Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 6): In the Arms of Family (18 page)

I did ask some of the kids to hit the lake the other day, and after digging up worms for a few hours, some of them were able to crank in some fish. I think they were pickerel, and there might’ve been a bass, but honestly, I know fuck all about looking at fish and knowing what they are. I focus more on the eating of them. Martin and Ollie can, but I didn’t think to ask them. Today for dinner we added the fish they caught to our menu, and I gotta say it was delicious stuff. I’m thinking in order to moderate our consumption of the lake’s fish, we should put a hard cap on how many we pull from the lake each week. I’m gonna talk to the other folks to see if they have an idea on how many we can take. I’m thinking maybe eight fish a week is about right. That’s enough for variety here and there, gives the kids something to do so they’re helpful, and hopefully won’t deplete the stock.

Wall progress continues to be amazing. Despite the current work being on the outskirts of the campus, and away from easy access, the fact that we are cutting trees right where we are digging the trenches means less transit time for logs, and shorter production time. We’ve managed to keep a steady speed of 80-100 feet per day, which means the wall will be finished in comparatively no time at all.

I think I mentioned this already, but the fringe benefit of the log cutting is the enormous amount of wood we are generating for the wood stoves for winter. It seems like every tree we trim is making 6 to ten small logs for fires, as well as the wood from the branches. Some of that will just be for fire starting, but some of the branches are three or four inches in diameter, and that’s plenty big enough to burn. It’s nice that we’re killing two birds with one stone. We really need to rely heavily on the wood stoves this winter to cut down on our overall fuel consumption as the cold sets in.

Tomorrow we are taking another day off outside the wall in the hopes the heat breaks. We’re going to double up on the wall crew instead. We’ll rotate in shifts to stay cool, hydrated, and work a little less hard. With any luck, we’ll still get a healthy chunk of wall done. As for the day after that, I’m thinking we can maybe start sitting down and seriously talking about the process of staffing MGR, and getting the damn radio repeater on the roof and powered. Once MGR is staffed up…

We start making a serious plan about going to Gilbert’s warehouse. He's been gone a month now, which is strange to think about. That task is so long overdue now, I’m starting to think that when we finally get there, it’ll be fucking empty. Well, more aptly, it’ll be filled right to the rafters with hundreds and hundreds of hungry undead. Because that’s how I’d do it, if I were evil.

Why half ass such a juicy target, when you KNOW we’re gonna make that trip.

We really need to have all of our I’s dotted, and T’s crossed for that.

-Adrian

July 25
^th

I got laid today.
 

I wish had cake to celebrate. Mallory and I have been completely non sexual since Westfield went up in flames. I haven’t had the heart to ask for sex, and I know she hasn’t been in the mood since all those folks died. She had some close friends and acquaintances die that night, and I can speak from experience that loss directly changes your sex drive. Her need to get her mind in order was far more important any silly need for me to get my dick wet.

Today however, that changed. First thing this morning I was awoken with her hand on my dick, and her kissing my neck, and ear. Things proceeded very rapidly from there, and within minutes we were sweaty, sticky, and really enjoying each other.

Best alarm clock ever.

The heat broke last night. Today was nice, and relaxing in bed after a fairly long bout of really vigorous sex in the cool morning air was something I really enjoyed. She and I didn’t talk for the longest time. She had her head nestled on my shoulder, and ran her fingers over my chest, until finally she started talking. I was really surprised by what she had to say, and what she asked for.

“Adrian I’m sorry I’ve been detached and a bitch. It’s not fair to you. Talking with Abby has been really helpful, she’s such a sweetheart,” Mallory said to me softly, and in an apologetic tone.

I kissed her forehead, and replied, “Mallory don’t be silly. You’ve lost a lot of people who were your friends, and you have nothing to apologize for. I’m glad talking with Abby has been helpful. If you think it’ll help, you can always talk to me too.”

“I know. I’m just not used to putting my bullshit on people,” she said.

I just nodded.

