Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (15 page)

We need to ration food starting immediately. Scary thought.

Tomorrow we are taking a day off to continue to get folks settled in and acclimated to the campus. It’s a huge place with a lot of buildings with locked doors, and everyone needs a full tour to know where to find what, and what the damn rules are. I'll be needing to hand out new key rings to people, and that means keeping a better tab on who can access where.

Speaking of rules, we’re having a meeting tomorrow morning to establish community guidelines. We need very specific instructions on what folks can do and where to do it, and what the expectations are of living here. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and everyone MUST contribute. We cannot afford to harbor people who do not carry a fair share of the load of labor. If you can’t provide us with something, you need to leave, and provide yourself with everything on your own. Everyone carries their weight, or as much of it as they can.
 

Sorry.

The day after tomorrow we’re tentatively planning a return to Westfield to hit a garage there that Hector has stocked up with spare parts, as well as what remained behind at Mike’s unit’s armory. He’s saying he got almost all the ammunition out of the school before the fire, and he says that there is quite a bit of useful gear back at the armory. Spare weapons, parts, tools, vests, boots, blah blah blah. Really a treasure trove for everyone.

It’s funny to think that water runs are now a thing of the past, and that all these people will now be living here, or living near here. It’s weird that there are so many more people here. I don’t even know the names of most of them. It’s kind of scary, especially considering that Mike is certain that someone set that fucking fire.

If they’re here, I hope I have some pretty awesome dreams so that folks can point out who the fuck did it. The last thing we need is for buildings to start burning down around here, or whatever could be worse than that.

I shudder to think.

I’m so torn. I’m happy for new people, but this is a lot of fucking people. I’m also sad because I lost friends, and the world lost people that matter, and that could’ve really helped us rebuild, or at least move on.

Life sucks man.
 

-Adrian

July 18
^th

Lots of tension here.

Trying to keep it all under wraps has proved to be a very difficult task. We’ve had arguments and small fights here almost constantly since everyone arrived, and it has made for an awkward campus. Everyone has frayed nerves. We’re all on each other’s case about shit that we can handle, but don’t seem to have the patience to wait and deal with.

We’ve broken up into two groups. Well more accurately, we’re still two separate groups. The ALPAN people, and the Westfield folks. The old guard is angry the new folks are taking up space, eating our food, and using our shit. The new folks are pissed off they’ve been transplanted, and their friends and family members have been killed. The peace is fragile right now, and I am really hoping I don’t have to break up any more fights or settle any more arguments. The next person who gives me the hairy eyeball after I tell them how things work here is getting their fucking teeth punched down their throat. I’m fed up with having my authority questioned.
 

This is MY home. These people are here because of the work I did, with the people who were here because I LET them come here.
 

God I’m pissy. Legit at the end of my good nature. I am really pretty close to decking someone. Mike pulled me aside earlier when we were over in Westfield at Hector’s garage and told me I needed to take a deep breath and simmer down. I damn near put his teeth out. I’m just so sick of all this bullshit. I’m fed up with assholes, and death, and fucking zombies. We frigging practically waded through undead over in Westfield this morning to get back to the school. No one had the foggiest idea where they came from.

Granted, some were burnt to a crisp, which likely means they came out of the school over there, but there were a lot of pristine (and I use that term very fucking loosely) undead just milling about. We wound up putting down something like sixty undead just to clear space to get to the garage. Clearing the armory was easier, but not by much.

Alright, details I suppose are the order of the day at this point.
 

Yesterday we gave tours, assessed skills, and tried to meet everyone. I don’t remember all their names. It’s just not happening. I don’t think I have room in my fucking skull for the names of new people. I’m afraid now that if I learn their names, I’ll get close to them, and then they’ll die, and I’ll feel much worse about it. I’d rather keep them at arm’s length, and anonymous, so when and if they do leave or die, I have remained detached.

Is that fucked up?

