The Failed Coward (40 page)

Blake had good news, and bad news. Bad news first. Moving about town he has seen quite a few folks. He guessed at maybe as many as twenty since we last saw him. Blake said that most of them seemed like returning families, or locals who somehow had remained completely out of sight the entire winter. That seemed unlikely to us though.

He unfortunately reported that he had personally watched many of them get killed, repeating the same fucking mistakes that people made back in June. He said several of them returned to the grocery store, which is now empty, as well as the police station (also empty), and the pharmacy (yet again, empty). Basically people who left town are returning and going where there’s nothing left, hoping or expecting shit to still be there for them. Shit, I think most of the food in town is now either incinerated in the wreckage of STIG, or sitting in our cafeteria here at ALPA.

Of the twenty or so people he has seen in the past four days, Blake thinks maybe ten are still alive. Morons have no idea what they’re doing. Trying to clear a major group of undead with a fucking bolt action rifle, no armor to speak of, no backup, and no goddamn plan to gtfo safely. How did they think it was going to end? 

Sigh.

The good news is this: stupid people die, and leave their shit behind. Blake showed us his haul inside the gas station, and he’s picked up five rifles, and seven handguns. I am very happy to report that one of the handguns was a 10mm, and Blake was more than happy to part with the ammo and the weapon, which suddenly made the Kimber back here a lot more attractive as a sidearm. It’s just a fine weapon, and honestly, I’d really like to carry it at one point. 

Blake also said that the farm has been lackluster in terms of evidence. He pushed pretty hard for someone to join him on his daily recon mission, but we kindly backed out of that idea. I still don’t trust him fully, and the last thing I want to do is disappear somewhere in the woods with someone who strikes me as a few letters short of an alphabet. AEIU and pretty much never Y.

Nonetheless, he claims that there is daily activity there, and he thinks it is very sketchy. 

As a big thank you, we gave him a few eggs, about ten cans of various foodstuffs, a six pack of Coke, and I kicked him another ten rounds of .303. I’m hoping I find more, as keeping him slightly dependant on me for Enfield ammo makes me think he’s less likely to do anything weird. Of course he has other guns now, as well as ammo, so maybe that’s entirely moot, and I’m just a dipshit.

You ever stop to think about that expression Mr. Journal? Dipshit? Implying that one has been dipped in shit like some kind of fucked up éclair or something? When you break it down, it’s fucking gross.

Blake said he’s all set for stuff, but he’d REALLY like us to hit the auto parts store so he can get the garage back up and running. Of course I pointed out that he’d need more security there if he was making noise, and that building a fence would be a necessity. His expression was priceless when he looked around outside after I said that. I imagine it was a lot like the face I was making when I realized how much fucking crap needed to be done on campus.

Sort of a “are you shitting me?” face, mixed with a “oh yeah that’s right, fuck my life” face.

Our next meeting with the Blakester is on the 29
^th
, six days hence. We told him we would do our level best on the auto parts store, and if he found any building supplies, especially ones that built chainlink fences, to give us a call. We almost gave him a walkie today, but for some reason I bailed on it. I dunno, chalk it up to a gut feeling.

Oh, so the return trip back here was a clusterfuck of undead. Downtown’s population of zombies has literally doubled, which begs the question, WHERE THE FUCK WERE THEY? More noises and activity from locals returning is starting to interfere with my quality of life, and that’s saying something, because my life sucks. You really need to fuck things up to make it worse for me right now.

Highlight of the day: Gilbert is the fucking man. All those nights he went home and blew us off to “rest” or whatever, he was working on building weapons racks and a workbench for the reloading gear. While we were gone earlier today he had Abby and Ollie help him move it, and install it in the new armory in Hall E’s basement. All of our unused weapons are now stored in a cool, dark, reasonably dry environment under lock and key. He says we can start reloading brass as early as tomorrow if we want. Fortunately, Walt had oodles of 5.56 and 7.62 reloading supplies, and Gilbert says we’ve got at least 2,000 rounds between the two.

That’s the best news Mr. Journal. Straight up made my day. More good bullets is good.

