Soooo... many of you have asked for information about how he fared after that day, and these stories will tell you just about exactly how that went down. 

We've been working on this shirt idea for forever and a day, and this one came up as a fun idea men and women both could wear.  Want to support the ladies of AUD?  Patty, Amanda, Angela, Melissa, Kimberly, Michelle, Mallory and most important of all, Abby?

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                Remember me? 

Abby

THE END

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                I’m sorry I took so long to write an entry.  Things have been so different around here at Bastion, and with all that was up in the air I’ve had precious little time to sit down in front of the laptop and bang out the details of how life is right now.

                Again Mr. Journal, I apologize.

                The dead are gone.  Well, the dead bodies are still here, but they are no longer animated, hateful, and violent towards the living.  They have simply fallen where they were on March 3^rd, and that has been the end of them.  Somewhat anti-climactic I think.  That’s not to take anything away from the events of March 3^rd.  I think we all came out of that alive only by the grace of… something much larger than us.

                Since then, nine days ago now, things have been eerily quiet.   The folks at MGR haven’t seen a single threatening thing since then.  Nothing, not even another living soul.  The folks at the Factory though have heard and seen some folks moving around the city area near them, though there hasn’t been any contact just yet. 

                We haven’t seen anything here at Bastion either.  In fact, the weather has been beautiful for the most part, and we’re spending a lot of time outside, getting some fresh air.  We’re still building that last guard tower at the water, and we’re still keeping both gates locked tight.  As much as I love my fellow man, far too many of them have tried to take my life these past… nineteen months for me to just forgive and forget entirely.

                Trust is earned, and right now, I don’t trust this new and strange world yet. 

                We’ve made three trips into the city.  We have seen no one on our trips out, but we project a fairly massive presence with two humvees and the deuce.  One good look at the turrets on the trucks and I’m sure anyone watching changes their mind.  I’m frankly surprised no one has come out to talk to us expecting us to be the National Guard returned or something.  It’s odd.  I wonder if that’s an indication of the behavior of the Guard in the waning days of society, or a general indication of paranoia on the survivor’s part?  Or something else entirely, I’m fricking spitballing here.

                Our trips out were to, in the following order:  Three large grocery stores on day one, a large gun store on day two, and a series of gas stations on day three.  The grocery stores were complete dry holes for us.  No food of use whatsoever.  I guess that can’t be a surprise to anyone.  Everyone hit the stores hard before it all shit the bed, and I’m sure since then folks were sneaking in and out as they could to take what was left.

                The gun store was a much better trip.  The doors were reinforced with heavy duty steel bars, and we were able to winch the thing right off the front of the building.  Inside we found several bodies that had all died from what appeared to be self inflicted gunshot wounds.  They were scary thin, and the back of the business outside was piled up with MRE wrappers, so I’m guessing the folks there that day simply locked up shop, and ate MREs until they ran out.  Rather than face the world outside (which was also littered with a LOT of bodies on the ground, some long since dead) they decided to take care of themselves all on their own.

                They left us a treasure trove of weapons and ammunition.  There were also plentiful reloading supplies, as well as holsters, slings, hunting equipment and the such.  Kevin sported an erection three feet long for days while he inventoried everything.  It was a pretty big store.  I’m glad we got to it before anyone else.

                The gas stations were also largely good news.  We can’t verify the quality of the small amount of remaining gasoline that’s still there just yet, but Martin and Blake are guessing there could be around 400 to 500 gallons spread out amongst them. We’re thinking fuel treatments and additives might be a solution to stale gas, but that’s beyond my pay grade.  We also found a LOT of diesel, which is great news.  Again, I’ve no goddamn idea if it’s any good, but other people are going to make that call, or make that happen, so I’m incredibly hopeful.  We could use some good news on the fuel front.  I’d like to bankroll security in our vehicles operating for the foreseeable future.

                We don’t really…. Have any horses.  Or any meaningful alternatives at the moment.

                What else?  What am I forgetting?

                Um… old age is a bitch, I’ll tell you that. 

                Moving forward?  Well that’s a great question.  Collectively, and by collectively I mean the big decision making folks here, we’ve decided that we are going to be active in the world.  Active means helping those that need it.  Active means protecting those that need it.  Active means feeding those that are hungry, and liberating those that are oppressed.

                I think Gilbert would be proud of us.

                I have had many dreams of my friends lately.  The living ones.  Not just the dead people.  That tells me an awful lot.  That tells me the poor souls that were hung up on the other side… have moved on.  I don’t know where they went, or if it’s a comfy cloud or hot as hell in a lake of fire… but I think they’ve gone on to where they were supposed to.

