Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (24 page)

We’re hitting the med clinic in Westfield. There are supplies still there and I know there are a ton of pieces of medical equipment that we really need here locally. I don’t think we’ll be able to transport it all back here, but we will take what we can, and move it here tomorrow. At the very least the trip will bring us closer to the ruins of the school, and it’ll be good to see what it’s like down there now. I wonder how many undead have shuffled into the void.

We’re getting closer to hitting Gilbert’s warehouse, and that’s exciting, and horrifying all at the same time. I don’t really know how to feel about it. I really wish that old prick would stop into one of my dreams here and make me feel a little better about things.
 

I could use a little internal peace.

-Adrian

Becca

Rebecca Ring hunched down behind the fender of the well used Chevy Malibu parked on the side of the street.  It was a hot afternoon, and it would be at least two more hours before the temperature dropped and the air became comfortable.  It didn’t help that the endless pavement of the small city absorbed the sun and sent it back, baking her from the top and bottom simultaneously, like a virtual convection oven.  She narrowed her eyes and looked out over the abandoned surface roads leading into the city.  The yards were overtaken by untended grass and weeds, and fallen branches littered the sidewalks and streets. The world looked empty, and uncared for. Where she stood was as far as she or her brother Caleb, or her boyfriend Max had dared to venture into the city since the dead had taken everything over.

It had been a long time since June 23
^rd
of last year.  Becca didn’t know exactly what the day was, but she knew summer was nearly over, so that meant either late August, or early September.  Their food was running short, and it hadn’t rained in some time, so drinking and bathing water was an issue.  No matter how little they ate or drank, it always seemed like they were running out of something.  Caleb and Sophie’s five year old son Adam ate like a horse, let alone what the other four adults ate. 

Try as hard as she might, Becca couldn't stop reminiscing and dwelling on the events of last summer. Everything went to shit that late June day.  Becca was working over the summer as an RA at her college in the city, just a mile or two away from where she was crouched presently.  Becca’s parents couldn’t take her in, due to her dad being dead, and her mom living in senior housing several towns over.  Her brother Adrian couldn’t take her in either.  He and his girlfriend Cassie (who Becca thought was awesome), probably had sex on the living room couch far too often to risk that situation.  Caleb, the brother she and her college boyfriend Max had run to when the dead came alive, was only a few miles away, and the four family members plus boyfriend stayed hidden inside Caleb’s condo for months, eating the food they had and raiding the other abandoned condos in the complex.

That didn’t last long.  When cold weather came, they needed a place with a stove or fireplace to stay warm, and in the first few inches of that winter’s snow they hoofed it over a mile in the dead hours of night, breath steaming from their mouths and noses as they searched for homes with a way to stay warm inside them.  The cold five wound up breaking down the door to a small home on the corner of the first suburb heading out of the city.  The noise the busting wood made drew the attention of what seemed like an armada of the dead to Becca, but the frightened family flattened themselves on the dark floor of the home, and the dead eventually passed by, leaving them be.

Becca had never been more afraid than that night.  They took precautions after that to ensure they were as invisible as could be. Once they had painted the windows over to make them opaque, and quietly screwed what wood they could over the doors and window frames to shore them up against attack, they finally had a small place to keep warm, and call home.  They ate sparingly over that winter.  Caleb had a few years in the Marines under his belt, and when he could (and when it was necessary) he slipped out and destroyed the undead in the neighborhood as quietly as he could, carving out a small island of safety around them.  When the walking dead and their festering stench were finally mitigated, some small animals returned.  Squirrels, raccoons, and the occasional skunk became their bread and butter, but the small critters were frail and as hungry as they were.  Caleb’s wife Sophie became quite the wild game chef over the small fireplace, turning the meager scraps into edible meals.

But right now, things were sparse.  Becca and Caleb were almost out of bullets for Caleb’s handgun, and they had picked the bones of the suburbs around them long since clean.  They’d laid low when the larger groups of scavengers came through, and even had to shoot a few people when threatened.  Sadly, those were the best days.  The other living people almost always had food and water, as well as guns and ammunition.  It pained Becca to think that murder was the most effective way to survive now.

