Adrian's Undead Diary Enter the World of AUD

December 30^th.

                The first wave came today.  It won’t be the last. 

                My hands are shaking like a leaf right now.  It’s taken me an hour to get just these first few sentences out.  Jesus I’m so amped up on adrenaline right now it’s not even funny.  I’ve gotten so used to killing zombies I’m not getting the rush out of doing it anymore, but holy shit. 

                Deep, slow breathing.  Inhale.  Exhale.

                Little better.

                The 29^thwas a very nice day.  The weather held firm for us from an hour before dawn all the way to about dusk.  The waiting is horrible though.  I was back in my sniper hide in the tree line the entire day and didn’t take any breaks at all.  I don’t think Chuck took any breaks in his hiding spot either, and I know Gilbert didn’t take any breaks.

                We got setup damn early on the 29^thbecause we were expecting them to show up at dawn, which is a typical time to launch assaults.  Usually your enemy is asleep, or doing a shift change, or just waking up.  It tends to be an effective time to hit someone, and there was no reason to expect them to do any different. 

                 Abigail has been a treasure.  She zips around on the snowmobile every couple hours to make sure we all have something to eat and drink.  I don’t know what path she’s blazed with the machine, but she must be taking a pretty wide route to move around and not make visible tracks or be heard near the road.  It’s nice to see a friendly  face every few hours, and the hot chicken broth keeps the biting cold away.  It’s also funny when she comes up to where I’m laying and she can’t find me.  I’ve got a white fleece blanket on top of me I drew on with green and brown markers.  It’s amazingly effective camo.  She comes up following her own footprints and starts whispering my name until I respond.  It’s funny.

                 We wrapped up yesterday about an hour after dusk.  Gilbert made his way over to campus on his snowmobile after and we had a family dinner.  No one really talked for most of it.  We’re all just fucking beat.  Mr. Journal if you’ve never stood active watch when you’re expecting to be attacked it is easily one of the most mentally draining things you can do.  Have you ever expected bad news?  Ever dreaded a phone call? Imagine that feeling, only much worse, and it never goes away.  Every day you wake up (assuming you can even fucking sleep) and there are endless hours of holding your breath to look forward to.  It was killing us.

                After eating in silence Gilbert and Randy had bonding time over a shooter video game, and I sat with the rest of the Williams clan going over what-if scenarios.  They were so scared yesterday.  I can’t blame them.  Every day that went by with no action meant we were one more day closer to a much more likely violent encounter.  I volunteered to take watch first, and Charles said to wake him up at midnight to switch out.  I sat in the dark downstairs with Otis on my lap for hours, listening to the nearly inaudible hum coming from the gas generator in the basement.  I stared out the windows into the middle of campus, looking for dark shapes moving around.  I started to get worried about getting firebombed.  We hadn’t considered that yet.  It doesn’t make sense to hit us like that though.  They want to kill us for what we have, and burning the place down makes that all worthless.  I woke Charles at 1am, and face planted on my bed for our 4am roll out.

                Patty woke me up with a knock on the door at 4am sharp.  She’d made me a cup of coffee just exactly the way I like it.  Light cream, smidge of sugar.  Granted it was powdered creamer, but I won’t bitch.  That was the first time I’d been woken up with a cup of hot coffee since mid June.  Cassie used to do it for me if she got out of work early.  She’d get home and brew some and wake me up with it.  I miss that.  It’s weird how your brain works after violence.  I’m reminiscing about Cassie and morning breakfast after everything that happened today.  Too funny.

                Downstairs Patty and Randy had woken up early to make us all a big breakfast.  With no eggs we’re scraping the barrel for breakfast options, but they did a good job.  I’ve got a few frozen bagels left over, and they’d gotten those out with jam and jelly.  Cream cheese is long since history.  There was cereal and rehydrated milk, as well as poor man’s bacon.  Patty had taken some of the fatty venison and cut it super thin.  It was amazing.  Gilbert ate like a beast for an old guy.  I get a kick out of old people with big appetites.  So many elderly folks eat like birds, but not Gilbert.