Yesterday while we gave tours and whatnot Martin led a small crew of volunteers to get some of the wall done. I think he had three people with him, and they managed about ten feet of wall. Not much to celebrate, but wall is wall, and every foot counts. I’m really hoping we can get some of these people working on the wall with us in a hurry. An extra six or seven bodies would basically double our work force, and that’d shave a LOT of time off the project as a whole. Right now the priority is relocating everything back from Westfield to here.

Speaking of which…

I think I already said we went back to Westfield earlier today. We made the trip for three reasons. First, we wanted to hit the garage that Hector had been using to get everything there out of it. Second, we wanted to go to Mike’s armory and get everything out of it they’d left behind, and thirdly, there were four people who wanted to move back to Westfield to live with Lenny on his farm while we prepared to accept his livestock. I guess Lenny will be giving us his chickens and cattle first, and when the harvest rolls in, we’ll get the lion’s share of that too.

We rolled out in a large force, prepared for major confrontation. We took both humvees, Mike’s semi truck, and the HRT. For personnel we took Hector, Mike, Myself, Abby, Chris, Ryan, one of the girls my age from Westfield named Renee, and one of the newest people, a black guy named Dwayne Chilton. I guess he’d only arrived in Westfield a few weeks ago. He’s originally from Texas, somewhere near Galveston I guess, and he’s a rugged guy. I guess he was up here going to college for his master’s when it all went down. He’s my age I think. We also brought the four people who are staying with Lenny. Lenny is going to be living with two 19 year olds, one boy and one girl, one 17 year old girl, and a 28 year old girl. I cannot wait to see how that pans out.

Patty, Ollie, and Melissa were left in charge on campus, and we rolled out in force straight to the garage. As I said, the garage was fucking overrun with the dead. The school was right next to the shop, and as I said there were plenty of burnt undead mixed in with the fresh. I don’t know why, but the undead had migrated there. Maybe it was the powers-that-be trying to cock block us again. Maybe it was just the noise and commotion of the fire and the exodus to here. Who fucking knows?

I drove the HRT in the lead, and using Martin’s plow attachment, I smashed right into the crowd of undead while the other vehicles sat on the fringe and started to pick off the zombies. We worked a pretty good system as I drove around in circles, taking them out in the truck while others shot the roamers that were too hard for me to hit with the big truck. As we were emptying the garage our perimeter sentries had to pick off maybe a dozen more zombies, which was bothersome of course, but all in all, it went very well. Disconcerting sure, but no injuries, and no deaths. Had enough of that already.

I wound up doing sentry duty due to the cuts I got on my arm at the gas station. They are kind of infected, but they’re getting better with bacitracin and plenty of water. I’m going to wind up getting scars out of it, but who cares. The three large gouges are diagonal across the top of my forearm, so anyone who shakes my hand for the rest of my life will see the scars. Anyway, I didn’t really want to lift heavy shit all damn day and risk having the cuts reopen, so I stood outside like a fucking tool and used every yard of my ACOG’s range to take out anything I saw moving. Mike coordinated everything with Abby and Hector on the inside.

We posted two sentries, and had ten people moving shit. It went pretty well at the garage. Hector had relocated all the spare parts from the motor pool at the armory to the garage, and that’s primarily what we took. He also had a few barrels of motor oil, diesel, and gasoline, which was a nice find.

Incidentally, we’re now thinking that we will focus on emptying the remaining gas in Westfield on our fuel runs first, before we hit the stuff here in town. We’re leaving it largely unprotected here, so getting it up and out makes more sense. Also, if we need gas in a hurry, we’d rather get it right down the road in town, as opposed to being forced to drive all the damn way to Westfield.

After we emptied the garage we drove across town to the armory building. Mike’s armory is basically just a large brick warehouse with a large garage behind it. As a logistics support unit they weren’t technically infantry or anything so they didn’t have a substantial supply of weaponry. They did however have tools and vehicle oriented repair gear out the fucking wazoo. We wound up having to smear about twenty undead that had taken up residence outside the fence of the base, and that was a little tricky to do, because we couldn’t hit them with the HRT easily with them against the fence, and for whatever reason (I’m going with them being pure evil, and the bane of my fucking existence) they wouldn’t leave the fucking fence either.

