Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (29 page)

It’s like P90Z. The Z stands for holy shit I survived the zombie apocalypse, lost forty pounds and now look like I could easily be a cast member in 300.

I guess it’s not all bad.
 

Once we had the parking lot clear, the streets around the clinic clear, and the bodies stacked up and out of the way, we lit a funeral pyre. It does sound stupid for us to do that, but we’ve got tactical reasons. Pretty clever shit if you ask me. The dead bodies everywhere around town are like disease filled landmines. When we finally get around to dealing with them, they’re likely to be ROTTEN and filled with all kinds of pestilence and whatnot.

We had maybe 80 bodies at the clinic just outside that were just around and about so burning them now before the disease sets in was a smart idea. Remember how I said the zombies don’t rot, and don’t have maggots or anything? It’s like the evil power that motivates them preserves them, and kept them warm enough to stay mobile through the cold months. It’s like they’re smoldering with hatred towards the living.

Unpleasant though to say the least.

Plus, when we did the MGR run afterward, Mike said he’s got a great view of the clinic fire, and if those Outsider motherfuckers go to the clinic to find out what the smoke is about, Mike will see them, and hopefully gather some intel. So haha asshats. Joke’s on you. I’m hoping they show up in the middle of the night tonight and Mike watches them fumble around, scared out of their mind as they try and figure out who cleared out that many undead and then took the time to deal with the bodies. It’s a calculated show of force as well as a way to try and get intelligence about these assholes.

We didn’t go inside the clinic today, that’s tomorrow. We could see through the ground floor windows though that the place had a large amount of undead inside. It will be a real bitch of a clear, and we’ll have to do a choke point and pull operation to do it safely. Set up a car stereo blaring our favorite female pop singer, make sure a door with some kind of blockage is opened, and then we just plug them as they come out. Lather, rinse, repeat, then go inside and clear the place out the old fashioned way. Hopefully it goes well.

Mike and Patty are awesome at MGR. They say the movement is very light, but the dead are definitely out and about. Mike says they move around like waves. They’ll move one way in town for a few hours, then something will get their attention and they’ll turn in a different direction. Almost like they operate on their own set of tide tables. That really creeps me out.
 

Once again we increased the MGR water and food supply so now they have a full ten days of water and food on hand. They aren’t eating or drinking as much as I thought they would, so it turns out that’s not that large an amount of food. I’m really happy they aren’t draining us. It’s also helpful that the crops are yielding good shit now. Plenty of veggies on the regular, and the kids continue to get fish out of the lake.
 

Hunting has dropped though. Our wild game take is down dramatically. The wall means less creatures are wandering into campus, and that means less wild game. That subject came up at dinner tonight, and we’re thinking of setting out traps in the area behind campus to draw in stuff we can shoot. I think Blake said he’s already making salt licks so we can bag some deer, or God forbid a moose.

That’d be delicious.

Tomorrow we hit the clinic. Wish us luck Mr. Journal. Might need it.

-Adrian

August 13
^th

Well. That went well. Well-ish.

Since yesterday all I’ve had on my mind was the fiasco at the clinic downtown. I say it went well, but I’m really being sarcastic. It went fucking awful. We overlooked a few really small details and it damn near cost us quite a few lives. Not cool Mr. Journal.
 

It’s always a little thing that gets someone killed it seems. I mean maybe I’m wrong, but it’s like I cover the big details, the concepts really well, but some tiny little fact escapes me, and it winds up spiraling out of control into an event that gets someone dead. It sucks balls.

We rolled out early in force after getting in touch with Mike. Mike said the Outsiders came near the clinic in the middle of night like we'd hoped, observed the mess from afar for maybe ten minutes, and then left in a hurry. He said the two wagons were back, and he saw four adults, all male. One was really tall and thin, one kind of short and rotund, and two who were generic. They booked it pretty fast due to what Mike described as an ‘untenable amount of the dead' that had flocked to the clinic again. I guess setting a huge fire in the middle of an abandoned town that’s still filled with undead tends to draw those undead in. Should’ve thought of that. Seems like a no-brainer in retrospect.