                We filled our bellies, geared up like every other day, and headed out.  There wasn’t much waiting today.  We had company within the first hour.  Abby had just gotten over to my position to give me a travel mug of chicken soup when I heard something.  It was like.. a brushing or swooshing noise.  I can’t describe it.  I grabbed her by the waist of her pants and yanked her down into my cover and started scanning through the scope.

                It took me about a minute before I saw the bastard.  He was dressed in mostly white skiing gear, and was trucking down the road on cross country skis.  Strapped across his back was a rifle.  I had already measured out my range and the wind was calm, so I leveled off the crosshairs on his chest and watched him come down the road.  He slid along at a decent clip until he got to the area where we were set up, where the spike boards were.  I don’t who to thank, but the route he took slalomed him right around the boards.  I had my left hand on the nylon rope too in case I had to yank them out of the way.

                He stopped almost dead nuts in front of me, 25 yards away.  The guy undid his poles and got his rifle out and started scanning campus through his own scope.  I was praying Chuck didn’t let into him with shotgun.  It was just starting to get light out though, so there was a good chance he didn’t even see the guy.  Captain Snowpants surveyed campus and did a really shoddy job of checking his 9 and 1 o’clock, where we were hidden.  Once he’d seen enough, he slung the rifle and whipped out a small walkie talkie.  It was a cheaper one, like the kind you get in stores for vacations, or concerts.  He radioed someone up, and started skiing back up the hill towards Auburn Lake.  He got about halfway to the Prospect turn off and stopped to wait.  Once he settled down I sent Abby away.

                I told her expressly to not use the snowmobile, and to get the fuck back to Hall E.  Patty had the .38 revolver there, and I told her to get everyone into the basement because shit was going to go down.  Abby was shaking from the cold and adrenaline and fear like a motherfucker.  I steeled her up though, and she got herself under control quick.  She was off and I was left alone to do my wet work.

                Captain Snowpants stood in the middle of the road like fat fucking bullseye for me.  I kept the scope on him as the sky continued to lighten.  After maybe 15 minutes I could hear oncoming vehicles coming up and over the crest of Auburn Lake Road.  In total they brought 4 vehicles.  The first vehicle was exactly what I feared they might have; a giant blaze orange state plow truck.  Big ass diesel truck with heavy duty steel plows on all three sides.  I could see two people in the cab.  Behind that was a Ford Explorer, a Nissan Xterra, and bringing up the rear was a jacked up redneck special Chevy pickup.  I couldn’t get a head count out of the SUVs on the account of tinted windows, but I could see two men in the rear vehicle.

                Captain Snowpants talked to the passenger in the plow then slid back and did the same to the passenger in the Explorer.  After that he backed away, and the convoy of assholes rolled forward slowly.  There was perhaps 75 feet of real estate before the plow hit the spike strips, and as they crept forward, I got my shit ready.  I already had four sets of reloads for the rifle in front of me on the blanket on the ground, and to my direct right I had both the .22 and my 12 gauge.  On my hip was the .45, but that was a clear last ditch weapon because I couldn’t afford the time to reload it in the middle of a fight. To my left was the chainsaw should I need to cut the trees.   I laid the four nylon ropes out connected to the spike boards and got ready to yank them.

                Setting up a kill zone is an art form.  If you set it properly, and they panic, you will slaughter your enemy.  Your kill zone is often referred to as the X, or the Box.  To survive a properly planned ambush the first thing you need to do is get off The Box.  Get out of the kill zone.  The best ambushes leave you without that choice.  My plan was to exhaust their retreat option first off, and let the fuckers flail around like turkeys in my barrel.  The second thing you can do to survive an ambush is to assault into it.  Literally attack the ambush with more ferocity than they are attacking you with.  Couldn’t do much about that if they managed it, but I was betting they wouldn’t be prepared for what we had for them.

