Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 5): Wrath (15 page)
Inside the resort, behind the fortified bridge and across the river, the guardsman and their “citizens” lived a life of relative ease. The ski resorts are set up to last through inclement weather pretty good, so they had a fair amount of electricity, fuel, and food to last. Those outside in town were forced to rely on whatever they could scrounge in town, or hunt for. I guess a saving grace was that there were precious few undead up there. Luck of the draw perhaps?
Lindsey guessed and said maybe 80% of the survivors that didn’t make the cut into the resort made a living together after they collapsed into a luxury condo complex nearby. Raids from other locals diminished when their targets weren’t spread out, and they could organize hunting parties, raiding parties, etc. They never amassed enough firepower to attempt an assault on the resort. Lindsey said her family was fortunate that they never got seriously hit by anyone.
Warm weather saw things get much worse for them. By that point the food resources in the resort had run dry, and the guardsman ventured out, and started doing what the other batch of survivors down the road had been doing. Going door to door, searching for scraps. Mind you, this is before crops could yield any food, and with so many folks hunting and fishing, the local wildlife had been decimated as well.
There was no food left for the resort people to find, so they started taking it from the out of towners. Obviously, this was met with resistance. And unfortunately from the sounds of it, the shotguns, hunting rifles and handguns of the folks in the condos were no match for the humvee .50 cals. There’s no cover against those Mr. Journal. They’ll go right through a whole house and kill the people on the other side.
It was a massacre. Once the scale started to tip, the guardsman evidently decided that the other groups were too much of a threat to their survival, and expendable, and they purged them. Lindsey’s tear filled description of the events sounds an awful lot like the holocaust. People dragged out of their homes kicking and screaming, and forced to leave, perform what amounted to slave labor at the resort, or die on the spot.
The leader of the resort was a Colonel in the state National Guard, and Lindsey didn’t recall his name, but she said he was clearly insane. If her story is true, then I have no doubt about it. Lindsey said she and her family escaped because they never moved fully into the luxury development. They stayed at her uncle’s summer home and only visited when they caught or shot trade bait. She said they were exceptionally lucky because of a small stocked pond in the back of her uncle’s land. I guess they pulled a fish or two out of there every day, right up 'til it froze over. After that she said they managed to trade a few snowmobiles, a deer Doug shot, and some other things to survive. It wasn’t much of a life from what she said, but they couldn’t see risking a return to the southern part of the state.
When things went badly at the resort and the condos, Doug and Lindsey decided it was no longer safe for them, or the girls there. They had to risk coming back. They had no fuel, a truck that had been beaten up over the winter something fierce (the Nissan I saw), no food to speak of, and they were almost out of ammunition for their two weapons.
Doug snuck into the resort area where some of the vehicles with fuel were left behind after the guard unit killed or enslaved everyone. He managed to siphon a full gas can before he bugged out. Lindsey said he had claimed that he was chased into the woods by soldiers shooting at him. Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Imagine what was going through his head? All they’d been through, and here he was running for his life with barely enough fuel to get his family hopefully somewhere safer. Desperation.
They put the gas in the truck, loaded up what they had (which by appearances was just their two kids), and they left for here in the middle of night with the headlights off.
She said the trip home was remarkably quiet. They encountered ZERO living souls the entire trip home, which is very discouraging to me. On the interstate they drove by multiple groups of undead, shambling up and down the road in varying intensities. They drove around them as best as possible, and when absolutely necessary, they’d stop the truck, and Doug killed them with a wood splitting axe from her uncle’s house. Lindsey has that same axe next to the fireplace. When she pointed at it I noticed the red stains on the handle. Macabre.
For the most part they didn’t fight much on the trip aside from the few times they stopped to try and siphon more fuel from the crashed or abandoned cars. She said it took them an entire day to make it back here. This is about a four or five hour drive on the interstate normally, if that tells you anything.