“I wanted to ask a favor, it’s kind of dangerous, but I think it’s important right now, and I know it’ll make me feel better.” She lifted her head and looked at me.

I lifted my head, and looked at her. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Well, it occurred to me when I was talking to Abby that I’m depressed for a couple of reasons. I mean, I’m sad my friends are dead, and I’m sad the school was burnt out, and all that, but I think I’m also really messed up because I don’t have anything productive to do anymore.”

“We’ve got a ton of shit to do around here Mallory. I’m sure you can find something that interests you.”
 

“I know, but really, I want to get my salon back up and running. People need haircuts, and I know the women here need them. We’d all feel better if we could get cuts when we wanted, and it’d make me feel better if I could do them, and I just would love if you could help me make that happen. I don’t need much. Just some stuff from a salon, and a room to set it up in.” Mallory was hopeful, almost pleading.

“What stuff? Supplies, equipment?” I asked her. Logistically, I didn’t want to agree to something that’d be too dangerous. As much as I wanted to make her happy, people shouldn’t risk their lives for haircuts.

“I have most of what I need to start already. I’d really like to get a hair washing sink, and one of the stylists chairs, both of which we could just rip out of an existing salon here somewhere. As long as we were careful, and picked a salon that was clear, it might take twenty minutes. I can go to help. I really want this Adrian, please.” She looked me dead in the eyes and made her case.
 

I remember putting my head back on the pillow and running the numbers, so to speak. I was going over my internal map of town and trying to recall where the different hair cutting places were. I knew there were at least five or six right in the downtown area, which might work if we were heading downtown soon. Then after a bit, I remembered a small in-home salon off of one of the rural roads heading towards Westfield. Cassie had gotten her hair done there once, and she said the lady was terrible. At most, it was five miles away, and there couldn’t be more than eight houses on that road. If I could get a crew together to clear the houses for supplies, we could potentially get some good loot, as well as Mallory’s shit to start a salon.

“I have an idea, but I need to talk to some of the other folks first. Anytime we head out it’s gotta be for good reason, and as much as you want to start this up with the right gear, it might need to wait. I’ll let you know tonight.”
 

She kissed my cheek, thanked me, and we went back to relaxing. It was a few hours, and a second round of sex before we joined the rest of campus and the work on the wall.

Like I said we were planning on working in shifts today on the wall to help fight the effects of the heat. Fortunately, the heat had largely lost its bite today. I think the thermometer outside Hall E peaked at two or so at about 85, which was a ten to fifteen degree drop from the past few days. The humidity also took a break today. What that meant was fewer breaks on the work crew, and that meant we got a lot of wall done.
 

Not only did we get wall done, but we were able to use the backhoe to move those giant rocks we’ve been digging up into a defensive placement. Because we need to move in and out of campus with semi trucks, setting up a series of staggered road blocks is tough. Basically, if we can set up an arrangement of the rocks to cause incoming traffic to slow down and zig zag, that puts them in a bad place for when and if we need to open fire on incoming vehicles. Sadly, if we space the rocks out so a semi can get through it, then a regular vehicle can fly right through it.
 

So more or less, we can’t put in an effective road barrier system of that type. To put the rocks to good use, we used them as back fill on the berms, and as middle of the road barriers to prevent anything larger than a four wheeler from passing down the road in either direction. Specifically, we put them in on Jones Road, and Prospect Circle. Really, there’s no reason for any vehicle to be moving down there of any size without our blessing. If we do need to get down there, then we can just move the boulders. This way, no one can just drive in, cherry pick the houses for whatever reason, and leave. I imagine as time goes on, we’ll be populating those houses anyway, so this is like an investment in future security.

While helping with all that I managed to touch base with Abby, Patty, and Mike. They are my main, I dunno, leaders or whatever, and I wanted to get their opinions on the idea of making a run to that street to clear the houses, and hit the salon to get Mallory’s stuff.

Abby and Patty were gung ho when they heard, “Hair cut.”