                We had another huge stroke of good luck when the plow drove over the first nail boards.  The tires didn’t blow out, they just slowly deflated and the truck made it all the way past the last board before the driver realized his truck was fucked up somehow. He also totally missed one row of the boards, which left them on the road, and still dangerous to the other vehicles.   The big truck shuddered to a halt and kicked slightly sideways in the few inches of snow.  They were on a slight downhill right there and because he didn’t stop early, the Explorer and the Xterra drove right onto the boards.  The Explorer’s passenger side tire blew out with a loud POOMPH!  I watched the fucking driver shit a brick and duck from the noise.  I smiled.  Idiot.

               The Xterra driver was much calmer, but he still didn’t stop his vehicle in time.  Quick as a mongoose I grabbed the rope connected to the board nearest his front tires and gave it a tug with every ounce of strength I had.  Through the snow the rope went taught, and pulled the board maybe 6 inches in my direction.  It was just enough to get both his front wheels to blow out with their own POOMPH!  We’d been pretty fucking clever with the ropes too, bending them around one tree each so when the ropes went taught it sent the line in the wrong direction, so it looked like they were being pulled from a different direction then where we actually were.  If they saw the straight interruption in the snow from the rope, they’d fire in that direction, and that might give us a few seconds to return accurate fire while they wasted ammo shooting at ghosts.

                  Anyway, the motherfuckers had three vehicles dead in the water with at least one flat tire or more.  The rear truck caught on and came to a skidding stop at the steepest part of the little downhill, and sat motionless.  I put the crosshairs on the grill of the truck and leaned back slightly to watch everything unfold. 

                  The people in the vehicles spilled out pretty haphazardly.  Most of them got out and immediately started looking at the flat tires like a bunch of morons.  Two of the guys got out, dropped to their knees and actually pulled security, and I made a note where they were.  They die first.

                 Sean and his shiny round glasses got out of the passenger side of the Explorer.  Even from 30 yards away his facial expression was *priceless*.  At first he was stone faced, completely blank of expression.  Then, as he stared at the flat tire on his SUV he slowly started to smile, and then he looked up and around, surveying the area.  The sun was just about up in the sky high enough that we had a nice dawn blue hue to the world.  The temperature was already starting to rise too.  You could feel the warmth coming in over the horizon.

                  Sean actually started to laugh, building and building until it was damn near maniacal.  The guys around him slowly and carefully backed away as he visibly started to lose his mind.  I mean, he clearly fucking snapped.  He didn’t go nuts, but the look in his eye told me everything.  This was a guy used to outsmarting people.  He’d made a living out of always having the upper hand.  Guess what motherfucker?  

                  Pwned. 

                 He smashed the butt of his rifle into the hood of the car a few times and it was everything I had to not laugh and cackle in my little victory over him.  (Writing this is cheering me up big time Mr. Journal, just wanted to insert that while I realize I’m smiling again finally.)  Sean spun around, looking for me, and eventually one of the other guys pointed to the rope line in the snow, heading directly towards my 9 o’clock, well away from me. 

                 Sean started yelling, screaming really, and literally foaming at the mouth, “ADRIAN!  THIS ISN”T A GOOD WAY TO DO BUSINESS MY FRIEND!”

                 Yeah fuck you buddy. 

                 “WE CAN TAKE WHAT WE WANT ADRIAN, YOU CAN’T KILL US ALL!” 

                 Try me you cocksucker.

                   Sean motioned for his people to start moving towards campus, and I decided I’d had enough.  I dropped my eye down to the scope, and confirmed it was still on the grill of the truck.  I flicked the safety on the Savage, and sent a .30-06 round screaming into the engine block. 

                   They couldn’t move the plow forward, nor the truck backward.  If they moved into either tree line they’d run into me, or Chuck.

                   They were on my X.  If they didn’t assault into us to escape immediately, they were fish in a barrel.  My barrel.

