Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (20 page)

While it was quiet, Abby and I cleared the inside of the building again, and noticed immediately it had been ransacked. Well, the fire station side had been hit, but the police station side was still fine. For whatever reason the keycard still worked, which means it’s getting power from somewhere, but despite our best efforts, we couldn’t tell where the juice was coming from. Some kind of emergency battery maybe?
 

We grabbed some extra shit we’d left behind before, but the majority of it was not worth mentioning. Notepads. Legal books. Pamphlets. Blah.

Things got weird and went towards the drain when we left the building. On our exit Martin and Blake had the tower unattached from its moorings on the roof. From what I’ve gathered, there were four bolts per leg of the tower, and four legs, and once undone the tower was just sitting on the blocks and connected to the building only by the wiring/cabling that ran into the station.

Not one second after we were clear of the door, a gust of wind picked up, and tossed the tower to the side, toppling it right over the side of the building, and right onto poor fucking Chris. The tower was a heavy steel structure, and had to have weighed a minimum of 500 pounds, if it weighed an ounce. He dodged fairly effectively, but went the wrong way. His left arm was clipped somehow as the tower came down, and it snapped like a fucking twig. He went down in a screaming mess as the tower rolled over him, and pinned him to the grass. Luckily he wasn’t crushed in the process.

Abby and I ran to render aid as everyone sort of took it all in. When we checked him to make sure he wasn’t being crushed, we yanked his ass out from under the tipped over tower, and dragged him to the HRT, screaming the whole time. Abby and I popped the back door open, and that’s when we heard gunfire start popping off from the front of the station. Now I knew every single person on the perimeter had either ARs or M4s, and the initial gunshot I heard was NOT a 5.56 rifle. It was throaty, and fucking clearly something heavy like a bolt action hunting rifle.
 

It was two seconds tops before the relative silence and shock of being fired on was ripped apart by our team. Mike and Patty were on the other side of the building, and they opened the fuck up on something. After a few seconds of Abby and I trying to calm Chris down, Mike came over the comms and said we were taking fire from a vehicle that had pulled up at the end of the street. Immediately Abby and I told Chris to deal with his arm for a minute, and we beat feet to the corner of the building to join the fight.

Maybe a hundred and fifty yards down the street at the end away from Main there were two station wagons. They were clearly Mercedes which struck me as odd initially, but now that I think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Some Mercedes are diesel. I bet those were.

Anyway, leaning over the hood of both vehicles were two shooters, and they were slowly firing at the humvee Mike and Patty were taking cover behind. Abby and I didn’t even say a word, we just dropped into firing positions, and starting laying down suppressing fire into the cars. My first shots sailed low and blew out the tire of one wagon, but Abby’s were spot the fuck on. I watched the shooter on the wagon on the left go over backwards as one of her shots hit him in the head or chest. As soon as that asshole went down the remainder of our people switched to the other wagon, and with all that incoming fire the other shooter got into the vehicle, and made it out pronto. I have no idea how he managed to escape being shot into swiss cheese, but some crazy shit happens in firefights. Both wagons drove away.

We didn’t pursue. No fucking clue who that was yet. We checked the body in the road when we left after, and it was a Caucasian male, maybe 30 or 35, scraggly, sparse beard and fairly thin. He had a .45-70 lever action rifle, and about thirty rounds in his pockets to go with it. He had no body armor, and was dressed in fatigue pants, and a t-shirt. We also found a fresh pool of blood near where the other car was parked, and that told me we’d hit the other prick too. Go us.

Fire superiority motherfucker. Can’t dodge every fucking raindrop.

We are cutting it close with this shit. I have no idea who those people were, and if we are now dealing with hostile, mobile competition in town, then we’ve got to change tactics. I know I bitched about me being unlucky earlier, but in reality, we were wearing four leaf clovers big time to not catch lead in that firefight. How we didn’t catch a dead body befuddles me.