                I could not be happier about this.  If I am proud of anything… I think I am most proud of that.  I am happy that all the people hung up in limbo, waiting, watching, are now where they belong.  I guess I am also proud of the fact that it appears that I was part of the group of people that gave this world peace from the dead, and a second chance to do it all over again, hopefully correctly.

                Michelle and I are… moving forward.  I asked her to move into Hall E sort of out of the blue the other day, and she took a day to think about it.  She agreed to move in, and she does so tomorrow.  I’m so… pleased to have her move closer.  It’ll be nice to have at breakfast in the mornings with her, as well as just be able to see her later into the night. 

                I really want to kiss her. 

                I know I’m in deep emotional shit here because I’m not even thinking about sex.  Talk about horrifying…  Evil has nothing on love.

                Our immediate plans here at Bastion is stability.  Accumulate the resources we previously couldn’t because of the undead, and then see what happens.  That group that attacked us in the city and killed Fitz is still out there, and one day, I’m sure we’ll cross paths with them.  I don’t want to sound vindictive, but they owe several of us a pound of flesh for what they did, and I plan on collecting.

                Maybe that’s a bad attitude, but I see it as justice.  I’m not a perfect man.

                I’ll end this with a summary of a conversation I had this very morning with Sylvia.  Little Sylvia has come out of her shell like no other.  She is bouncy, beautiful, and talkative.  She has seemingly walked away from her behaviors and rejoined us as a largely normal young girl.

                Why the sudden change you ask?

                Interesting story.  I was sitting over at Hall B, enjoying the warm sunshine and talking to little Shelby when the kids were on their lunch break from school.  Shelby is doing well, thank you for asking Mr. Journal.  Kevin and Becky are raising a good young lady.

                As Shelby and I are talking, Sylvia comes over and has a seat on the ground in front of the bench we sat on, and patiently waited until Shelby and I were done talking.  Shelby smiled at Syl, and after telling me all about how she finished some project in school, she left to go back inside.

                Sylvia looks up at me, and smiled again, very warmly.  Then she says this, “I’m so sorry I was so mean to everyone.  I was just so scared about you guys, and wanted to be nearby, and I didn’t know how to make the dreams stop.”

                I smiled and sort of brushed it off as some of the weirdness she’d spouted off before.  The women in the school have said multiple times she can go off on these weird tangets…

                Then she says this, “when I dreamt of how you and Michelle were surrounded by all those dead people, and then when I saw you, and then her, and then Kevin… I knew I had to stay around to help protect you.  I don’t think I did in the end, but I’m sure happy Michelle did was she was supposed to do, and you and Kevin did too.  A lot of people are now safe because of you guys.”

                So apparently she had dreamt about the three of us.  I questioned her softly, and she agreed to as much.  She had been having detailed dreams about March 3^rd going back for months.  A year really.  Dreams of the living.  I guess they were White Room dreams too, which is strange.  I don’t know quite what to make of all that, but it was amazing to hear.

                Then, after our long ass conversation, she drops this atomic bomb on me…. “ I just hope the others make their decisions as well as you did.”

                The others?  What fucking others right?  I was tweaking.  Like, heart in my throat tweaking.  I leaned down to her and asked, “What do you mean others?  I’m confused.”

                Sylvia stood up, brushed her jeans off of the grass she’d picked up, and looked up at the blue sky above us.  Without looking back down to me she said, “Three is like… a perfect number.  It’s got something to do with math.  Michelle told me about it.  A lot of religions use the number three to symbolize very important things.  The third hour of the third day of the third month Adrian?  Three is important.”

                “Yeah?”

                Then she looked down at me, still smiling, “The only number that could have more importance than three would be nine.  Nine is perfect too.  Nine is three threes.  You were never the only Trinity Adrian. You think the force that runs all of creation would trust everything to just three people?  Oh well.  You saved millions.  So many people will have a chance at happiness because of you three.  I’d be really proud if I were you.”

                I’m like, floored and shit.  I have no idea if she’s right.  I have no way of knowing, and after talking to Michelle and Kevin about it… they agree with her.  It makes a lot of sense to all of us.

                Is it our job to help these other, hypothetical Trinities?

                I don’t know.  I don’t want to think about it right now either.

                I’m done writing this.  I’ve been the Scribe for a very long time, and I’m weary.  I’ve written so much I’ve forgotten how to live without trying to remember everything that happens.  I’ve poured my heart, my soul, my life, and my sweat into this journal, and one day I’ll share it with people so they can understand what I went through, what we all went through to get to where we are today.

                I am no longer the Scribe.