                  As soon as I killed the Chevy’s motor they opened fire in random directions.  One of the most important rules of gunfights is called fire superiority.  Basically gun battles are won by whoever can get their enemy to duck.  It is really that simple.  If you shoot at them more than they are shooting at you, they duck, and you can maneuver and fire until they lose their cover, and you kill them or they retreat.  I was already ducked in my heavy cover, and had clear avenues of fire so no matter how much they shot at me, there was almost no chance they’d hit me unless they got really fucking lucky.  I swiveled the rifle back around as they sprayed rounds everywhere.  All sailed high into the trees, and most of them went into the woods in the direction of the rope line.  I heard a few zing near me and snap as they broke the speed of sound.  Bits of tree were raining down as the gunfire clipped branches and burst chunks of bark all over the place.

                 I searched out the two men who’d taken a knee in the proper fashion and found one right off the bat.  I put the crosshairs on his sternum and blew his back out on the side of the Explorer.  He got tossed backwards in a heap and was dead immediately.  He’d be up as a zombie in a minute or two, and I was counting on that to add to their confusion.  I found the upper torso of the second guy within a second after that.  He was leaning over the hood of the Xterra and was laying down reasonable effective and professional suppressing fire with what looked to be an M4 or AR-15.  Mentally I licked my chops for his gun and I sent one more round straight through his skull, completely decapitating him.  I saw a huge chunk of his skull cartwheel into the trees behind his vehicle, spinning end over end trailing hair and blood.

                  I felt really good once those two were down.  I’d gotten the feel they were the ones with experience and the people who were the greatest threats to us.  Mind you, a random bullet can kill you just as effectively as a well aimed one can.  I had 5 shots in the Savage and fired the last two into the first two warm bodies I saw.  One punched a hole in a younger guy that was pumping a shotgun and mauling the shit out of a defenseless tree, trying to hit me where I wasn’t.  He went down.  I slid the bolt fluidly, maintaining as flat a barrel as best I could.  Keep that sight picture I thought to myself.  The last shot tore one man’s left shoulder loose and spun him like a top, eventually flopping him face down in the snow.  He let loose a blood curdling howl as he realized his arm was more or less gone.  I threw the bolt back and tucked my head down.  I reloaded.

                  Chuck and Gilbert knew that they were supposed to wait to fire until I’d shot five times.  I knew Gilbert would wait, and I knew he would be listening for the distinct sound of precise fire from me.  They were counting for five shots, in smooth succession, each resulting in a casualty.  Chuck should be able to see the people dropping, and as soon as I stopped firing, he was supposed to start shooting.  That’s fire superiority in a nutshell.  Never have a lull in the shooting.

                  When I started snapping more .30-06 rounds in the Savage’s magazine I heard the buzzing of a snowmobile coming from my right.  Once the buzzing stopped I heard a rapid barking from that direction, maybe 50 or 60 yards away.  Rifles and shotguns have a pretty distinct sound, and that’s all the gun play we’d had so far.  This was a pistol firing.  As soon as I heard a few of those rounds pop off I knew Gilbert had joined the firefight.  Not gonna lie, I was torn between excitement and worry.  I knew he’d be putting good rounds downrange at these assholes but if he got shot as a result I’d be devastated.

                   No time to worry about that.  I can mourn after.

                 The funny thing about idiots is they don’t think about ammo conservation.  The other funny thing is most commercially available firearms have very small magazine capacities.  Remember when I was talking about how a shotgun that held 8 shells was way better than one that held 6 Mr. Journal?  That’s what I’m talking about.  Two extra shots can be the difference between life and death.  These guys had generic hunting shotguns, and rifles.  Most of those hold 5 or 6 shots at best.  As soon as I was done reloading, those of them left alive were running dry.

                  Our plan was working.  They had all figured out the rough direction my fire was coming from, and as they reloaded they moved to the opposite side of their vehicles for cover.  That was the side Charles was in cover on.  When their fire started to slow, he opened up.  To be honest, Gilbert and I were afraid he’d pussy out on us and hunker down in his hide and let it all happen.  I could see his muzzle flashes as he bucked all six rounds into their group, doing some serious damage.  I don’t think he killed anyone, but he sure as shit put a few of them down for the count.

