Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (19 page)

Abby put an AR15 round through her skull, and she smashed her face off the sink before hitting the floor. What a shame. I wonder how many kids on this road had a crush on her.

That was easy. With four houses left at that point the next home was the house with the hair salon in it. It was a home run business in an addition on the side of a fairly large cape. The way they had it built the cape was on the left, a garage in the middle, and the addition for the salon on the right side. Neopolitan-esque I guess.

We cleared the salon quickly, seeing as how it was a single room, and with that done and the work needed to remove the sinks and chairs at hand, Mallory and I broke off, and Abby took the rest of the folks over to the next home.

Now I can’t fault Abby on this. I can’t fault Angela either. From what I’ve pieced together Abby told them to wait while everyone took a minute to go around the next home and check inside the windows. Abby and Angela were around the back of the home when either Dwayne, Renee, or Chris forgot to wait, or heard something they thought was a go ahead, and the door was opened. Now because we’d been making noise at the time, the undead that happened to be inside were right near that door, and when they opened the sumbitch, they all came rushing out, as the dead are apt to do when the living are around.

After the fact we saw eleven undead on the lawn. I’m sure the noobs were positively shitting in their pants when they started to pour out. Of course at the time only Dwayne had a handgun on him, as Abby had just asked them to put their guns aside for the upcoming breach, so all the others had were halligans, axes, and bats.

Dwayne opened up, but he doesn’t have much in the way of trigger time, and thus wasted almost all of his ammunition. I only saw three of the zombies dead by gunshot wound near the doorway, and I’m pretty sure those were his kills. Danny Jr. was still on the roof of the HRT supplying cover and security with his .22, and he had to wait to fire because of the three asshats running straight in his direction. He didn’t have enough of a clear line of sight to fire safely. That's good trigger discipline.

I guess Chris and Renee backpedaled to get the fuck away and towards the HRT to get their guns again, screaming all the way. Abby and Angela then hear the screaming and Dwayne’s shots, and come running around the house, running right into the three noobs hightailing it away from the handful of the dead they’d just set free.

Due to crossfire concerns, the two women had to run to flank the dead before they could open fire. Neither Mallory or I heard the handgun shots inside the salon, and when we heard the distinctive crack of the AR firing, we both dropped our tools and gathered our weapons to join whatever it was that was going on outside.

I went out first, and not a half second after I stuck my head outside the damn salon exit, I was buzzed by a round zipping maybe ten inches from my head. I hit the deck hard, screaming for Mallory to stay inside.

I mean in retrospect I should’ve realized we would be walking out directly into the line of fire from the house next door. Angela and Abby were firing across that yard, and any misses or through and throughs were headed directly at the house we were in. Fuck me, right?

I crawled back inside the salon and the two of us took cover behind the most solid thing we could find, which happened to be a bank of those old school hair drying seats. You know the ones with the big clear plastic bowl that sits on top of your head? We yanked it out from the wall and huddled behind it until the firing stopped.

And man when it let up I let loose. I don’t think I’ve ever sworn that much. I absolutely ripped skulls off and made fresh assholes. I wanted to know how the fuck, what the fuck, who the fuck, and who I had to assfuck dry to make that never happen again. I scared the living shit out of those people, especially the new folks. I don’t think they’ve ever seen me mad, and man Mr. Journal... I haven’t been that mad in sometime.

Everyone apologized for their part in the debacle, and after fifteen minutes of being pissed and scared shitless, I went back to the salon with a frightened Mallory, and Abby and Angela went back to clearing the what, three houses left?

Fuck. We could’ve had a total party wipe there. Dwayne, Renee and Chris could’ve easily died at the door, and I was less than a foot from taking an accidental 5.56 round to the fucking gourd. Fuck. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck.

Amateur hour bullshit right there. Abby talked to me on the ride home in the HRT and took the blame for everything. I let her have it. The blame that is. If she thinks what happened today was her mistake I’m fine with that. Next time, she will NOT ALLOW something like this to happen. It may be unfair of me to make her eat the guilt for almost letting us get killed, but that kind of learning experience is far more valuable to us than keeping her feelings slightly more intact. Besides, it’s not like she’d listen to me telling her that, “It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.”

