresh recruit that had a little too much confidence in her fledgling skills.  Mike winced on the inside as the two approached them, prizes in hand.

“Got it.  This should totally do it,” Chris said to Mike with a huge grin.  He lifted the various engine parts, tubes, and unidentifiable widgets.  He presented them as if Mike would automatically understand their value.

“Fantastic.  Pack our shit up and let’s scram.”  Mike swung his fingers in a circle, and the handful of armed Westfield citizens collapsed in on him.  Within minutes they were in their National Guard humvees, and they were gone, leaving a few scattered undead to shuffle the empty streets.

*****

As promised by Chris, the diesel generator was up and running by midnight that night.  No one really understood how he fixed what he fixed, but when the lights inside the expansive high school kicked back on, there was a collective cheer amongst those still awake.  Mike was with Chris at the time, holding a flashlight deep in the bowels of the basement when everything turned back on.  Chris turned to Mike and smiled a warm smile that genuinely made Mike feel good.  He gave Chris the same smile in return, and patted the young man’s back heartily.

Westfield was back in business, plus one nerd hero.

*****

Several days later on the eve of Independence Day, Mike made the forty five minute long trip several towns over to visit the survivors at Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy.  It was a scenic country drive through green forests and steep hills.  He always enjoyed that drive with his family before things went to shit, and even now, despite all the heartbreak, it gave him some satisfaction to drive it again.

With him he brought LaFrenz, as well as Blake and Kim, two of Adrian’s fellow survivors who had been staying in Westfield so that Kim could give birth to their bouncing baby boy under the medically trained eye of Lisa Goldman.  The two soldiers had bonded strongly over the year, and seldom did they travel anywhere not within eyesight.  They were an odd couple, but sometimes strange pairings make for successful recipes.

Westfield made trips roughly every ten days to the private school to get water.  They had procured a small water tanker in town and with no town water available near the high school, they worked out a deal where Westfield would supply the ALPA people with various supplies and ammunition and ALPA would empty their bottomless artesian wells into the truck as needed.  It kept everyone healthy, hydrated, and happy despite the required drive.

This trip was made extra joyous due to the birth of Kim and Blake's meatball.  Mike couldn’t get over how fat and healthy the baby was.  Everyone had a notion that any babies born now would be thin, and sickly, but that was not the case.  Everyone at the private school had gathered on the porch of one of the large dormitories to visit the beaming new parents, and their rosy faced baby.  It was a nice day, with warm sunshine and blue skies.

Mike and Adrian stood together leaning on the railing, watching the goings on quietly.  Adrian was such a character, Mike had always felt.  It was exacerbated now by his Mohawk haircut.  The longer row of hair stood up a clean half inch taller than the buzzed sides.  He was covered in colorful tattoos on his arms and legs, and he cast a long shadow.  He was tall, lean, and muscular.  He exuded a natural confidence that caused people to gravitate to him, and his time in the Army made him as deadly as he looked like he could be.  Mike liked him quickly, and respected mightily what the 35 year old had accomplished in the wake of the world's end.  He’d turned a school filled with dead children into a bastion of safety, and helped to free Westfield from the tyranny of their first leader Sean. 
 

“I have shitty news Mike,” Adrian said flatly without taking his eyes off the little baby boy.

Mike turned to him, taken aback by the tone of the man’s voice. “Yeah?  How shitty?”

“Really shitty.  You’re not gonna like this one bit, but on the 23
^rd
, Gilbert passed.”  Adrian looked over with sad eyes at Mike.  Gilbert was an older man that had lived near the school.  He was an ex-Green Beret, and in the months since the end of the world, he had been like Adrian’s father, and compatriot.  They had made for a great pair, and were largely inseparable.  Mike knew the young warrior was hurting deeply at the loss.

Others gathered on the porch overheard enough of Adrian’s words to understand what was going on.  The ALPA people already knew the bad news.  They humbled themselves and turned their attention to the two leaders.

“Holy shit. What happened?”  Mike asked. He hadn't even realized the old man wasn't around.

“He had Abby shoot him.  I don’t want to go into details because it’s nothing good, but Gilbert had some baggage, and he felt he was better off dead than alive.  He talked Abby into helping him go. It sounds strange, but it's for the best.”  Adrian looked over at the young Blake, the new father.  Blake was just like Adrian when it came to the grizzled Vietnam veteran Gilbert.  Blake was sucked right into the old man’s hard charm immediately.  They had clashed for sure, but it was like an argument with a good father.  It was only afterwards you realized the words were out of love and wisdom, and not hurt.

Blake swallowed hard as he listened to Adrian, holding his baby tighter suddenly. “Well I think that settles it.”  He looked down at the mother of his child.  She looked up at him and nodded in agreement.

Adrian raised an eyebrow and looked over at the couple. “Settles what?”

“We haven’t named this little guy yet.  We had some ideas, but if Gilbert is really gone, well.  We were thinking of asking you for your permission to name him Adrian Gilbert.”  Blake looked at Adrian with pleading eyes.

Abby, Adrian’s blonde 18 year old right hand woman and the hardest teenager in the history of America smiled from a few steps away and spoke up, “I think that’s great.  Couldn’t be a more fitting name.”

Patty, Abby’s dark haired mother added her two cents, “I agree.  That’s just great.”

Adrian looked at the two women, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of having a child carrying his name.  He shook his head in slight disbelief and asked a question of Blake and Kim, “Why?  I mean, I get Gilbert, but why me?”

Kim responded, “Adrian if it wasn’t for you and Gilbert, we’d be dead no doubt.  At the very least, I’d still be at that damn farm, waiting to have a baby without his daddy there.  You gave Blake friendship, food, and safety, and you saved my life, potentially saving my baby’s life.  Making sure our boy knows the name of the two men who saved his family and made that happen is the least we can do for him.”

Mike looked at Adrian as he swallowed the sense of her statement.  After nearly a minute of awkward silence Adrian simply shrugged, and nodded.  A small round of applause went through the gathered survivors, and Mike smiled.

It was a fitting name for a newborn.  To be named after not one but two heroes was an honor very few were bestowed.

Mike sincerely hoped the child lived up to his namesakes.

*****

Mike and company left the rural lakeside private school that evening and headed home.  They brought back two of their own who had been staying there as well.  Mallory Malone, a spunky hairdresser that was seeing Adrian, and Hector, one of Mike’s guardsman and their resident mechanic.  Mike secretly wondered if the generator would’ve been fixed faster if Hector had been there.  The Mexican had a way with making things work.