                   I didn’t have any clear shots so I sat still and let them shit their pants.  I could hear them yelling out in panic and pain in between Gilbert’s steady pistol fire.  From what I could see he had the two assholes from the truck last in the line either pinned or wounded.  Just as soon as I saw what was happening, one of the two guys rolled around the front of the truck and took cover near the grill, behind one of the giant tires.  He too had a pistol, and was leaning around the tire, shooting back at Gilbert.

                   Oh hell no.

                  Two seconds later his head was a fine red mist covering that giant tire.  The other guy was in heavy cover behind the truck, and I saw pretty clearly his shotgun getting tossed on the hood.  He raised both of his hands straight up in the air and stayed there like a statue.  He was out of the fight.  I threw the bolt, reloaded, listened and watched.  You could see them bickering as they reloaded and debated what was going on.  The only thing I could think about was splitting that prick Sean’s wig.  I scanned down the length of the vehicles looking for his greasy prick head but I couldn’t see it.  Gilbert’s pistol had gone quiet, and Charles had ceased fire as well.

                   All told the exchange of gunfire up that point was less than five minutes long.  My heart was absolutely throbbing in my chest.  I mean shit, it was beating so hard it actually hurt every time I felt it pump.  Made me wonder how poor Gilbert’s ticker was handling it.  Charles had held up amazingly with his barrage of shotgun fire too, which changed my opinion of him drastically.

                 They’d gone silent.  So had we.  I think they knew they’d been had, and the fight was over.  I saw more hands appear over the tops of the trucks and eventually they started to stand up, showing that they were surrendering.   Just as they started reaching for the sky though, the dude I shot in the chest started to get up as a zombie.  He was stumbling to his feet and turning towards them, reaching across the hood to get at the two or three people closest to them.  One of the assholes scooped up a rifle off the hood and drew down on his dead buddy.  I didn’t do anything, because it was what had to be done.  The guy squeezed off a single round and blew his dead friend’s head off.

                   Unfortunately Chuck responded.  From the opposite tree line I saw Chuck’s shotgun belch out the entire magazine as fast as he could pump and squeeze the trigger.  The entire group of people closest to him crumpled to the ground, blasted apart by the buckshot.  I just dropped my head and swore to myself.  These guys didn’t have to die, they were trying to surrender.  The guy who first threw up his hands must’ve seen the muzzle bursts as well, because he grabbed his weapon and drew down on Chuck’s location.  I snapped a fast shot off in his direction and hit him in the head.  He went sideways into the snow and out of view.

                   Silence after that.  No movement either.  I tossed the bolt back and topped off the Savage.  After a solid five minutes I finally sat the savage down and picked up the shotgun.  I needed to go down and see up close what was happening.  Once I was most of the way out of the trees I hollered out to Charles and Gilbert that I was moving.  I walked down through the snow drifts and made sure to avoid stepping where the un-hit spike boards were. 

                   It was a bloodbath.  I counted ten bodies in various states of death.  The poor bastard who had tried to surrender first was still alive.  My head shot had gone a little wide, and clipped him in the jaw.  Unfortunately for him, the force of the round had torn his jaw clean off.  His upper teeth and tongue were wagging as he laid on his side, bleeding slowly into the snow.  He rolled half over and looked up at me as I approached him.  We made eye contact and I noticed he was crying.  His face was destroyed, and with no medical care to speak of, he was just waiting to die.  He gave me a slight nod and closed his eyes.  I put a .45 round through his eye and swallowed the rising bile in my throat.

                 This was really bad.  I mean straight up fucking ugly.  If it wasn’t for the snow I would’ve been flashing back hard to my Iraq days.  Dead bodies all over the place, fresh wet blood in the snow.  I could hear the few of them waiting to die as they labored to breathe.  I didn’t have my sword on me, but I did have my uncle’s hunting knife.  I didn’t want to waste any more ammunition, so I did them in with the knife.  Tore me up to do it that way, but I stabbed them once in the fucking eyes to make sure they didn’t get back up.