                I am a man, trying to be the best man I can, and trying to lead other men and women to a better life the same as I.

                Someone else can be the memory now. 

                Otis is profoundly happy.  This means far more lap time for my homeboy.

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                I’m having a hard time imaging this being over.

                Or, depending on how you want to look at it, maybe this is really all just beginning?  I’m not tired at all.  I should be exhausted, weary, ready to rest, but I’m not.  I think that’s fortunate, though I know that attitude will change as I actually get down to work.

                Where to begin?  Do I tell this in dramatic fashion, dragging out all the details in sinful fashion? Or do I cut straight to the chase and drop the biggest of all bombs?

                I suppose as the Scribe I should record history.  History tends to start at the beginning, so I guess I’ll follow suit and do the same.

                Abby, Michelle, Kevin, Harold and I all went into the city to find Cassie on March 3^rd.  I woke up early, shockingly at 3:33 am that morning in one of the houses in Spring Meadow that the locals gifted to us as a home away from home.  Kevin and I joked that it was our “embassy.”  Sort of funny, but also pretty accurate.

                After eating an early morning MRI with my brother Kev, we got our gear packed up, checked, double checked, and we loaded into the HRT.  We coordinated with Ethan and Quan’s group as they started out towards the western parking garage at the apartments.  Our plan was to reach detonator range at roughly the same time so the explosions were more or less simultaneous.  All went well up to that point.

                We heard Quan blow the other garage before we tried to blow ours.  Operative word there is tried…  The explosion was incredibly loud, even over all those miles with all those buildings in between.  We saw some plumes of dust and debris rising up into the sky and we knew the explosion was successful.  Very exciting shit for sure.  We were in detonator range on our own garage, and Kevin hit the switch.

                The Jinx Fairy struck.

                Clicky clicky went the detonator, but no boomy boomy went the bombs.  We had a minor, spirited debate as to whether or not to scrap the mission, but I put my foot down, and opted to move forward.  Everyone else was onboard, though I know Kevin was skeptical.  We were watching undead shuffle off towards the location of the explosion, even with us in the HRT right there moving, so I felt pretty confident we would be okay.  One downed building would have to be enough of a diversion for us.

                I don’t necessarily want to say I was wrong… but my judgment could’ve been better.  It was a “grab your heels and brace for anal impact” kind of day that day, and I think no matter what my call would’ve been, things would’ve been bad, or worse.  The third was the day this had to happen, and I’m glad I pushed forward.

                I think we made it 15 minutes before the roads started to close up on us.  We were engaging undead from the windows on a constant basis and the HRT’s plow blade was seeing some robust work smashing walkers from the road in front of us.  It got to the point where we were pissing through ammunition fast enough, and there were enough bodies in the road ahead of us, I made the call to change our route to something safer.

                We knew we had the car alarms as well as the fires in the garage, and despite it not blowing up, I had a good feeling the undead would still be inside the garage.  That creates a bit of a vacuum right?  A few thousand undead from the city packed into a single structure means a few thousand undead off the street.

                I was right.  Sadly, the route we took to head us towards the hospital we hadn’t been on yet, and there was a nasty surprise waiting for us.  To be honest I don’t remember what happened.  The first thing I remember was coming to, hanging on my side in the driver’s seat.  Thankfully I was wearing my seatbelt, otherwise I would’ve been tossed around like a goddamn ragdoll.  Kevin got chucked from his seat, and as it turns out, he’s got a sprained wrist and has so many bruises he looks spotted like a fucking leopard today.  Tough kid.

                Michelle woke me up, and after shitting a bit of a brick I got myself under control, and undid my seatbelt to get out of the seat.  We discovered later on that the entire street we had been driving on was covered with both exploded as well as unexploded cluster munitions.  Michelle told me after the fact yesterday that I’d taken my eyes off the road for just a few seconds to crack some dumb joke about Kevin or something, and that was long enough for me to hit one with the HRT.

                Abby and Hal were shaken up, banged and bruised but alive and still in the fight.  Michelle had her bell rung, and I already told you about Kevin.  At that point the Jinx Fairy was balls deep inside us.  We had no vehicle, we were out of radio contact with Ethan and Quan’s group, we were all alone, and utterly, and completely surrounded by the dead.

                I radioed back to Spring Meadow and told Agnes or Anders to pass along the message to the other group that our vehicle was down.  I gave our approximate position, and went back to unfucking our lives.  We debated a plan, and decided we needed to try and blow the garage to create a powerful diversion to not only pull undead away from Cassie’s work so I could get there, but also to try and kill a bunch of these dead motherfuckers.