I R GUD AT ENGRISH.

Tomorrow I’m back on house clearing and fence acquisition duty. We’ll see which happens after a scout of some areas we haven’t spent too much time in. I KNOW there is a shitload of fencing at the schools, but that’s like, dead frigging center in town, and there were a LOT of undead there earlier today. Mike is coming for more water on the 25
^th
too, so hopefully he has news regarding Operation Snatch.

I’m out like a boner in sweatpants. 

-Adrian

April 25
^th

Abby smashed the living shit out of her right middle finger yesterday. Lost the nail and everything. Poor girl cried her eyes out. 

Nice start to our chat eh? I figured I’d start with a jolt to get you on board Mr. Journal. 

We were on fence acquisition duty yesterday when it happened. Scattered around town are these little municipal properties that were part of the water department I think. There’s a little outbuilding, a raised area that I think is some kind of leech field, and it’s all surrounded by a six foot chainlink fence.

I never thought I’d type chainlink fence quite so much in my life. Nor did I think my genuine personal safety and wellbeing relied so much on finding enough of it. It amuses me as well that such a simple invention can be so effective in providing safety for me and my people. The concerns of the barely alive I suppose.

We were rolling through the side of town that we’ve been clearing house to house, and Abby pointed out the fence and the fact that it was pretty damn clear of anything moving. We opted to get the fence while it looked clear. It also helped that there was a large duplex right next door that we hadn’t cleared, so we figured it was a nice two-fer.

House came first, as we didn’t want to risk there being living people inside. We breached and cleared one side, then the other side. Mercifully, the house(s) were empty, and actually had a really large amount of food between the two of them. Of course what passes for a large amount of food each day gets smaller. Enchilada sauce was the gem find of the day. One of the sides of the duplex had a crib in a spare bedroom, and as you’d expect, there was some formula and baby food in the cupboards. A breast milk pump as well. Melissa and Ollie were very thankful for that.

We were stoked to find two more small woodstoves. They were the small ones like the stove we just put into Hall E, and we were able to remove them and get them into the truck with little trouble. We also grabbed the chimney piping or whatever it’s called as well. One of the duplexes had a well stocked gun case too, which was a nice find. No weapons of note really, but more usable ammo in a variety of calibers and gauges. I’m starting to note a local love affair with the .357 magnum. I swear I’ve found more .357 revolvers than anything else here. It’s a good caliber, but kinda heavy for what we need guns for. 

Once that was done we had about six hours of light remaining in the day, and that was exactly enough time to roll up the entire fence surrounding the area we had scoped out. It was a square area about 50 feet on a side, and we got the last of the poles into the truck at right about 7:30pm or so. That’s when Abby pan caked her finger. The big blob of concrete the last pole had sat in was still on the pole, and when she was helping Patty get it situated, I guess it shifted and rolled right onto her right middle finger.

Her yelp of pain sent both Gavin and I into a fit, as we were checking around the back of the duplex when it happened, and didn’t see it go down. Both of us bolted around the corner and to be honest, were relieved when we saw her clutching her finger like she was. We’ll take a busted fingernail any day over a bite wound.

Today Abby is enjoying the fact that she has a huge bulbous white bandage at the tip of her middle finger. She now has a super powerful fuck you gesture to give when she’s feeling generous, and believe me, she was feeling generous. We gave her a half a Vike to cut the pain a few times, and it made her loopy as hell. Gavin couldn’t stop laughing at how stupid she was on the painkiller, and that made her even more pissed. I think he did more to prevent his getting laid by laughing at Abby than Patty could ever achieve professionally cock blocking him.

Oh kids. 

