Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (21 page)

Clearly worrisome. However, it’s not like we haven’t spent nights or days apart before. Like when I was scouting Westfield, and was out of radio contact for extended periods. It just worries me to have anyone out of my realm of protection for any period of time. What’s that called? A paternal instinct? Fucked if I know. I don’t feel like a dad to these people.

Oh, and I’ve forgotten to mention that Hector and Blake both fully believe that there isn’t enough power available at MGR to properly run the repeater, as well as deal with the energy needs that the staff there will be requiring. We need to get another generator transported there, and if we can, I’d like to find more solar panels to go there. I now feel like a tool for moving the solar panels from there to the gym, but at least now we’ve some power going to the pumps and lights for the hydro setup on campus.

So here’s the plan for now. We’re guessing it’ll take a day or two for Hector to get the tower more or less hooked up and running. I’m not sure what he’s going to need for the long term to make it permanent and functional, but I believe he has enough for now to get it up and running. I KNOW we need more power there, as well as here on campus, and that’s now our main priority.

We’re breaking up into two parties tomorrow to go outside the wall to look for more solar panels, and portable power generators. We need a beefy one to go there to run everything in tip top shape, or at least a smaller one and a few solar panels to run together. Hector’s got enough brains to hook it all up, we just need to give him the proper tools to make it happen.

I’m really hoping we find panels. I know I wasn’t looking for them when I was clearing houses all winter, and if you add the fact that most roofs were covered in snow at the time anyway, I’m betting there are at least four or five houses around here that have panels we can remove. It's also a safe be that locals with panels got them from STIG, which means if that's the case, we are already sort of knowledgeable about their removal and installation.

As I said, our reliance on diesel and gasoline needs to get addressed, and quickly. We also need to hit Gilbert’s place, and finish the wall, and go to the clinic in Westfield, get the rest of Lenny’s cows from his farm, build the fences to contain those cows, and safely train Doc Lindsey before we die of some horrid injury or disease, etc.

But that and all the other shit I’m forgetting about is for another day.

-Adrian

August 2011

August 1
^st

Sup Mr. Journal? I’m in a great fucking mood today. No sarcasm here either. Genuinely pretty happy with things as they are. We’ve gotten a lot done, and we took most of this afternoon off to celebrate it.
 

Where to begin? How about I share the fact that Mallory’s “salon” is now up and running in the admin building. Yesterday Martin and Blake tackled the project and hammered it out in what amounts to record time. I know I said it was fully set up before but that was a clear exaggeration. It’s fucking great to have a pair of guys that are so handy around here. I don’t know how we got anything done before we had them. Now that the two of them are working together it seems like no project is out of reach for us. Finding and rescuing all those people form MGR was worth it, if only for Martin’s wide array of practical knowledge.

Anyway, bromance moment aside, Martin and Blake ran some basic plumbing to the sinks we stole from that small salon as well as mounting her hair cutting chairs into the floor, and wound up setting her entire place in motion all in one afternoon yesterday. It still needs some TLC to look professional, but Mallory started giving trims to folks almost immediately. I’m shocked at the size of the lines she had. Well, saying she had lines isn’t accurate. Not like they wrapped around the block or anything, but she always had at least one person waiting to get their hair cut. Encouraging to me to know that there really was a demand for folks to get their hair tidied up. Men and women both.

Now that so many people have fresh haircuts, I’m really surprised that I didn’t realize up until just now how ugly we all were. Everyone is or was pretty shaggy and our hair is stringy and greasy. Most of the women just pull their hair back, and the men are either buzzed, or have long nasty hair that hangs in front of their eyes. Based on appearance alone, my dad would’ve described us all as a bunch of “hippie commie pussies.” Now that some of us have decent haircuts, we’re starting to look like civilized people again. It’s weird and cool. Mallory trimmed my Mohawk up nicely, and I feel like a fresh man. Feels good to… feel good Mr. Journal.