                Kevin, Abby and Hal took the detonator and an AT4 anti tank weapon and went to the garage.  I gave Kevin mad shit for having brought the armor piercing weapon, but it turned out to be a good decision on his part.  More on that later.  When we exited the now ruined HRT (and I mean ruined.  The entire right front of the vehicle was blown to smithereens.  I think the only reason we survived is that it looked to me that the charge blew on the plow blade, and not under the tire where Kevin was sitting.) there was forty or so undead in all directions.  We laid down fire to clear the streets, and we split.

                Michelle and I headed north… west to the center of town, and Abby, Hal and Kevin headed southeast to the hospital garage. 

                Here’s the story I pieced together from the trio that went thattaway;

                Because of the relative vacuum created with the zombies in the garage, the run to the garage was fairly good for them.  They reached the garage with minimal contact, and made a plan to suppress their weapons and head into the still fairly empty bottom level to try and find out what was wrong with the explosives.

                I don’t know SHIT about explosives, but I guess Quan had some central detonation system on the bottom floor that all the different charges were slaved to.  When they entered the bottom floor of the garage and cleared it, Abby found some loose wires that had been disconnected from the box, thus breaking the circuit I imagine. 

                Kevin switches with Abby, Abby and Hal lay cover for Kevin.  At that point Michelle and I were getting gang raped by an army of the dead.  I’d pissed through three magazines just moving down a street and a half and I had at least that much further to go again.  I cried like a bitch to them to start making noise to get us some breathing room.  They dropped their suppressors, and within seconds the gunfire started to distract the undead for us.

                Back to them.

                So like, two minutes into their louder shooting, they reported feeling a cold wind pick up.  Like, creepy cold wind.  I can remember the same feeling somewhat, but not quite to the level they described.  I guess just seconds after... the entire parking garage filled with undead starts coming down at them.  All three shit enough bricks to build a new parking garage, and they take off running literally for their lives.

                They make it to cover out of blast range (read: theoretically out of blast range) and Kevin hits the switch.  Kamotherfuckingboom.  All the Semtex goes off, thankfully.  Quan’s fear of the stuff being unstable turned out to be unfounded, which is clearly awesome for us.

                So anyway, this garage was the one Quan didn’t like.  It was more squat, with thicker floors and columns, and the bottom floor was half sunk into the ground as well.  When the explosive blew, they didn’t take out enough support to topple te  building immediately.  Kevin said it was well on its way to collapsing, but with all those undead marching right the fuck out, he needed to bring the building down right then and there.

                Enter the AT4.

                Kevin jacks that pig up, lines up a shot straight into the center of the parking garage, and threads the fucking needle.  The projectile goes right through a four foot gap at three hundred feet, and hits a pillar dead fucking nuts.  Luckily the explosion took the entire pillar out, and like the finger of fucking God, down went the garage.

                I heard the building shit the bed where we were, and wow did that buy us some time.  Michelle and I had ducked into a pizza shop that I knew Cassie ate at every once in awhile for lunch.  We’d gone in there to take cover and let the noise pull the undead in our area away.  My hope was to slip out the back exit into a street or alley and then weave our way to Cassie’s work.

                Of course as Michelle and I were getting up from taking cover, I get tackled by a fat undead prick.  Michelle warned me just in time, and I sort of launched myself forward as he hit my lower back and legs.  When I landed I sort of spun sideways, trying to get to my feet quickly, but he was literally in my junk and grabbing at me.  My first thought was Kimber, but I gave the pistol to Michelle to use, and I also realized I wanted to be quiet.  I snatched my knife off my belt and stabbed him in his fat head, managing to hit something grey inside there, killing him.

                Talk about a close fucking call.

                Michelle and I caught our breath, had a nice moment where I built up the nerve to thank her for being there for me(whereupon she touched my cheek, giving me a thrill), and we scooted out into the alley in the back of the pizza shop.

                The alley was clear.  We made it all the way down to the street that Casse’s work was actually on, and that’s when things went to shit.  Well...  went to shit isn’t the right expression. Went to weird is more apt.

                Standing to one side of the intersection we walked into were... thousands of dead. Tens of thousands, all shoulder shoulder, standing in foul rank and file.  Just a bit ahead of them was Alan, some asshole VP that Cassie hated.  He was standing there, missing an arm and had this… malicious look about him.  Normally the dead don’t have facial expressions, they don’t show emotion, but I swear to you Mr. Journal that bitch had contempt on his face for me. 

                I looked right, and the other directions had an equal amount of undead.  Cassie’s direct boss, a woman named Melanie was standing in front of a wall of the dead.  Her and Alan were there like… well, they were like sergeants or lieutenants.

                In front of Melanie was Cassie.