It seemed that war would be fought no matter the state of the world.

Becca looked carefully in both directions as she stood, and slinked across the street to the brown brick apartment building.  They hadn’t been inside this building yet, and there was a good chance there was a treasure trove of food inside.  Becca hefted the hatchet she’d found a month prior in the side of a dead man's head as she ran to the door.  There was an even better chance there were undead inside.

*****

“Wow, how many did you have to kill?”  Caleb Ring asked his baby sister as she unloaded her backpack’s contents on the kitchen table of their meagerly fortified home.  Cans of food rolled in tight circles on the laminate top of the retro 70's style kitchen table as she smiled widely.

“Sweet sixteen.  One for every year you’re older than me, grampy.”  Becca winked at her brother.  Caleb’s age of 36 was hardly old by anyone’s standards, but that didn’t stop the younger sister from ribbing her brother.  Sometimes the other people surviving with them thought that was the only way the two could communicate. Sophie and Max often stared at each other with blank expressions as the two argued incessantly over entirely pointless things.

“Kiss my ass, fetus,” Caleb replied without hesitation as he organized the food into the two major food groups:  the good, and then the shitty but edible.  Sadly, the shitty but edible pile was the largest, as it always was.  Everyone at the table sighed at the giant stack of canned creamed corn.  It would be another week of runny bowel movements.  Becca laughed and remembered her brother Adrian’s name for bouts of diarrhea: ninja shits.  They always snuck up on you.  It made perfect sense.

“This won’t last us more than three days,” Sophie said as she sat one of the cans of corn down softly.  She looked over her shoulder in the dimming light of the house at her sleeping son Adam on the couch.  His angelic little face was resting peacefully, thumb planted firmly in his mouth.  Becca watched as her nephew slept.  She was secretly thankful he was down for the night.  When Adam was awake it was a task to keep him from making too much noise.  Five year olds were a beast to deal with.

“We’re going to have to go further into the city.  That or start looking for a better place to live.  That minivan on the corner still works and has enough gas to get us at least a hundred miles I think.  That’s an option, just get in and fucking go.”  Caleb sat down in the wooden chair and rested his head in his hands, thinking out loud.  The rest of the adults joined him, debating a course of action. A plan for life.

“If we are planning on leaving, we need to make thure the roadth to the interthtate are open.  I know at one point the polith were putting up roadblockth on the rampth.  It’d thuck to drive all the way out there jutht to turn around again.  Plus the thide thtreeth had a ton of thmall accidents,” Max offered with his heavy lisp.  The rest of the adults had entirely forgotten about his speaking quirk.  Constant exposure will do that to you.

Becca chimed in, “We can run out on foot in a day or so.  It’s as far to the highway as I was out today.  We can hoof it there and back in a few hours, find a good route, and then get the hell out.”

“Where do we go?”  Sophie asked no one in particular.

“West.  The towns out that way are smaller, and the houses more spaced out.  We’re more likely to find fireplaces and stoves too, and there are a few farms scattered about.  With any luck there is still some kind of crops growing naturally out there and we can find some kind of food.  Worst case I can hunt stuff,”  Caleb said.

“Plus mom and Adrian and Cassie are out that way too.  If anyone is still alive, I bet Adrian is,” Becca said. 

Caleb nodded emphatically.  Adrian had almost qualified for the Rangers when he was in the Army, and he had years of experience with guns and fighting.  Adrian was smart, resourceful, and Becca was right.  He had all the tools to be alive right now.  “Do you think you can check the way to the highway tomorrow morning Becca?  You’re the fastest one on foot here.  Well, you and Max are.”

Max responded before his girlfriend could, “I’ll go.  You don’t have to go Becca, I got thith.”

Becca smiled at her boyfriend of two years.  The end of the world having been a bit of a strain on their fledgling romance, for better or for worse. “No, no silly.  We go together.  That far out in a direction we haven’t been yet means we go in a pair.  Watch each other’s backs and all.”