Besides getting everything rolling with the salon yesterday, we went outside the wall for the entire day split up into two teams to tackle two problems. Firstly, we wanted to run a team to go back over every single house we’d already cleared and check them for solar panels. I led that team, because I already knew where I’d been, and it required a smaller group, so I was more comfortable rolling out with fewer people and less support. I had Patty and George with me in a humvee. We grabbed a large ladder so we could get on roofs if need be.

Our second group cleared more homes that were fresh in the hopes we’d find more gas powered generators. The group rolled out fairly large and heavy again in a humvee, the HRT, and the semi trailer in the hopes we’d find something large and super awesome. That group consisted of Abby, Angela, Mike, Alex, Danny Jr., Chad, James, Ryan, and Julie. (Martin’s wife)
 

It didn’t take my group long to finish our search. The vast majority of our time was spent driving around, and not actually doing much of anything. Of all the houses our group has cleared, we found two houses with solar panels on the roof. I had really been hoping for more like five or six, but one house had a shitload of panels on it, and the other had what appeared to be a normal amount.
 

We didn’t have any storage space in the humvee so obviously we didn’t take any of the panels yesterday. We checked the panels out and snapped some digital pictures to show Martin, Hector and Blake exactly what they’d be dealing with when they returned to remove them. When we got back last night and shared the snapshots, they said the big house had standard electrical power panels, but the small house had the panels that only warm water. Logistically, I don’t know what we’ll do with the different types yet, but I’m sure one of us will come up with a bright idea soon enough.

The undead presence we encountered when we were out was marginal. I was kind of surprised to run into so few but really it does make some sense. We have been killing quite a few as we move about, and if those assholes in the Mercedes station wagons are still moving about (which they appear to be, more on that later), they’re likely killing them too. I am still worried about crossing paths with those assholes again. I am less worried about shambling, stupid dead bodies than I am about living, breathing people with guns that are trying to kill me.

After my group returned home, we pitched in on the salon work, helped the kitchen people with preparing dinner, and I relaxed and watched everyone get haircuts as they could. It was a good day for our team.

The other team had some struggles on their house clearing work. Mike was LIVID when they got back last night, despite them finding a reasonably large amount of good haulage. Geographically speaking they wanted to go rural. It made more sense to us that we’d find generators further outside of town. In town we didn’t lose power much during storms, but the longer power lines heading out into the countryside naturally led to more power outages. Frequent outages typically drive people to buy generators. In light of that, they headed out to the area near The Farm, and hit the dozen or so farms and large colonials out in that neck of the woods.

I guess there were just a ton of mistakes made. First off I should say that every one of the houses they cleared had dead people inside it. Not the good kind of dead people that are permanently dead and understand how this shit should be working either. The kind of dead people who are still standing, and try to eat you when they see you. So there were no walks to first base, if you get my meaning Mr. Journal.

Mike said they had a LOT of near misses due to friendly fire inside the houses. Some folks just not paying enough attention to where their guns were pointed, and where the other people in the house were, relative to their position. It’s so easy to shoot someone when things are safe, let alone when you’re in actual danger. Our 5.56 rifles punch through house walls like they aren’t even there. Never mind the heavier hunting style high velocity rifles we’ve got. It's really fucking easy to kill people by accident. Mike I guess chewed some asses out, and by the end of the day, they were running much more smoothly. That doesn’t change the fact that some folks almost got shot though. Scary stuff.

Mike did say Chad was acting weird during the house clearing trip. Just hanging near the back of the group a lot, and not stepping up much, like he was extra afraid or something. I don’t know if he “knew” something bad was going to happen, or maybe he was sitting back to orchestrate a bad situation to make things more dangerous for them. I just don’t know. Mike didn’t catch him doing anything specifically shady, so it’s just Mike’s gut instinct to go on. There are worse sources for me to take into counsel however.