                She was dead.  Very dead.  Emaciated, drawn, bony, pale, sunken.  She looked horrible.  Her eyes had lost all the green sparkle I’d loved to look at.  There instead was that filthy, milky, pus like white. 

                I won’t lie, nor will I posture here.  I lost it.  I straight up dropped to knees in a whole different place in my head and started to apologize over and over and over.  I couldn’t say it enough or say it fast enough.  I begged for forgiveness.

                Then Cassie spoke.  I… can’t remember all of the conversation.  I remember being cold, very cold when she spoke.  I remember the clouds coming in, and feeling like I’d finally gotten a chance to make things right by her.  I remember her asking me to join her, to go to her in… the afterlife or something, and I remember hearing Michelle there.  I remember Cassie seeing Michelle too, and I remember feeling so torn and confused.  I wasn’t in my right mind.

                Luckily Michelle was.

                I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember when she started talking, the air became warmer, and sweeter.  I remember looking down at my hands and seeing my knife resting on my wrist, starting to dent the skin from pressure.  I was moments away from trying to kill myself to join Cassie.

                I remember Michelle saying one thing before the world got turned around on me.  She said something to Cassie about, “letting slip the chains of evil.”

                Next thing I know I’m back on the other side.  All the undead are gone, and it’s just Cassie and I standing in an empty intersection on June 23^rd.  The sky is sparkling blue and sun is warm.  It’s like the last nineteen months of guilt never happened.  It’s like I went to her that day, instead of taking care of just myself like a coward.

                We embrace.  We kiss.  It’s beautiful.  It’s everything I’ve wanted.  But it’s fleeting.  I know it, she knows it. 

                She tells me to move on.  She tells me all the same things she told me in that dream a year ago.  She tells me I am a good man, and that I deserve to live, and I deserve to love.  She tells me she can see and feel the connection Michelle and I have, and that embarrasses me.  I feel very… guilty about how I feel about Michelle.  I want to love Cassie, to still be in love with her, as well as fall in love with Michelle, but that’s not possible.  Nor is it healthy, or what the world needs.

                I know now, in that moment what I need to do.  I need to give Cassie peace, to set her free from the constraints of whatever hell that’s holding her, and give myself fully to someone who I want to love, that wants to love me back.  I close my eyes, and when I open them again, I’m facing her dead body.

                Michelle comes to me, hands me my Kimber and puts her arm around me, and with her support and presence, I was able to do what I didn’t think I could.

                That’s what this is all about right?  Leaning on our fellow man and woman, and believing that in the end, all will be well.  Believing that somewhere out there the faith you have in whatever you believe in is being rewarded by something.  Something bigger than you.  Something that wants good things for you and for those you love. 

                It’s about having faith in those you know well, your loved ones, and having hope that those you do not know well will treat you better than you could wish, despite our failings and flaws.

                When I pulled the trigger everything changed.  I felt a weight come off me that I didn’t realize I was carrying.  I watched- no, I felt a tangible outpouring leave me, and leave Cassie, spreading out into the world like ripples on a still pond.  As the first ripple met and passed the ranks of undead, they fell to the ground like dominos.  Each and every corpse standing fell to the ground.

                Behind them, standing on the base of a traffic light I saw Kevin.  With him he had both Abby and Hal, and they were slack jawed.  We exchanged looks, and everyone knew…

                It was over.

                We checked many of the bodies to see if they were still animated by… Evil, but they weren’t.  They were simply dead bodies now.  No more murderous intent, no more hunger for the flesh of the living.  No more fear of dying, no more fear of the dead.

                Together we started walking back.  I remember handing my pistol back to Michelle so she could holster it.  I also remember taking her hand and squeezing it, holding it like I never wanted to let go again.    Probably because I didn’t want to let go then, and I still don’t want to let go now.  She’s in Hall C still, but I want to ask her to move to Hall E.  I feel like we’re at that point.

                I’m getting ahead of myself.

                I think fifteen minutes into our slow walk we heard radio chatter over the walkies.  It was Ethan and Quan’s group rolling into our area of the city, and they were looking for us.  They’d seen the dead fall, and were wondering if we were okay.  We told them we were fine, and directed them to our location. 

                It’s amazingly easy to travel in the city with no traffic, and no zombies.  Kind of amusing how easy it was.  We stopped at Spring Meadow for an hour to eat and tend our wounds.  I’ve got a motherfucker of a cut on my jaw from the HRT’s demise.  If I figure out who dropped those cluster bombs I’ll punch his ass in the hairy beanbag.  Retard.