Max smiled, and the family smiled with him.  A new plan had been formed.  It required more fine tuning later, but finally it seemed to them like hope might be an option.

*****

“What the fuck is that?”  Becca asked her boyfriend as they peered through the overgrown hedge in a small house’s yard.  The two of them were flat on their stomachs, torsos fully buried in the dark green shrubbery.

Max squinted and looked at the end of the street where the on-ramp for the interstate was.  Perched about a hundred yards ahead and directly in the middle of the ramp was a large green vehicle.  Max couldn’t quite make it out, but he knew it was some kind of military truck.  A Hummer maybe.  “I think it’th a Hummer.  I think it’th running, can you hear the engine going?”

Becca turned her head and listened with focus. “Yeah, I can hear it.  Should we check it out, maybe it’s the Army?  Maybe things are finally coming around?”

“Yeah that or thome athole thtole an Army truck and will thoot uth on thite,” Max said in a hushed but sarcastic tone.

“I got a feeling about this Max.  We need to check it out.”  Becca looked at her young man with a nearly desperate expression.  It reminded Max oddly enough of the first time they made real love in her dorm room, back before the undead ruined everyone’s lives.  That memory combined with his curiosity made him nod unconsciously, and the two stood up to head to the military vehicle a few hundred feet away.

Not a second after reaching his full height Max felt a sharp burning sensation in the meat on his shoulder blade.  It felt like he’d been stung by a handful of angry bees, and after yelping in pain, he twisted away from the pain, and realized what had happened.  While they had been on the ground a zombie had silently shuffled across the grass behind them.  Their intense focus on the truck ahead combined with the faint rumble of the military motor allowed the dead woman to get right on them. 

Max spun away, leaving a plum sized chunk of his flesh in the older woman’s mouth.  Becca let out a panicked, “Oh shit!” Without thinking she swung her hatchet down at the woman’s head, buryng it firmly in the skull at the forehead.  Sadly Becca didn’t hit her with enough force to kill, merely enough power to lodge the hatchet in the bone where it stayed.  The dead woman, still dressed in her torn open business suit from work on June 23
^rd
staggered, spat out the lump of Max’s warm flesh, and let out a silent snarl. Her teeth were coated with a fresh slick of red blood.

“Get the fuck down,” a male voice from behind them said calmly, and forcefully.  Becca had heard that tone before.  Her brothers, and father, all men with military time had that voice.  It meant business.  Becca grabbed Max and tossed him to the grass.  A sharp crack broke the near silence of high noon in the suburb of the city, and the undead business woman’s head erupted as if Becca’s hatchet was a bomb that ticked its final second.

“Fuck fuck fuck.  I’m bit.  Oh shit I’m bitten.  Oh God.  What the fuck now?”  Max’s lisp was gone.  It took death’s imminent presence to straighten his speech out.  Max rolled around on the green grass with Becca trying to hold him firm.  The young man reached impossibly, trying to touch where the teeth had sunken into his back. Behind him he left behind thin red streaks of his blood on the vibrant natural green of the long grass.

From the other side of the hedge a tall man pushed his way through.  Becca looked up from her crying boyfriend to see who had come to their rescue.  Through her own tears she could see he was tall, at least a few inches over six feet, taller than all her brothers, but not as thickly built as the Ring men.  The man wore the khaki uniform she recognized as Army.  Slung across his chest comfortably was a military style rifle.  He had his hand on the grip and she knew he could point it at her or Max and end them if he felt inclined to.  His skin was pale, like he hadn't slept in days, or weeks, and his eyes were sunken. From his body armor she guessed he was National Guard. It paid to be the daughter of a military man these days.

“He’s bit isn’t he?  You know we have to—“ and the soldier paused.  His dark eyes locked onto Becca like he’d seen a ghost.  His eyes almost glazed over as a new set of footsteps approached from the street behind him.  An entirely confused Becca watched a young girl pushed her way through the same hedge the solider had a moment before, stopping at his side.  She had a pistol in her hand, and took the situation in as Max whined in pain.  The girl stopped cold when she saw Becca as well.  Both of them looked shocked. Becca didn't know what to think, or what to say.