                    I was kneeling down, yanking my blade out of a dude’s eye when I heard the loudest blast in my life right near me.  I did this retarded barrel roll over the body I’d just stabbed and fumbled the .45 out of the holster.  I damn near emptied the mag into Chuck.  Idiot was standing ten feet away from me aiming into a ditch.  Damn near scared a ninja shit right out my asshole.

                   Man you wanna talk about profanity.  Mr. Journal I called him everything but a white man.  I think I even called him a chudly waggler, which I still have no idea what the meaning of is.  He turned bright red.  Idiot should’ve told me he was moving.

                    Anyway, we wound up with eleven dead people.  That’s the biggest good news.  Once Gilbert made his way over on the snowmobile, we got the bad news.  He had chased down the asshole on skis from the start of it all and didn’t catch him.  Apparently there was another vehicle about a mile down the road, and he made it to that and they got away.  The other part of the bad news was none of the eleven bodies belonged to that motherfucker Sean.

                   We searched the snowdrifts around the cars and there were no footprints headed out in any direction.  He wasn’t in the vehicles either, which meant he had escaped down the road and somehow got past Gilbert.  Sneaky fucking coward.

                    I wish I could say I was furious he got away, but I’m feeling pretty victorious right now.  We made a massive fucking haul off these losers.  I won’t inventory all of what we got, but we definitely increased our arsenal in a pretty fucking dramatic way. I tracked down the two dudes who had acted like real soldiers and found their guns.  Both of them had the exact same gun, and they’re both sitting on the bed next to me right now.  They’re Armalite M15A4 carbines.  It’s basically the commercial version of the military’s M4 rifle.  They feel a little… I don’t know, chintzy to me, but they’re a pretty substantial improvement over having to plink away with the .22 I’ve got now.  I mean shit, these guns have 30 round magazines.  And multiple spares to boot.  Between the two of them they had eight magazines.  All filled with ammo as well.  Well that’s not entirely true.  They’d pissed through the better part of two magazines before I shot them.

                   Um.  Both also had Glock 21 handguns.  I should be way more excited to finally get the Glock I wanted originally, but I’m starting to hear Chuck and Patty in the room next to me.  Chuck sounds like he’s crying.  He had handled the stress of the gunfight all day pretty amazingly, but now that it’s just him and Patty I think he’s losing it.  It’ll do him good to get the emotion out.  These situations really fuck with your head.  Gotta try and tune them out to get this entry done.

                   So both guys had .45 caliber Glocks, and both of them had 2 spare magazines.  Underneath their winter coats I saw that they were wearing pretty shiny black gear belts.  Looked an awful lot like a police officer’s belt.  I tossed them over and checked their pockets, and lo and behold, both had badges for the town of Westfield, where Abby and family came from.

                    I don’t even know what to think about that.  We killed two cops today.  Were they even dirty cops?  Were these people even really dirty at all?  Fuck me.  Lose/lose right Mr. Journal?

                   The more I thought about it all afternoon as we cleaned up the more I thought how stupid we were.  I am filled with doubt now.  Had we just allied with them we’d be much stronger.  We could’ve shared ammo and food, and in numbers you get security.  Plus I mean… what if everything goes back to normal soon?  I’ve got to live the rest of my life knowing I killed two cops who were probably doing what they were supposed to be doing.  Taking care of the people from their town. 

                  I don’t know.  I’ll come to grips with the guilt someday soon.  I’m just really happy I didn’t get hurt, and none of my people got hurt.  Speaking of which, my leg feels great, and my eye didn’t split open at all today.  Starting to almost feel like a normal human being again.

                Now there’s a punch line Mr. Journal.  Normal human being.  What the fuck is normal anymore?

                   We had to ram the truck out of the way using the school’s plow.  The Savage did a number on the engine and it was deep sixed.  We got it back up the hill, turned onto Prospect and into the yard of the house with the huge woodshop in the back.  The Xterra had two flat tires, and with some help from the plow, we got it backed up and into the yard of the house where I found the dead girl with the broken leg.  From a distance, everything looks normal.