Chris had a bad break. Both bones in his forearm were snapped, and we put a splint on it, and got a painkiller into him until we got back to campus. Of course he had to wait while the first crew got the tower down from its half upside down location, and loaded into the semi. We also pulled the wiring, as well as the electronics inside the station that apparently boost the signal. I didn’t see what was happening, as we were extra vigilant for any kind of motion after the attack.

Hector said he could get it all hooked up at MGR within a day or two, and once we were sure we had everything, we rolled the hell out.

Doc Lindsey took good care of our goofy broken armed friend literally on arrival. We were surprised to see that while we were away, Ollie and his people had managed to get the gate up and installed. It was refreshing to see that there was no way for anything on the road to get across the bridge now. Ollie says he has an idea for additional structures, but he needs time to think it over.

Chris is in a cast now, and will be medicated for his pain for some time. Lindsey says the break was bad, and he’ll be a hurting unit especially while it’s warm and humid out. Dunno if she’s full of shit or not, but it seems like he’ll live, and that’s good. He’s a good kid.

So where do we go from here? We compared notes again tonight and there’s still no sign of anyone who has a guilty story as far as the Westfield fire is concerned. It blows. We’re a dead teenager heavy now, with no sign of the arsonist, or the potential murderer, assuming that Emily was killed and didn’t legitimately hang herself.

Frustrating.

After today’s downtown bullshit, we are not moving an inch tomorrow. Our wall is being worked on, and we are going to formulate a good plan to install the repeater on MGR so we can get that observation tower operational. I REALLY want eyes in the sky now that there are clearly some hostiles kicking about.

After that… well, we’ll have to see.

-Adrian

July 30
^th

Very much a busy set of days here on and off campus. I’ve got a lot of mundane detail to chronicle. Where to begin Mr. Journal?

Yesterday was a day of small fires that were fairly easy to put out, but irritating. Our first and largest issue was coming up with an executable plan to install the repeater tower on top of MGR. That took the majority of the day for those of us involved with that.
 

Ryan pulled me aside after that large meeting and made his huge plea to get more assistance on the hydroponics system in the gymnasium. He has such a good point too. We really need to hit the plumbing shop near Gilbert’s warehouse, but we’ve got other things to do first. MGR needs to get done, and the repeater tower must be installed and operational, and we’ve got to staff the damn place first. It just sucks that poor Ryan is taking it in the proverbial pants while we get our asses sorted out from our elbows on this.

I really wish we could just get in the trucks and head out to that fucking restaurant supply business, but the reality is, we’d be killed. I know it with complete certainty. I’m really hoping Gilbert or Gavin comes to me in one of my infamous dreams, and they send me some amazing message that makes my life go much easier. I’m actually thinking that might be a possibility. If anyone is going to come through for me in the clutch, it’s Gilbert.
 

I KNOW that with certainty. Funny how things can change. Now that I know the one man I completely trusted after the end of the world betrayed me, I feel like I trust him even more. Sometimes trying to make sense of it all just makes things worse in my head.

While all that was going on, the rest of us on campus were working on the wall. However, with a fairly small crew, they were only able to do about 30 feet and I think that number is a stretch. Progress is progress though, and I’m happy whenever we can accomplish multiple things at the same time. Especially multiple important things at the same time. Very happy.

Today had toe pusher written all over it. Some turds circled the drain, and they got gently mashed down the grate, but fortunately none of us got pushed down with that shit. Oh, speaking of which, Chris’ arm is broke in a few places. I don’t remember how much detail I went into earlier, but it’s broken clean in three places. He’ll be in a cast for at least six weeks according to Doc Lindsey. For the moment though, he’s useless. He’s on campus only duty for the moment, but at least he’s alive, and he still has his arm mostly attached. I don't know if he'll need surgery and neither does Doc Lindsey but she's playing it by ear and watching close for infection.

As you might imagine, he didn’t accompany us on our trip to MGR today.