She’d still feel responsible one way or the other. This way, she’ll try harder, and her extra vigilance is an asset to us. Hard lesson.

The rest of the houses on that road were cleared with far less fanfare. Abby was telling me on the ride home they encountered four more undead amongst those homes, and while it was a little dicey with the new folks, they did well, and no one was hurt. Actually that’s not fully true. Dwayne wound up getting a massive splinter in his right palm when they breached a door. I guess they pried it in with a halligan, and a shard of wood was sticking out. He was walking out of the house and caught it just right and bam! The shard was at least three inches in when it broke off. Renee wound up removing it in the HRT with the first aid shit. I watched her for a bit, and I am now thinking she needs to spend more time with Doc Lindsey. She’s got a knack for first aid and I think she might enjoy it. Fingers are crossed Dwayne doesn't get an infection.

The other houses had another stove we could remove, as well as a few more rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Fortunately, one of the gun safes was wide fucking open for us, so that saves Martin a smidge of work at a later date. We also yanked out a few empty drums in a backyard we can clean and retask for fuel storage, and there was a fair amount of canned food and paper supplies, etc. One thing that was kind of neat we found was a fisherman’s wet dream. One of the homes had a guy who was an avid fisherman, and he had multiple rods, reels, flies, etc. A ton of good fishing shit for us to put to good use on Auburn Lake.

So despite our near death bullshit, it was a hugely successful day. Training for a few new folks went well enough, we found several wood stoves, we got some food, toilet paper, guns, ammunition, and most importantly for me personally, we got Mallory two salon chairs, and two salon sinks.
 

We didn’t make it back to campus until about seven at night, so we rolled in right as dinner was being wrapped up. It’s sort of weird now because we’re breaking dinner service up into multiple places. For the longest time we were all eating together, which brought us much closer, but now there’s no place to do it other than the cafeteria, and logistically, that doesn’t make much sense. It isn’t powered so cooking there is pretty much not possible, and that means we’d have to transport the food, and that’s a huge pain in the ass.

We’ve broken up into groups eating at Hall B with Ollie and Melissa, a second group eating at Hall A, and a third group eating at the Jones Road Farm with Lindsey and little Andrea. Melissa has organized the dinners into a rotating schedule, so there’s one dinner at 4:30, one at 5:30, and a final late dinner at 7pm, give or take. It’s working, but it feels weird that we’re all eating at different times in different places.

We managed to scrape up the last remnants of the 7pm dinner in Hall A, so thankfully, there were no deaths due to starvation today.

While we were out, the wall crew managed to throw about 75 feet of barricade up. They also managed an injury free day, which is more than we can boast. With such a productive day under our collective belts, we have elected to plan a trip to the police station tomorrow while a follow up crew heads back to get those woodstoves, and crack that gun safe so we can get to the innards.

The day after, if tomorrow goes well and our plan for the police station pans out, we’ll actually go to the damn police station, and get the repeater tower, as well as anything that isn’t nailed down that we think we can make use of.

Tomorrow we’ve also got to figure out where exactly we can put Mallory’s salon. She needs plumbing for the sinks, and we really don’t have the patience or time to run pipes to a room without plumbing. This will require some serious thought to be done relatively easily.

Looking at the bright side though, I am pretty sure I have secured my place with Mallory as, “Most awesomest man she’s ever slept with.”

It’s not all bad I guess.

-Adrian

July 28
^th

Goddamn it Mr. Journal. I’m starting to feel the walls close in on me here. I’ve got a sinking suspicion luck has gone south on me, and I’m running on skill, and planning, which means I’m fucking royally bent. If anything, I need a little luck to make it through all this.

We have more injured.
 

Yesterday we split up into several groups. Martin and Angela broke off with a labor team and went outside the wall back to the salon road to remove the woodstoves that we found, and to cut open that gun safe to get inside it. While they were out and about frolicking and whatnot. The brain trust of myself, Hector, Mike, Patty and Abby made the plan to hit the municipal station to take down the repeater tower so it could be relocated to MGR. While we were doing that, another very small group of relatively handy people, consisting mostly of Blake, worked with Mallory and got her salon installed in the administration building near Hall A and the admissions office.