We had to park, get out, and shoot the assholes manually. Huge waste of fucking ammo. Well not that huge really, but whenever I can drive over a dead guy and save a bullet, I’m doing it. Hector and Mike got the fence open, and we drove inside the perceived safety of the chain link. From there, it was just labor to get everything loaded into the semi.

From what I saw Mike had about a dozen IOTV vests, a crate or two of packed M4s, and around 4 crates of 5.56. He had about four empty magazines per weapon as well. That’s a nice, healthy boost to our stores. Also, he had a crate of 5.56 in both of the humvees just for safety’s sake, and he removed from the school just before the fire 4 more crates. Effectively, we’ve got an ass ton of ammo for the rifles now.

I was really hoping Mike had some M249s, or god forbid a M240G, but that kind of heavy hardware wasn’t really just left around. Plus, if he had those, we’d have seen them mounted on his vehicles by now. I’d have given up a testicle for a M203, or some fucking fragmentation grenades. Wishful thinking I suppose.

He had spare parts for the M4s, as well as uniforms, boots, medical supplies, some spare cots, bedding, tools, water, spare parts, and just a nice mixture of all the things you’d expect a small armory to have just in case. It wasn’t the mother load in terms of lootage, but the ammo and weapons alone are well worth it. Also, I found out that Mike can fix and repair the M4s and ARs we are using, which is great. I can maintain them in terms of cleanliness, but if something breaks, I’m going on gut instinct to fix it. He on the other hand, can actually diagnose, maintain, and repair the damn things. I’m wondering if our failures lately are as a result of insufficient weapons maintenance, coupled with mixing in reloads with military issue ammunition?

I’m betting Mike will know. Mike also knows how to reload. Yay for Mike.

After the few hours of taking everything we could out of the armory, we hoofed it over to Lenny’s farm to drop off the four kids so old man McDowell had company. The look on his face when he saw the 19 year old couple was priceless. Mike and I just grinned ear to ear as he rolled his eyes. I’m betting it’s less than 24 hours before he finds the boy balls deep in the girl somewhere in a hay stack. Can’t wait to hear that story.

Speaking of hay, Lenny said he’s going to be working hard on cutting the hay in the fields near his house and getting it bailed for the cows before it turns to straw. I guess there are some fields owned by his now dead neighbors that he used to get the hay out of. He’s got the tractor and shit to do it with, and now he has the labor force to get help. Exciting shit I suppose. I can’t get over how much bullshit goes into just fucking surviving now. It’s unreal.

Our trip home was clear and uneventful, and when we arrived we got everyone out and about to assist us in unloading everything. Weaponry and ammo went to Hall E, food and medical supplies went to the different Halls for even distribution, and random gear was also sent about so we don’t have all our shit in one place. That’s one lesson we have certainly learned from what happened at Westfield. Spread everything out, and keep it secured, but keep it close. We don’t want one accident to destroy all of any one item or supply.

My arm is sore, and my shoulder as well. Lots of firing today after lifting heavy things, and lifting heavy things after firing. I’m getting too old for this shit. I need a mojito, a lawn chair beside the lake, and a two hour long, leisurely blowjob right now. I need to fucking unwind.

I'd love to talk to Gilbert too. He'd have some kind of meaningful thing to say.

Sadly, we have no limes, no fresh mint, no time for lawn chairs, and Mallory’s sex drive has joined Jimmy Hoffa, wherever the fuck that dead bastard is. You already know Gilbert isn't around anymore, at least not in the sense that he's alive and kicking. Maybe still kicking.

Speaking of no damn time, tomorrow we are collectively working on just campus stuff. We all agreed that the fence and berm needs to be worked on immediately for security’s sake, and Ollie needs help building better interior fences to pen in the cows, and chicken coops. He can build quite a few, but we’re also going to need to steal some of Lenny’s as well. On the plus side, all of Lenny’s what? 80 or so chickens means we will be able to eat chicken regularly, which is exciting. We’ve got plenty of baby chickens about to hatch as well as the ones Lenny has, so our poultry population is exploding.