Because of our recent attack at the municipal station, we elected to roll exceptionally heavy today. We brought the semi trailer that had the tower in it obviously, plus two humvees, the ladder truck, and the HRT. As far as staffing is concerned, we brought Mike, Hector, James (sitting in the HRT passenger seat operating as a shooter/spotter), Dwayne, Alex, George, Chad, Abby, Patty, Martin, Blake, and Angela.

What scares me about that is it meant we left Ollie and Melissa in charge over all the new folks at campus. Ollie is not a hardcore shooter, nor is Melissa, especially now that she’s getting big and fat with that spud inside her belly. She’s been struggling with the pregnancy too, according to Ollie. Lots of back pain and cramps at night I guess, and she’s had morning sickness here and there, but when it hits, Ollie says it’s debilitating. I guess it's also unusual to have morning sickness this late in the pregnancy, but this is a subject I am far from being knowledgeable on. I really don’t want to put any additional bullshit on her, but life is filled with it, and we all need to find a way to shovel it, or get buried in it. It pained me to leave them behind, but we really needed the manpower at MGR for safety and security.

Martin and Blake had a winch they found somewhere that was pretty industrially powered. When we rolled into the MGR area of town, the first order of business was securing that area, and getting that winch to the top so we could get the tower up.
 

The undead presence at the base of MGR was very manageable all day. I think the largest push we had all day was perhaps ten undead, and with all those well trained shooters it was a piece of cake. I think the two worst parts were the waiting for those assholes that shot at us the other day to show up again, and the actual raising of the tower. The raising didn’t go quite as smoothly, or as fast as we’d hoped.

Here’s the laundry list of the shit that went awry on us:

Martin and Blake had to attach the winch to the rooftop with a cement bolt gun, or whatever they call it. They had to enter at the ground level and run all the way up to the roof carrying the damn winch, which was at least a three person job. Fucking thing was heavy as balls. When we were winching the tower up on the first try, two of the bolts holding the winch came loose from the roof, and the winch was maybe five seconds from ripping free and sending the whole tower smashing to the ground. Fortunately, Blake was a ninja on the winch, and hit the switch letting the cable play out. The tower slid down, and he managed to hit the switch again just in time to catch it before it crashed. The winch ripped free from the moorings at that moment, but only went about five feet before clanging off an air conditioning unit on the roof. Talk about lucky. Everything could've shit the bed all at once had that not worked out.

They had to remount the winch, as well as tie some length of rope to the tower to steer it as well as add some manpower to take the strain off the winch itself. The second attempt was far more successful. Getting it up and over the edge of the building turned out to be a task that required extra people. Leveraging that much weight up and over the corner wasn't something they could do easily.

Once they got the tower up to the roof we miscalculated the amount of area needed to move the damn tower around in, and they needed extra assistance from the security folks to get it all done. I wound up running up to the top of the building to lend an extra two hundred pounds of muscle to get it all done. We needed to more or less tip this thirty odd foot tall tower upright using just muscle, and a single nylon cord wrapped around what I think was a fire sprinkler pipe. I think I busted a disc or two in my back doing it, but we got it upright and in position.

Hector and Blake took over mounting the tower. They used a tap and die set to get bolt mounts put into somewhere solid, but even after fully bolting the tower down they all thought that it’d need wires as well to keep it from blowing away. Blake and Martin are going to scour campus and the surrounding towns to find strong wire and appropriately strong clips to attach it with.

Hector started to run the wiring and the gear down to the fifth floor of the building, but once he started the whole process, it became clear that there was no way he was going to get it done in any kind of a reasonable timeframe. He elected to remain behind by himself to get more work done. We were really not keen on him staying alone there to do work, and without a minute’s hesitation, Dwayne raised his big ass hand and volunteered to stay with him.

Dwayne’s a big guy, and he’s smart as well, so the two of them were a really great pair to get technical work done safely. Once we’d made sure they had enough ammunition, a scoped longer range weapon, and food and water to last at least through two nights we packed everything up, and left MGR. As we drove back, we calculated the exact distance the radios work, and they don’t quite reach campus. As in, there was a three mile span of dead silence.