                The other team that blew the other garage had zero injuries.  Not even so much as a frigging hangnail.  I’m so glad for that.  I just purged a shitload of guilt, I really don’t want to pile more on.

                Sua Sponte is the Ranger motto.  It means “of their own accord.”  It is supposed to reflect that Rangers, as an elite fighting force, is entirely composed of men who volunteer multiple times over for progressively more difficult and more dangerous duties, simply to be a better soldier, and to help their nation, and the man standing next to them.  They volunteer because they can, and because they know that when the job needs to get done, they will be there, willing to give everything necessary to get that job done. 

                De Oppresso Liber is the Green Beret motto.  It means to free the oppressed.  To set free those who have been bound into situations that are contradictory to democratic values, as well as human values.  It means to help those that cannot help themselves.

                That Others May Live is the motto of the Air Force Para Rescue units.  It speaks for itself.  PJs are trained, and one might even say naturally inclined to put their own lives on the line to save the lives of anyone.  They do what they do, so that others may live when they would otherwise die.

                Why am I rambling on about these mottos?  Because we’ve got Rangers, one wily Green Beret, and a handful of Para Rescue men here taking part in the events that may or may not have just given mankind a second chance.  These are the men and the creeds that we’ve lived by, and that many of us have died by.

                I hope as time goes forward we continue as citizens of this new world to live by the creeds that the best of us tried to live up to.  My hope is that I am a better man today, and that my fellow survivors are better people as well.

                We have earned our second chance.

                Now what do we do with it?  Do we rally everyone under our banner, and attempt to lead whoever is left?  Or do we seal ourselves off and try to do this right, alone?

                We’ve got a lot of meetings going on here.  Trying to figure out where we go from here.  Do we continue to fortify?  Are the other groups going to continue to be threats to us?  Is it safe to plant crops outside our walls again?

                I’ll chime in when we’ve figured some of this out.

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                I feel large and in charge.  I feel like a wise and omniscient military commander on the night before a large battle.  I feel like General Eisenhower in early June of 1944.  So much energy in the air tonight I can hardly breathe.  I’m nervous, and excited, and scared, and a whole bundle of emotions I can’t even find the right words for right now.

                I also sort of feel like instead of being the toe, I might be the shit circling the drain.  It’s hard to tell right now.  This is easily our most impressive and dangerous operation to date, and anything ambitious usually costs lives.  Ask any military strategist that.  Calculating the likely amount of death in any operation is a sad requirement.  What’s the return on investment?

                My return might be high.  I could find Cassie, and get closure, allowing myself to be a normal person again.  But at what cost?

                He asks no one in particular.

                As it turns out, this is indeed a leap year, so we had an extra day, which was last night.  I thought it was fitting that we started this operation on a day that occurs once every four years.  It’s a rare occurrence on a rare day, and it seemed very fitting to me.

                We just returned from two separate trips to our pair of parking garages.  We have a small insertion team staged at both the Factory and Spring Meadows, and at roughly the same time, they went into the city to light the fires at the top of the parking garages.  We had to time lighting the fires to coincide with nightfall.  Otherwise the fires aren’t anywhere nearly visible enough to attract attention.  I wasn’t on a team going out today.  Kevin and Michelle both thought it was bad karma to participate in lighting the fires for whatever reason.  Michelle kept saying she “had a feeling” that if I went into the city so close to heading in to find Cassie something wouldn’t be right.

                I’m not going to second guess her.  Not so soon after a White Room dream.  Not so soon after Gilbert told me to lean on those around me.  Not so soon after Otis sent me off with a strange rub of his head on my leg.  I can’t say what was strange about it… it was just strange.  Like a… I’ll see you soon head butt.

                Not that cats can send that much information with a head butt.

                At any rate… I cannot say exactly what happened on those trips, because it was all just recanted to me second hand.  Kevin led the team into the parking garage at the hospital, and Joel led the team going into the apartment building garage.  From what I heard from Joel’s team on return, their garage was a total clusterfuck.  Covered from top to bottom in undead already, likely from the noise we’d made the other day.  Joel said it was creepy as hell too.  Like they were there, waiting for his team.  All of them were facing the road, blocking the path in to head up.  I guess he had to hit them with the humvee leading, and floor it up to the top floor at top speed. 

                The side of his humvee got smashed apart as they fishtailed around a bend and collided with a concrete post, but the vehicle survived.  At the top, they hit one of the large piles of wood on a vehicle with some of our remaining lighter fluid, and torched the shit out of it.  Once the fire had taken and they felt comfortable getting out, they blitzed down to the middle deck, and Blake hit the car he’d set the car alarm up in.  Joel said the bastard went off immediately, according to Blake’s plan, and they mounted up, and got the fuck out.  I guess they ran over a few dozen more undead on the way out, but the managed to scram with no injuries other than a split ear from the humvee crash.