Once Mike gave us the all clear to roll downtown, and the heads up that the clinic had been surrounded by undead yet again, we packed up for a long day out on the town with that in mind, and we headed out.

We didn’t roll into the place like our warehouse breach plan would’ve had us. We set up a firing line in the street about 120 yards out yet again, and opened up on the massive crowd that had reformed in the street and parking lot of the clinic. It was a fucking mess.

Instead of a good straight line we were too staggered, and not ten minutes into the shooting it became fucking apparent we were going to get surrounded. Abby and I were firing out from the flanks and dropping undead as fast as we could move our sights, but it wasn’t enough. I don’t know where all these motherfuckers came from, but there had to be two hundred and fifty of the bastards. Abby hollered out she needed support, and I was already pot committed on my side, and it was about to totally shit the bed on us, so I ordered a fall back into the vehicles.
 

Abby and I went cyclic just trying to drop bodies to turn them into shit for the undead to stumble over, and that bought us enough time to regroup the vehicles a couple hundred yards away in the intersection near the pharmacy I shit myself in. It was weird to set up a circled wagons last stand deal in the middle of Main Street. Fucking surreal.

Now that we were that far away from the herd heading from the clinic, and we’d broken the line of the undead coming at us from the rear, we had enough time to reload magazines, encourage the new folks that everything was indeed very much still under control, and then get our nerves steadied to deal with the remnants still heading our way. It was a perfectly good example of how a retreat can turn into a reorganization period, then into an assault. That's also why you shoot people in war who are trying to escape.
 

The slaughter began in earnest, and it was a tide of dead. Fucking-A that felt good after nearly losing our shit. We pissed through so many rounds in the ten minutes following our displacement the streets were covered in brass. We couldn’t walk around with nearly slipping and falling. I made sure we focused on using the .22 rifles as much as possible because we’ve still got a ton of that ammo around, and frankly, we had the time and ability to do so.

What a rush though. I really felt great afterwards. Of course more bullshit was headed our way, but for the moment, I felt like a goddamn rock star. We had weathered the storm, and I was happy with how it went. I mean it was also a rush to see the other folks proud that we had survived. It’s a bond you only get in a really bad situation like this. I remember some of the horrible ambushes and IED attacks Kevin and I were in back on Route Irish, and I tell you what, there’s little that’ll build a bond faster than surviving what you feel is the time God has chosen for you to go.

The camaraderie is something special.

We moved on the clinic a few minutes after. As I said our plan was to set up a choke point at the front doors using loud noises (read: Lady Gaga) to draw them out and through the door setting up a kill zone that we could control. We’d keep the HRT parked slightly behind us, and if the door became overrun, we’d simply drive it forward, using the plow blade to block the exit, and then restart at a different door, or shoot over the plow blade as best we could to clear the passage.

All that went like fucking clockwork right up until the point the undead came spilling out of a side access door around the corner of the building. I have no idea why twenty odd zombies would’ve gone to a door that wasn’t even facing our way, but they did, and lo and motherfucking behold, one of the dumb bastards leaned on the emergency plunger bar, and the exit door sprung right the fuck open. After that they simply went to the noise we were making, and we had major fucking issues.

The main doorway of the clinic was a glass double door that swung outward. It was also one of two double doors (inner and outer, like an airlock sort of), creating a small dead space to catch the cold air for winter. Basically a place to put your mats to wipe the folk’s feet on. We had to deal with some undead inside the innermost door, but we were happy to see someone had the presence of mind to lock that inner door, keeping them in. We wound up busting it with a halligan to get it open to set up our kill zone.

The undead started coming out one or two at a time, and that was easy work. Plinking away with the .22, or waiting until they were outside and them braining them with the point of the halligans was tit. When it got to three or four at a time, we had to focus, and we started having three people on the door, two to shoot, and one to stay on point with a halligan to get anything that crept too close. A lot of these undead had died violently. Bite marks all over, with torn throats, giant chunks missing from their arms, and scratch marks from nails on the faces. Gory stuff.