Oh, speaking of the haul they got. Three gas powered generators, and they found one house with a facing of the roof covered in solar panels. Thank God for the green movement. They left the panels for removal on another day, but the generators came back with them. Incidentally, all of those homes had been entirely picked clean of food and usable loot. The obvious answer to why is The Farm having picked the neighborhood over. They would’ve taken everything but the generators. Remember the Pastor wanting to bring things back to a simpler way of life?

Crazy asshole.

Our plan for Hector and Dwayne at MGR was to wait until about two in the afternoon today and drive over to make sure they were doing well. We adjusted our plan immediately when we got word from Hector via radio at about eleven in the morning today. He’d gotten the tower installed with Dwayne’s help, and they had boosted the radio power so they could reach us all the way from the center of downtown. Insanity.

If the repeater tower works as it was intended, then we’ve got radio contact at least this far out heading in all directions from MGR. It could be twenty miles or more. I’m not sure exactly what the specs are on the signal boost, but if folks were using them to chain together radio contact before things died out, then there has GOT to be a huge distance it can reach. Well, when it’s full powered I guess. Hector said he had news for us, and he wanted us to come get him and Dwayne as fast as was convenient.

It took us an hour to spool up a team and head out. His sense of urgency was contained in his contact, but Mike and I both felt like he was worried about something and that in turn got us a little worried. When we arrived, there were a handful of undead in the street, and we dropped them with halligans and bats. Yay for not wasting ammunition.

Alright so Hector said staffing MGR was a must. He said during the night he and Dwayne observed at least thirty or forty undead moving about town, and more importantly, he saw both of those diesel station wagons trucking around too. I guess they were moving about on the eastern edge of town, towards where you’d have to go to get to STIG.

That told us despite killing one and wounding one, they were still ballsy enough to mount movements outside of wherever they’re currently holing up. Our two men said they didn’t see or hear any gunfire, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there killing zombies just the same. They could have melee weapons obviously, but Mike suggested the possibility that they had suppressors, which scares the fuck out of me. Even a homemade suppressor would be kinda shitty to deal with. Not being able to hear where fire is coming at you from scares me.

Anyway, Hector said they ran dark all night long to prevent them from figuring out the two of them were even inside that building. I didn’t even think of that to be honest. None of us had. If we’re staffing the top floor of the tallest building in town, and we turn on the proverbial lights, it’s like putting a giant motherfucking cherry on a sundae that says, “Please head to this location, and violate me. Thanks.”

So Hector put heavy curtains up in the apartment they crashed in, and actually went so far as to use masking tape he found to tape everything shut so what little light they made was entirely invisible from the outside. His worry was that the two wagons would see him, and they’d head over to MGR and do something foolish like try and set the damn building on fire. Or… something much worse. Don’t know what that might’ve been, but it seems like there’s always some asshole thinking of something worse to do to us.

We checked over their work, and helped Martin and Blake install the wire to hold the tower firm they dug up at some point in time yesterday. We also dragged one of the generators we found up to the roof of the building and got it plugged into a small power network. Martin and Blake said they’d figure out the best way to set the generator up. Those two are like twin MacGuyvers. Give them a tampon and a stick of dynamite and they’ll build you an ambulance. Or a plane.
 

So we got them out, locked the building up tight, and made damn sure we didn’t lead anyone back to our place here. That’d be peachy eh?
 

Actually, I wouldn’t mind being assaulted here. Fuck them assholes. We’ve got walls, a huge ass gate that’s nice and sturdy, and a lot of people that can accurately shoot the weapons they have. If there’s any place I’d want to engage an enemy, it’d be here. It certainly does make me feel much better about all of our preparations to defend campus. If we are attacked, we are far better off now.

We do need to do something about a second gate on the other side of the bridge though. Any asshole doing eighty in a big enough vehicle will destroy Ollie’s gate despite it being beefy and strong. A second gate to stop traffic on the other side would be a huge asset for us. I’ll mention it to him tomorrow to add to his already far too large to-do list. Poor fucking guy.