                The second team out, led by Kevin had a fairly similar experience.  No humvee crash on this run, but one of our guys, well, gals actually, took a ricochet to the leg.  Not sure exactly how it happened, but it seems like a round skipped off a bumper or some of the concrete in the garage, and hit Angela in the calf.  Nothing too serious, just some blood, and a shitload of pain.  She’ll be limping for weeks while that muscle mends.

                Kevin and team made it to the upper level, got their own lighter fluid on the wood, and got their fire going fairly quickly.  Things got very hairy for them when they dropped down a level to start the car alarm.  Blake wasn’t there to do exactly what was needed, so it fell to Hector and Martin to try and figure the shit out.  Hector, despite being Hispanic, is not that experienced with disarming car alarms. (yes, that’s racially insensitive, but he said it to me just a few minutes ago, so I’m repeating it for the sake of history)

                Fifteen minutes from what I’m told.  Fifteen minutes to get the car alarm to go off.  Now the first trip to that garage, we had that place on fucking lockdown while we were working there.  Entrances blocked and guarded, plenty of guns in the fight to pull security, all that jazz.  This trip out the undead were almost waiting for them, so the ensuing firefight while the two men were getting the car going was by all reports, epic.  We sent all shorter vehicles to that garage due to the entrance height, and all the vehicles took up defensive positions on the middle level.  They fired over hoods over and over, mowing down targets as fast as they could acquire them.  At one point Kevin said a few undead had gotten right on top of them while magazine changes were going down, and he had to draw his handgun to put them down before swapping his magazines.

                They are so fucking lucky no one died.  It sounds like they were minutes or even just seconds away from a complete wipe.  I was getting sweaty just listening to them tell me the story.

                Anyway, that was earlier this afternoon/evening.  Both teams made it out okay, with just minor injuries that are pretty normal for combat situations.  Pinched skin, small cuts and abrasions, burns from flying brass, that kind of bullshit.

                It was actually sort of funny to hear the AAR from those guys with Michelle and the Spring Meadows people right there.  They were HORRIFIED to hear how dicey it was.  I think after the story the Spring Meadows people thought we were super heroes.  I think they thought we could accomplish anything, anywhere, anytime.

                I hope they’re closer to right than wrong. 

                We’ve got the fires set up to cascade into a second pile of wood on top of an adjacent car.  The fires *should* work out that way.  We’ve also got the fires set up to torch the interior of the car, and we’ve got some gasoline in the tanks that should blow as well, helping to set the second car off.  Now when the second car catches, the same process should happen again.  In theory, if we’ve done our jobs right, we’ll have almost 24 hours of fire and smoke, as well as maybe 6-8 hours of car alarm going off too.  If the fires take properly, and burn out for a good long time, when we roll into the city to try and hit Cassie’s work, both parking garages will be absolutely full of the dead.

                Now as far as blowing the explosives go…  We need to get closer than where we are right now.  Our detonators don’t have the range to go off from here (part of the problem of dealing with stolen shit, as opposed to proper load outs of new gear), so we can’t blow them until we’re within a half mile or so.  This is what I’m told.

                So we will depart, then when we are in range to make the Semtex blow up, we’ll hit the detonators.  We have to be in two teams again to do this.  Kevin, Michelle, Abby, Hal, and myself will take the detonator for the hospital.  Joel will send another team into the area of the other parking garage, and at roughly the same time, we’ll all hit the switches, and if Quan did his job, the garages will explode and collapse, hopefully killing all the undead meandering about inside them.

                As long as the explosives blow, we should be okay.  The loud noise, dust and debris, and collateral damage of the Semtex going off should create such a diversion that even if there are no kills as a result, we’ll benefit.

                From there on… we head into the center of the office buildings, and straight to her office on the sixth floor.  With any luck, we’ll see her car outside on the street, and her body will be there in it. 

                We both know Mr. Journal that is not what will happen. 

                I can say with certainty this is likely to be the most difficult thing I have ever done, in a life filled with difficult experiences. 

                One way or the other, I plan on this trip being the end of my journey.  Either I return a better man, able to move on, and start anew for real, or I don’t return at all.  All in, is the expression.

                I’m hoping for the first option, but let’s be honest… it isn’t up to me.

                The people that are going with me to the city have been amazing.  Abby and Hal are very supportive, positive, and reassuring.  Hal’s wisdom is deeper than his years would indicate, much like Abby.  The two of them are a cute couple.  I’m glad they’re going with me, with us.  Just having Abby’s face in the mix here has helped me stay calm.