When the largest burst of undead came at us, I want to say a group of maybe ten or twelve at the same time, all rushing forward, I heard Martin yell out from our rear, “Holy fuck more from the side!”

At the time I was standing next to the HRT’s driver’s side door, which was opposite the side of the building the undead were coming through. I took off at a run, HRT still running, and wrapped around the ass end of the building as gunfire just exploded at the two locations. The three folks at the main door, one of which was Blake, just opened up as that crowd started to rush the opening, and Martin whipped out one of Gilbert’s AKs and went to town. The sound of the AK chattering sent chills up my spine. Not a sound I like at all. Even if it’s friendly, it makes my blood run cold for a split second. I had too many experiences with that noise meaning someone I cared about was getting lit up for it to sit well with me.

I hate that fucking rifle. I don’t care how reliable it is.

I rounded the back of the HRT, cleared my lane of fire, checked for anything past the undead I might hit with any over shots, shit my pants a little when I realized how many were there so fast, and I started shooting. I dropped three or four right off the bat in the first few seconds. Once the lead line of zombies went down and Martin had finally gotten himself under control, I looked over my shoulder and saw that the front door was going to get overrun. Immediately I screamed to no one in particular to drive the HRT into the breach of the door and seal it shut. If another door opened right then, we’d lose the whole operation. Better to plug the hole we knew we had, and deal with any other leaks first.

I think it was Angela who drove the HRT into the doorway once the three folks moved out of her way. It had to be her, because I think she’s the only woman who can drive stick. I don’t think Abby can. It might’ve been Amanda, but I can’t say for sure. Some blonde woman. Did a good job. Blah blah.
 

Great job actually. Saying that does whoever did do it a disservice. Without that kind of clutch reaction, we might’ve had dead folks on our hands yesterday. The HRT slammed into the opening with a crunch of glass and steel, shutting it completely, and allowing us to focus on the dozen or so undead still coming at us from our right side. Once that initial threat of the main door was sealed, we dropped the other undead in just seconds. Overwhelming fire I guess.

Fuck my life. Wow what a shit moment.

I can’t believe none of us thought to shut the fucking side doors, or check to make sure they didn’t or couldn’t open easily. It blows. If we’d just put a fucking concrete block or two in front of that side door we might’ve avoided all that bullshit. We are so fucking lucky. Unreal. Note to self: At Gilbert’s Warehouse, please take a moment to investigate and secure all exterior doors.

After my profanity laced tirade directed mostly at myself, I had everyone clear the parking lot once again, seal off any exterior doors, and check all the ground floor windows to make sure no rooms were being overwhelmed by zombies. Last thing we wanted was to have a few of them smash a window and come spilling out. There’s little we could’ve done to plug a window broken in that way.

Fortunately, we were able to push a few cars in the parking lot against the doors we wanted sealed, and then we were clear to back the HRT away. Once it lurched out of the way with Martin at the wheel, a few of us just lit the fucking doorway up at head height, and mowed the plug of undead standing there down. After that, we were able to enter the building with our breach team, and go room to room, putting them down.

The breach team as we discussed it was Hector, Patty, Angela, and I. Outside we went to our blocking positions as they would be at the warehouse job, and we did it as close as we could to the real deal. The inside of the clinic was a goddamn mess. Gore everywhere. I don’t know what happened in there, but the entire place looked like it was crusted over in blood and bits of people. Granted, it was all dried and desiccated and rotting from having sat there for a year or more, but the impact wasn’t lost on us. The place looked and smelled like a slaughterhouse.

There were so many dead. I know I had two magazine changes, and everyone else had at least one each, which puts our headcount somewhere around 150 dead inside the building. I can’t even fathom that number today. I don’t remember shooting that many targets in that building, and I certainly didn’t think there would be that many dead in there. I shudder right now thinking about how all those dead folks were just meandering inside that building this whole time. I've driven by there more times than I can recall. Gross.