There were two facts that she shared that disturbed me a great deal. The first fact was the gridlock going north. After they’d left the road there had been a series of accidents that stopped all forward progress heading north. She described one tragedy after another on the highway with pileups, cars riddled with gunshot holes, and clusters of undead that sounded enormous. She lamented the fact that they couldn’t stop to search the police cruisers left behind at the crashes for guns or ammo. It’s funny how your priorities change.
The second thing that really bothered me was the city. The interstate doesn’t run straight through the city, but circles it at a few miles out. If you want to get into the city, you need to get off on an exit, and make your way on surface streets to the center. From the interstate though, you can see all the tall buildings, and in many places, you can look down from the elevated highway and see the shopping plazas, hospitals, neighborhoods etc.
She said the city was practically destroyed. The larger shopping plazas had craters covering them, and cars were flung about like toys. The larger buildings at the city’s center were rotted out scorched hulks, clearly having burned out a long time ago. She said many of the overpasses going into the city were destroyed, broken in half by targeted munitions of some form or another judging by her description.
Clearly craters are caused by explosions, and most likely they were caused by bombs. Bombs probably dropped from planes. I don't think any other nation on Earth would've had the military organization and power to bomb our domestic soul last fall, which means we probably did that to ourselves. I can’t help but wonder why we would bomb our own cities? I mean it does make some sense to try large explosions to clear the masses of undead, but honestly, bombs do more damage to buildings and roads than they do to civilians or human targets, and likely even less to zombies. As I’ve said a thousand fucking times, the only way to kill these fucking things is to destroy their brains. Bombing a pack of them doesn’t guarantee shit for head injuries.
Whoever pulled the trigger on the idea of bombing our own soil to kill zombies must’ve known that wouldn’t be effective. How do I know it wasn’t effective?
Lindsey said as far as the eye could see, in every direction heading into the city, were masses of undead. Door to door, streetlight to streetlight, from crushed and exploded car to smashed apart mailbox, were the walking dead. A moving, undulating sea of rotting flesh.
That’s maybe 40 miles away. There is nothing stopping them from turning this way, and making the trip here.
I don’t know how much sleep I am going to get tonight. I’m suddenly filled with doubts, and the fear that at any minute, the entire population of the city will arrive here on my doorstep.
Tomorrow is Abby’s birthday.
-Adrian
May 15
th
God I’m tired. Feeling like shit yesterday really took it out of me. I feel better today, but really drained. I’m good, and Lindsey’s two kids are good, which tells us that it was probably something we ate. Maybe there was something funny on the vegetables? Who knows.
Blake reported seeing nothing at The Farm yesterday, and with me still feeling a little queasy today, he went once more by himself. His report today when he returned home was mundane. He did say he saw two vehicles moving through town on the way back here, and that’s a little sketchy. One minivan, and one sedan. No word on passenger count. He thought they didn’t see him, but there’s no way of knowing.
Today was Abby’s birthday, and we’ve been planning a little shindig for her. We don’t have much to work with anymore obviously, but it’s the thought that counts. To make our plan work, we sent Abby and her more or less healed finger out with the house cleaning crew. Gilbert feigned illness so he could stay behind to help.
He and I worked in the kitchen all day and managed to bake a chocolate cake. We had a few cans of cocoa powder, and lots of flour, and eggs and etc, so he did the magic work, and I made some poor man’s frosting out of confectioner’s sugar and more cocoa. Abby I guess likes fish, so once we had the cake baked up, we went to the shore of the lake, and cast our lines out for a few hours.
Gilbert seems weird lately. He’s definitely been short of temper, evidenced by the whole sticking a gun in Blake’s chin incident. I dunno, maybe the stress of it all is getting to him. We chilled out at the water in some lawn chairs with a few beers and waited for something to bite.
By the end of the afternoon we’d brought up four lake trout and a bass which was far more than I thought we’d get. We should fish more. It’s a pretty big lake, and as long as we ration out our fishing days, we should be able to keep ourselves in fish through the warmer months with little effort. It was nice to spend some time with the old man where we weren’t on 100% vigilance. He and I don’t ever get to be civil to one another.
