Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 5): Wrath (19 page)
When he stopped everything went nearly silent. It seemed as if the entire world paused, waiting for his will to move forward again. When he spoke again his voice had lowered, and didn’t frighten them nearly as much. “Who are you? Are you with them? Are you pregnant?”
Both women had no answers to his strange line of questions. Evidently the confused expressions on their faces told him everything he needed to know. The barrel of his weapon dropped a few inches, and drifted between the ladies instead of pointing directly at Amanda’s chest, infinitely changing how dangerous he seemed.
A gasp of pain came on the wind from behind him, and he looked quickly over his shoulder. He turned back and eyed them, clearly pained by the noise. He asked them another series of questions in a much friendlier tone, “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“I’m Amanda Markliss, this is my sister Angela McGreevy. We thought our husbands came here after everything happened last summer. We didn’t know, we just saw them, those people...” Amanda stammered out the reply in as controlled a fashion as she could manage. She thumbed over her shoulder in the direction the wounded people retreated in.
“Wait, McGreevy? Dan McGreevy’s wife?” The man’s gun barrel lowered a bit more.
Angela nodded, the lump in her throat sliding down far enough to talk again, “Yeah, Dan is my husband.”
The man’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, sending more clear streaks down through the blood spattered on his face. The gun drifted all the way down to his side, and he shook his head at her. His lip curled a bit as he lowered his face to the dirt, and she knew. He didn’t have to say it.
Angela matched his welling eyes, and choked out the question anyway, “Is he? Here? Is he dead?”
The bloodied warrior swallowed firmly and looked back up at her, his eyes gleaming with intensity again as he gathered himself. He looked her straight in the eyes, took and deep breath, and said what she feared hearing most, “Dan’s dead Angela. Been dead since last July. I’m sorry.”
Angela’s face melted from the emotion bubbling inside her. Amanda curled her arm around her sister and the two women stood there in front of the man for what felt like a very long time.
Finally he shuffled his feet, turning to the growing noise of the grievously hurt people somewhere behind him. “I’m sorry for your loss, but I’ve got dead, and I’ve got dying to attend to. And as soon as I’m done doing that, I’m fucking sick of carrying around bullets for the motherfuckers who did this to my people. You'll have to excuse me.”
His face turned into a snarl of anger.
“I’ve got wrath to attend to.”
May 19
th
There are moments where I feel like I can help people. When I can offer them assistance, or an item, or food, or something, and I know, and they know that what was exchanged was important. I feel appreciated in moments like that. That make sense Mr. Journal?
Yesterday and today were good days for that.
I know this is a total jinx, but I think we might be able to get some real headway with the Adams Farm people. We’ve made some serious, positive progress in just the past couple days, and I’m happy to report that we are now thinking this might end without violence. Famous last words, right?
We rode over in a slight show of force to the Edwards family home yesterday for our prearranged meeting. I’m glad we rode heavy too, because downtown was pretty fucking thick with undead. From what Gilbert said in the HRT with me it was lighter than the previous bad day they had, which is a little alarming, because I thought it was a soup sandwich. I’m glad the HRT is a goddamn beast, because we didn’t really want to step out and start a firefight in town. I just kept the speedometer pegged on 25 miles per hour, and ran everything over. Luckily, no popped tires.
I should also note that every trip we’ve made the past two days have been shitty in this regard. Lots of undead moving around town again. I don’t know where they are coming from, other than the assumption that this is the front edge of the city’s population moving. A few times we had to stop to pull out the rifles, and as I said, that is not good news. We might need to go on a street clearing mission here soon.
Blake is now working on an idea to weld the state snow plow blade onto the front of the HRT. He can cut it down to a more appropriate size, and get it mounted apparently. He’s also got some heavy duty wire cage stuff we can put on the windows, and once that’s done, that thing will be a 120mm cannon short of being a tank. That would be awesome.
We arrived at the Edwards mobile home at 10am, which is later than I said we’d be there originally. I told them 9am. They were sitting at the end of their driveway, watching down the road for us, and from the looks on their faces, they were pretty shocked that we had multiple operating vehicles, let alone the town’s Heavy Rescue Truck.