That was our, “Day off.”

You believe that shit? Unreal how much crap goes into the fucking life we live now. Otis sits around and does fuck all each and every day, and I swear even he looks tired of this shit. Speaking of Otis, he’s well, and we’ve seen a smattering of cats and kittens running about on the fringes of campus lately. There’s been some talk of taking some in as pets, but we need to make sure we are not overrun by cats. Haven’t heard any dogs lately either, other than when we are downtown.

Mallory’s salon is fully installed in the office area right next to the old Nurse’s station which is where Doc Lindsey has set up her business. I’d always secretly envisioned Lisa setting up a medical treatment area there, but I’ll take what I can get. We still need to figure out a plan to go back to Westfield to hit the clinic Mike and Lisa had set up to get all that gear back here. It’s either that, or we hike up our skirts and clear the clinic here and get it ready for regular use for x-rays and that shit. Might need to do both.
 

Crossing T’s and dotting I’s and all.

Martin, Angela and the remainder of their team removed not three but four woodstoves out of the homes on that road, which is one more than we saw on our first pass through. All of them came out relatively easily. The folks also managed to remove all the brick flooring and insulation for the walls, as well as the vent pipes and all that shit. We’ve got to sort out where they’re going and who is going to install them, but I think we’ll figure it out. It’s nice to have extra resources. It’s weird. It’s like having one less thing to worry about.

That’s a strange fucking concept.
 

Martin was able to get the safe open with minimal torch use. I’m starting to think he’s used that torch for mildly illegal activities in the past. He knew just how to access the safe in a hurry according to Angela. I am not complaining, let me be clear about this. Having a safecracker nearby seems like an asset. Inside the safe I guess they found three antique shotguns, two handguns (both Glocks), a handful of mags for the Glocks, a few boxes of shotgun shells, and a couple hundred rounds of ammo for the pistols. Not what I’d hoped for, but still a nice present to unwrap in July.

The brain trust came up with an actionable plan to remove the repeater tower from the municipal complex to be executed today, which was exactly what happened. I won’t lay out the plan. It’s too much fucking writing and I’m tired. I will however, go over what happened. Besides, none of our goddamn plans survive first contact anyway. There’s always some unknown variable. I chalk that up to that little bitch Fairy.

Because we knew we were going to be down there doing labor for some time pretty well exposed, we had to bring a minimum of two groups of people. We wanted one group to focus on removing the tower, and the other group to set up a perimeter, and to provide security for the first team. Martin and Blake were our team leaders for the tower, which is noteworthy because this marked the first time Blake has left campus since little Adrian was born. They borrowed Dwayne, Hector, Chad and Alex for muscle.

Patty, Abby, Angela, Mike, Myself, and Chris provided the perimeter security force. We weren’t sure how large the tower was precisely, so we brought the semi truck down as well as both humvees and the HRT to clear the road as we went. The road down to the station was lightly littered with a few random walkers, but when we made the turn onto the road the municipal complex was on, we knew something was up. There were at least six or seven undead clustered near the old ambulance that was parked out front, and when we pulled in the parking lot to the rear, we encountered another dozen undead milling about, evidently waiting for us.

I smashed through the bulk of them in the HRT at the lead, and parked in a blocking position around the back of the building so we couldn’t be easily overrun like the time Charles busted his arm. Man that brings back memories. Ha. Charles forgetting he had a fucking handgun and deciding he was gonna Jimmy SupaFly Snooka the entire crowd of undead to death. Gotta admire brute force ignorance.

Mike and Hector parked the humvees surrounding the building, and we drove the semi straight to the back where we could load the tower once it was down. The repeater tower here in town is fairly small. Now that we’ve gotten it down, it’s maybe thirty feet tall. Really thin too. It was mounted on the roof of the station, and once we had exited the vehicles, and dealt with the threat posed by the undead in the parking lot, the second team dismounted, threw some ladders on the side of the building, and headed up to the roof.