Mike was on the fence for a bit, but wound up agreeing that the road seemed like a fairly safe bet, and it would give us a chance to take out some of the folks we wanted to get more experience with. We agreed that a run to the street could be done as early as tomorrow, and if that went well, we’d schedule a run downtown to get the repeater from the municipal complex.
 

With that in place, and MGR fully staffed, a run to Gilbert’s warehouse was much safer. I’m pretty sure that the repeater on MGR would give us radio power to get all the way to that warehouse, which means we would be entirely connected at a moment’s notice across the entire geographical area we are attempting to control.

After our day’s labor on the wall, we sat down and enlisted a small team of willing volunteers. We’re bringing Angela, Danny Jr, Abby, Mallory, Dwayne, Chris, and Renee. With me that makes seven, and I think that’s enough to get it done reasonably quickly, and safely.
 

We’re leaving here at about 8am tomorrow morning so we can get more work done before the heat comes, if it comes at all. It’s also just sensible to leave early to maximize our daylight time. My sincere hope is that this goes well, and we can get Mallory’s “salon” set up fast.

Incidentally, when I told Mallory we were on for tomorrow for a run to a small salon, her sex drive kicked in immediately, and I got lucky for the second time today.

When she applies herself, you gotta love her work ethic.

Tomorrow, we’re off to find stuff for here. Hopefully, we get some good shit.

-Adrian

July 26
^th

I feel like today was a clusterfuck. A grade-A clusterfuck.

I don’t remember jinxing myself. I felt like I was pretty clear in my choice of words yesterday, and I definitely didn’t say anything that would’ve led to a jinx. I feel as if today, it was just shit luck, or the evil powers-that-be are just… fucking out to get me. Which in and of itself, is probably bad fucking luck on my part.

Our run to get Mallory’s shit went reasonably well, but clearly something had happened on that street. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but whatever it was generated a fairly large amount of dead bodies trapped inside one of the houses, and we nearly lost control of the situation. I chalk this up to us bringing new folks that don’t quite follow the rules of how things are done just yet.

The road that we cleared today was perhaps five miles long, and connected Route 18 to another country road that leads to… the country. Along the roughly two mile length there were nine houses. Six on the left side of the road, three on the right. Four of these homes were spread out and largely isolated from the others, but the remaining five were clustered on the end of the road near Route 18.
 

To give us some practice with the new people, we started clearing the houses that were solitary. To give everyone a chance to learn, we inserted the new folks into a stack with Abby and I, centered and without a firearm (we let them have a melee weapon though), and simply let them observe us as we went room to room.
 

The four houses that were solitary were simple and clean. On the fourth house, we rotated Angela into the group, and let them clear it without Abby and I. We did this because after looking inside the house, it was obviously empty. It was one of those open concept homes and through the windows, we were almost 100% sure the place was safe. We were right.

The haul out of these homes was amazing. Simply amazing. We found three moveable wood stoves that are almost exactly what we need for the remaining dorms and structures on campus. We didn’t move them today, we just left them behind for the moment. We also found a fairly substantial amount of consumables and canned foods. There was a gun safe in one of the homes as well, but it had a combination lock, and that means we need Martin and his cutting torch to get inside. Hopefully we can get him on it fast.

We also found a few hunting rifles, some shotguns, a couple of handguns, and a suitably normal amount of ammunition to match all those weapons. Gotta love folks who live in the country.

That’s sort of when things went to shit on us.

We did a full clear on the first of the last five homes because we saw a zombie inside. Talk about raised hackles. Abby, Myself, Chris, and Renee went in and we had Chris and Renee with melee weapons again. Abby was on point, and around back we had Angela make some noise to draw the zombie(s) away from the door.

Abby pried the door with a halligan, and we breached. Through the living room, then the dining room, and at the back kitchen window above the sink, we saw the walking dead body of a teenage girl. She was pretty when she alive. The kind of girl that guys like me would’ve wanted to try and say hi to. The kind of girl that you wanted to ask to go swimming with you on a hot summer day like today. If only to see what kind of swimsuit she was going to wear.