When I hopped down from the cab of the HRT and got the M4 across my chest it looked like Larry and Candace were in La-La land. I felt like I was Santa caught by the kids on Christmas Eve eating the cookies. They were just shocked. Felt kind of pimptastic.
I introduced them to Patty, Gilbert, and Gavin, and they were thrilled to meet new people that weren’t bible thumping baby factory running Christians. I believe the expression is “thick as thieves.” Seriously fifteen minutes into our collective conversations and it was apparent everyone was not only going to get along, but get along smashingly. Remember that whole discussion we had about them not being able to come to the campus to live? Yeah that got abandoned. They’ve more or less earned an open invite to move somewhere closer whenever they want.
We didn’t need to butter them up with a sweet deal trade to get them to consider working with us, but we brought stuff for them (I owed them some .357 for the moose meat already), and we really wanted them to try and make another trade with the Adams Farm so we could have them ask some interesting questions. In the additional endeavor of making sure the Edwards family knew we were people of our word, we made sure to trade them something anyway. A gesture of good faith.
Gilbert and I have had extensive discussions, and we have been of the mind now that if the Edwards clan can trade once with the Adams clan, and say that they’ve found other people who can trade, we’ll have an “in” to walk up to the trading post. Otherwise, we’re coming in unvetted, and thus are much more likely to receive a cold or false first impression.
When we went over that idea with the others, everyone else agreed it was sensible. So our trade yesterday with the Edwards was to set up a second trade today between them and the Adams. We were successful in both endeavors. Diplomacy like a motherfucka.
Imagine that. Success. Mmm... I can almost taste it. Success. Makes me all warm and fuzzy on the inside. I feel dirty just saying it. Should wash my mouth out with soap.
….And goodbye strange and uncomfortable tangent on mediocre, theoretical success.
The Edwards family needs a vehicle big time, and we offered to repair that issue for them. We’ve got plenty of spare operational vehicles on campus that are literally doing nothing for us. They’re taking up space more than anything. We told them we had a small SUV spare in running condition, and if they were willing to help us secure a face to face trade with The Farm, we’d be more than happy to give it to them for the trouble.
They damn near died on the spot. Of course we don’t have the spare fuel to keep them in gas forever, but with a few of our small gas cans, they’ll at least be able to move around, and get the hell out if the shit should hit the fan. Anyone who has ever lost their license to drive, or had their car in the garage for a stretch knows exactly what we’re talking about here. Once you get those wheels back, oh boy… Freedom.
They agreed to make a visit to the Adams farm today, which they did after we left them with some of the trade items we knew the farm would want. Most of it was stuff we had spare. Light bulbs, toothpaste, etc. It was a token gesture from us to them to show we had good trade bait, and were serious about starting a relationship. While the trade went down we established double sniper hides in the two places we’d been using already. Blake and Patty were at one, Gavin and I were at the other. If anything went bad, then we had 360 degree line of sight. Thankfully the trade went down clean through the scopes, and after we exfil’d we met them back at their house a little after noon today. They were ear to ear smiles.
Larry and Candace said that old man Adams was happy to hear more folks were out and about in the town. We sort of knew that they didn’t go out much, so it seemed that this news was genuine news to them. Candace made a fairly large deal of the fact that we’re trying hard to make the town safe again, and we’d managed to reacquire a lot of good items for trade. Larry said they were very happy to get the items we gave them, and in return they offered up some fresh milk, which is now sitting downstairs in the fridge. It’s good, about the same as Lenny’s milk.
Everything went well enough for them to invite us back for a more thorough trade at their farm stand on the 21
st
. They gave our trade proxies a more robust set of items that they wanted us to potentially bring as well. From the looks of it all, we should be able to fill all of their requests. We won’t of course. I don’t want to come across as being resource wealthy. If they think we have extra to trade of everything, they’ll either expect it all the time and rely on us for it, or they’ll attempt to gouge us thinking that we have spare everything.