                   The Ford Explorer only had one flat, and was only a little shot up from the gun battle.  Chuck and I got the tire swapped out and we drove it back to campus.  Brand new SUV for us I guess.  The state truck is fucking dead for us though.  We lost all the tires on one side of the truck, and there aren’t giant snowplow tires kicking around.  Not to mention we’d need an epic lift to get the damn truck up to swap them out even if we had the tires.  We used our plow again and ham fisted the thing down the hill and across the bridge.  It was a tight fit too with the triad of enormous plow blades.  We scratched the shit out of the guardrail on the bridge.  We got it set up to the side of the road and out of the way.  Someday maybe we can figure out how to fix the damn thing and use it for what it was intended for.  Or use it for something it wasn’t intended for.  Food for thought on that eh?

                   All of the vehicles had mostly full fuel tanks, as well as 5 gallon gas cans in the back.  Spare fuel as it were.  That was a nice freebie.  They also had some lunch bags as well.  I don’t know where they got it, but they had sandwiches made with fresh hearty bread.  Someone back at that high school knows how to make bread.  Also I think you need eggs to make bread, which means they have chickens too.  I’ve got poultry envy.

                   This might be the worst thing we did all day, but we ate those fucking sandwiches after we burned their bodies.  To the victor go the spoils.  Chuck is still crying, but his sobbing has slowed down.  I think I can hear Patty talking to him, maybe even singing quietly.  They’re a good couple.

                   Otis is sniffing my new guns.  He’s taking a break from the constant attention he gets from the two kids.  Man I love my cat.  He even likes guns.  He just plopped down on top of one.

                   It took us almost the entire day to deal with the vehicles, clear out the bodies, assess our spoils, and debate what to do next.  The unanimous opinion is that they won’t be back for some time, if at all.  Chuck didn’t think they’d be able to muster another assault at all.  Gilbert and I are pretty sure that asshole Sean and Captain Snowpants will be back somehow.  I think they’re no longer in the “doing what’s necessary to survive” assault mode.  I think if they come back again they’re going to burn us to the ground for revenge.  Again though, I think we’ve got time.  At least a few days.

                   We’re going to use those few days to get Hall A up and running for the Williams family.  We’ve got to get the generator set up over there, and we’ve got to get the woodstove installed.  After that all we need is firewood, and there is a LOT of trees up here for that.

                 I’m a little pissed at Chuck the more I think about it.  I haven’t done an inventory yet, but he said he shot all of his shotgun shells earlier.  I know we got a whole bunch today, but if I recall correctly, he had 24 shells for the firefight.  That’s a huge dent in our buckshot supply.  Gilbert and I will have to teach him better fire discipline soon, or he’ll decimate our reserves if we get into another shootout.

                   I shouldn’t bitch.  He stood up like a man and did what he needed to do, and without a doubt he saved lives today.  Six months ago he was designing off ramps and traffic circles.  Now he’s sobbing on a shitty college bed in an abandoned, cold dorm room after a savage gun battle with murderous raiders in a world filled with undead.

                   Kinda fucked up if you think about it.

                   One more thing has stuck in my mind like a morsel of weirdness.  Gilbert claims to just have his .45 handgun.  I don’t think he’d lie to me, but the way he made it sound, all he had was the one pistol and magazine.  I can pretty distinctly remember him laying down steady suppressing fire during the shooting.  He must’ve shot a solid 20 to 30 rounds with minimal reload time.  At seven rounds a clip, that tells me he has at least four magazines for that pistol.  I wonder what else Gilbert has that he hasn’t told me about.  It’s more exciting than anything.  I bet that bastard has a .50 cal in his basement and he’s sandbagging me.

                 I love that dude.

                 But seriously I hope he has a .50 cal in his basement.

                 And before I crash for the night, I’d like to point this out Mr. Journal:

                  Adrian Ring:   1                  Sean the asshole and Captain Snowpants:  0

                 I’ll update more as I have time.  Probably be busy the next few days.

                  -Adrian

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