Her finger is pretty fucked up. I think she cracked the bone, and it’s swollen up good, but luckily it’s just the tip of the finger, and as long as she takes it easy for a few days, I think she’ll be okay. She might have some serious PTSD over being a nail short for a month or two, but she’ll live. Unfortunately, her busted finger has her on campus patrol. I can’t risk her out on a run anywhere, and if we don’t get the swelling down, she’ll be in a world of hurt. Upside for Abby: painting just nine fingernails should save her approximately 10% of the time she normally invests in nail painting. (let’s not think about how she’ll hold that teeny fucking brush in her bad hand though)

Today we spent the day with yet another Mike and crew visit from Westfield. We experienced our first pain in the ass over the semi we’re using a roadblock though. When they radio, we need to move the van blocking the bridge, then drive to the semi, then move the semi, let them through, move it back, blah blah fucking blah. Pain in the ass. However, it’s a lot like the old TSA grope festivals before the end of the world. We need to give up some comfort for security. 

Shrug.

I need to go on record and say officially that Mike is a straight up badass. He’s been so good to us here it’s insane. To think now that we were so close to going to war with this guy kills me. It makes me wonder about how many people that wind up fighting each other could’ve been good friends if circumstances were only a little different. I guess that’s spilled milk.

Mike brought Hector with him as well as LaFrenz again, and I guess Mallory tagged along to offer haircuts to everyone here. I was hoping he was going to bring one of the three girls I was talking to the other day, but oh well. I guess trying to pick up a chick really ought to be on the back burner for me.

Mike didn’t bring a ton of trade bait for the water. I guess that’s because they didn’t really need anything of ours. He said the warmer weather has let them search some of the houses that were buried in snow on the fringes of town, and that they’ve found a fair amount of food themselves. He also said they’re knee deep at Lenny’s farm getting the fields prepared for planting and whatnot. Ollie had to laugh at that. He alluded to the fact that his father was a wee bit of a slave driver during the spring. I’m wondering now if Ollie left strictly to escape working for his father right now.

Hector took a time out with LaFrenz and worked on our trucks. He brought spark plugs, oil filters, and other shit and actually did oil changes, and what amounted to a poor man’s tune up. That was super nice of him. 

Mike took a tour of our fieldwork, and actually we spent the majority of our afternoon out there working as a group. Having a good sized physically able dude to help really sped things up. Mallory came out as well after she gave everyone that would sit still long enough a fresh haircut. She’s a good worker as well. In about five hours we put up something like 80 feet of fence. I think it also helped that Ollie and I more or less perfected the installation system the other day, and being able to start off doing it efficiently cut down on wasted time.

During our work I dropped the hint to Mike again that we needed more 5.56 ammo due to the town being suddenly overwhelmed with moving undead. Our target rich environment was making us a wee bit ammo poor. I told him about the living stragglers returning/appearing in town, and he said they were experiencing the same problem, though to a lesser degree. You see, they managed to clear town of the vast majority of undead before winter due to having a lot more military grade hardware and ammo plus personnel at their disposal. We have no armory here in town. In fact, the closest armory/base is Westfield’s. I know on the opposite side of the city there was an Air National Guard base with a reserve center, but that might as well be on the far side of the moon.

Anyway, Mike said that the folks arriving in town were avoiding his people like the plague, which I thought was odd, considering Mike and his men roll in military vehicles wearing their BDU’s and body armor 24/7. They are clearly American soldiers in America, doing their job (so to speak) and the fact that people are literally scattering when they appear doesn’t bode well for whatever was happening where they were all winter. 

I’m now wondering if there are other units of guardsman that aren’t being quite as proper as the fallen Lt. Daniels’ men. That’s a scary thought. I’m envisioning scenarios of small vacation towns up north suddenly being overrun with people trying to escape this area where it’s more densely populated, only to find all the people from down here suddenly went to the same place at the same time. That’s the inherent problem with everyone having the same escape plan I guess. Do something no one else is thinking of. I did.

There are almost no businesses in the rural vacation areas that aren’t entertainment oriented. Lots of restaurants, ski slopes, ice cream shops, bike rental places, etc. There are a lot of hotels, bed and breakfast joints, etc. Per capita there has to be half the grocery capacity of this area. There are towns of 300, or 500 people that swell to 2 or 3,000 during the summer months as folks escape the city. Those extra people don’t grocery shop. They eat out. If all those people suddenly appeared in that town, we’re talking ten, twenty thousand folks trying to survive off of two, maybe three grocery stores total.