This Adams fellow might claim to be a man of the cloth, but I’ve read quite a few history books, and some of the worst people this world has ever had walk on it did their deeds in the name of their God(s). I’ve got good reason to think this guy is dangerous to my people and I. He is apparently hoarding pregnant women. That’s sketchball bullshit in my book. But until we get one of us face to face with him, we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, and we’ll keep things close to our chest.
Gilbert and Patty will go with the Edwards family on the 21st for the trade. They’re older, seemingly wiser, and represent weakness. Gilbert is also an excellent judge of character, and if he vouches for these people, then I trust his instincts. He hasn’t led us astray before, there’s no reason to think why he’d do it now.
In the meantime, we are lying relatively low and pushing forward on our other plans as best as possible. We are down Ollie, so Lindsey is on extra duty helping Melissa tend to the chickens, and make sure the crops are watched and maintained. Fortunately it’s been damp and drizzly, so watering the field hasn’t been an issue. Yay for small favors.
Because we may get the “oh shit” message at any point from Westfield we’ve decided to keep things on the down low. We don’t want to be broken up over multiple areas in dangerous places should we need to up and walk to go to their aid.
Gavin will be observing The Farm tomorrow to ensure things are fine there. I suspect he will return with zero intel, as has been the case all along. In the interest of continuing to be productive, we’ve decided to tackle some serious on campus projects so we’re all here. There’s no desperate need to clear houses, or attempt to wade into the masses of zombies that appear to be growing again. It’s like the calm before the fucking storm with those things. Blake has decided he will tackle the HRT/plow project.
I’m tired. I feel like I’ve been rambling over and over for days about nothing. Otis has been driving me nuts at night, crawling all over me. Oh shit that reminds me. The other night I woke up late to take a piss. I was half asleep, but when I came back into my bedroom and started to face plant back into bed, I noticed something small moving in the grass down below.
I kind of came to, and focused the eyes, and lo and behold, it was another cat. I watched it slink from tree to tree, then dart after something. A mouse maybe? I can’t recall exactly, but I think that’s the first cat I’ve seen since June. I think so. I wonder if Otis is getting up in the windows and watching his more wild counterparts play outside and night, and that’s why he’s driving me nuts?
Got me.
So yeah, aside from all the fucking zombies, I feel like we might be seeing some success in our near future. Huzzah and shit.
-Adrian
May 21
st
So much to write about Mr. Journal. I am totally fucking exhausted here. I have half a mind to just… say fuck it and go to bed, but I know if I pull the covers up over my face, I’ll just sit here like a bump on a log wishing I’d written all this shit down while it’s relatively fresh in my memory. Then I won’t be able to sleep, and I’ll get up, and do it anyway.
Obviously, I am still alive, which means our quasi confrontation/meeting at The Farm went well on some levels. Actually, on many levels, but there’s always something to make it fucked up. I’ll save that for last. Gotta tantalize you Mr. Journal.
Ollie returned to us from Westfield yesterday with a bag full of mixed news. Obviously he’s been with his dad at the big farm, helping him taking care of things. He said the farm itself is well, moving right along with no issues, and he said his dad was terrific too. A little frazzled from the new people driving by the farm on the regular, but thankfully things haven’t escalated to violence yet.
On a similar note, the signs that Mike and Lisa have placed around town there seem to be working to bring folks in. I guess they were visited by about a dozen folks in a few small groups asking for food and water, and they’ve dodged some pretty scary situations as a result. We don’t want folks to starve, and we don’t want to fight folks, so anything we (they) can do that achieves both agendas is awesome.
Ollie spent last night with Melissa, and headed back to be with his dad this evening after we returned from the meeting at the Adams farm. Melissa was… sad. Ollie too. They’re so sweet together it’s disgusting. On a similar note, I was sort of hoping to get some kind of love letter, or Hustler confession from Mallory via him. But… zilch. Maybe she and I aren’t going to be as regular a thing as my penis is hoping for. Oh well. I’ll take what I can get. Ollie plans on returning on the 23
rd
. Hopefully everything is safe and sound back in Westfield while he’s there.