I was definitely put into moment of bad mood though when we were coming back to the campus. I noticed two zombies coming across the bridge right past the single van we have. I haven’t seen a zombie up here in a very long time. I put the lawn chair down, dropped into a firing crouch, and punched one’s ticket. Like a douchebag I forgot to bring my melee weapon with me, so I dropped the other one with the M4 too.
Not sure what led them here. Especially in the middle of the day. Ollie hollered out on the radio asking what was up, and I told him we had a small breach. He called back that he’d get right on finishing the fence and gate. Once that gate and fence are up, our worries diminish dramatically.
Gilbert got the fish ready, and I transported the damn zombie corpses back to the body pile, which was fucking ripe. There isn’t much there at the moment, but the combination of spring warmth and decomposition and maggots make it just nasty. Smells fucking rotten. I gagged hard trying to get those bodies taken care of back there.
We got everything else prepared for dinner. The cake was ready, the fish were ready to be cooked, we had fresh vegetables from the pots, some canned stuff, we made some of the infinite Jello we have, as well as a smattering of other shit. It was a good spread.
The weather was really nice, and we had everything set up outside for when they all returned. Needless to say, Abby was pissed at Gavin because it was clearly his fault that he didn’t tell her we had set this all up for her. She was honestly surprised. Very happy, but also a little embarrassed.
There are no gifts really we can give. Another gun from the stockpile? More ammunition from the crates? Some clothes we got from a dead person’s house? It all seems meaningless now. I think Abby was happy that we were all here, all safe, and celebrating. Patty was a bit of an emotional wreck at one point. Her kid’s first birthday without Charles was tough on her. The Williams girls had some special time to work it out, and they returned to the fresh fish, and a half assed cake made by two Army men.
It wasn’t dinner at the Ritz, but it was nice.
Happy 18
th
birthday Abigail. May you have many more.
Tomorrow I’m headed to The Farm for another recon. Mike and the guys and gals are returning on the 17
th
for a trade and meet. With any luck they’ll have something good to trade, or at least have good news about something. We’ve got lukewarm news to give them about all this Farm business.
Otis has decreed it is time to sleep. He’s bonking his forehead into my elbow, which is his way of saying “get settled, so I can crawl up your ass for warmth.”
I don’t get it, it’s nice and warm tonight. I’ve got the windows open too, and there’s no need to role play being a dingleberry on my taint to stay warm.
Weird ass cat.
-Adrian
May 17
th
What’s the expression Mr. Journal? When it rains, it pours?
Yeah that’s the one. I think just to keep things fresh I’m going to invent my own one. When Adrian gets fucked, he gets royally fucked.
Things are messy. Like, really messy. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’ll guess I’ll jot it all down in the order the mess came in, that way it makes some sense. Structured bullshit.
Yesterday Abby and I went out on a recon of The Farm together. Her finger is much improved, and it was a good way for her to get out and get some action without really stressing the digit. If something did happen, she was well enough to put lead downrange accurately, and honestly, if anything happened we’d be retreating and not engaging. Plus it was nice to spend time with her. She got some good basic observation experience yesterday, and anything I can teach anyone is good. That’s not me tooting my own horn, I think the more we can teach each other in general, the better off we all are.
This Farm place is starting to irritate me. We haven’t seen shit. Sitting in the fucking dirt for ten solid hours or more is really boring, and the black flies are murderous right now. We actually found some old mosquito netting, and we’re covering ourselves in it while we’re out there to avoid the damn things. I hate those flies. They are God’s favorite way of irritating the living. That and the zombies. Fucking things.
Anyway, the only thing that happened yesterday was sweat and bug bites. We saw shit-all that was useful, and it was a total waste of time, yet again. I’m dangerously close to either moving on the place with force, or throwing in the towel and saying fuck it. Blake can deal with it however he chooses. We have too much to do to sit here all day doing nothing. It’s nearly time to shit or get off the pot.