                Michelle has been no more than ten feet from me since we arrived here.  She’s always watching my face and my body language to see how I’m doing.  She is constantly putting a soft hand on my shoulder, or my arm to let me know she is here for me.  I want to stand up and put my arms around her, pulling her close when she does these things, but it wouldn’t be right.  Not just yet.  Kevin is Kevin.  Stoic, resolute, focused on the job at hand.  When he senses I’m nervous, he picks on me, or cracks a joke, reminding me of who I am, and where I’m from.  He keeps me grounded.

                I’m a very fortunate person to have the friends I have.

                We’re heading out under the cover of darkness on the morning of the 3^rd.  Hopefully the fires and car alarms have attracted enough attention that this will work.  Otherwise, we’ll be making a very short, and very horrifying trip into the city.

                If this trip ends with me dead, then let this be my farewell.  Abby has instructions to take over for me should this happen and she survive.  If we both die... then Mallory knows the password, and even with just one hand she can see to who becomes the next Scribe. 

                Wish me luck.

                -Adrian

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                A wise person once told me in order to gain courage in life, you need to face your fears first.  Everything you face and conquer gives you confidence, strength, and courage for the things you have not faced yet.  Courage is funny like that.

                We went into the city yesterday to the other parking garage next to the hospital.  I can safely say that I’ve gained a lot of confidence after this trip.  Sadly, I’m still a little scared.

                We left here in a four vehicle convoy heading straight for Spring Meadows literally at the crack of dawn.  By the time we were rolling past MGR the sun had crested, the sky above had turned a lighter shade of blue, and we could see easily.  The weather had finally broken, it was dry, and things looked good.  It was an auspicious morning.

                The ride getting to Spring Meadows was gravy until we reached the primary intersection somewhat near the airport that we’d left a radio hanging at.  We had skirted that area on our way here the other day, but this time we decided to check the intersection and see just how successful our radio hanging off the traffic light was.

                As it turns out, pretty fucking successful.

                We stopped around a hundred fifty yards out when we saw the fucking mob of undead, milling about in the center of the crossroads.  I’d guess and say there were between three and four hundred undead wandering to and fro.  Of course once they heard our motors running, and saw us pull into view, they started our way.  I pulled Kevin up on the comms and told him I wanted to try my M203. 

                If you’ve never seen one before Mr. Journal, they’re a grenade launcher attachment that sits under your M4.  You slide a single 40mm shell in, slide that bitch shut, and seconds later you’re lobbing a fun and exciting explosive towards your enemies.  I hadn’t fired mine since Kevin hooked me up with it, so I wanted to.  No real reason otherwise.  I had a toy, and wanted to use it.

                I fired three shells into the mass of undead.  I wasn’t sure on the effective range of HE rounds, so I sent them about a hundred yards out, and hoped for the best.  The three shells hit and blew with a powerful thump, bringing back memories of hot days in the sandbox.  I missed the sensation of hearing and feeling the small projectiles explode at range.  It’s strange I know, but true.

                When the shells hit they sent multiple walking dead sprawling.  The force of the explosion wasn’t tremendous, but their balance is terrible, and even a slight push can topple them.  Abby and Caleb  were spotting for me, and sadly, almost every one of the knocked down zombies got back up.  The 40mm shell doesn’t have enough shrapnel to guarantee a lethal head wound.  I hate to say this, but as an anti-zombie weapon, the M203 is lacking oomph.

                The SAWs have no such drawback.  Ethan and Hal were in the turrets yesterday, and when they opened up on full tilt the bodies started dropping to the pavement faster than we could count.  It was disgusting and exciting at the same time.  So many shattered heads and skulls, and faces.  But, each dead body was one less threat.   Sort of the soldier’s conundrum isn’t it?  You must kill to save lives.

                Once we’d smashed in enough skulls to ensure the vast majority of the dead we’d shot into were down, we hopped back into the vehicles, and using the HRT’s plow blade, we cleared a path through the dead bodies and continued on.

                Spring Meadows had a small crowd of undead at the gate.  I think ten, maybe twenty.  We popped them off from about twenty yards out, dragged their bodies out of the way, and the locals let us in.  They were stoked to see us.  They’d been laying low, trying to make as little noise as possible hoping the undead would simply leave.  It was a decent plan.  Unfortunately, they’d made enough noise to keep this little pack of them around. 

                Not much else to report from them.  We dropped off our care package with them, garnering endless glee from the locals, and we shipped out fairly fast.  We didn’t want to stay too long after making all that noise, and lead whatever might be following us to them.  Always better to have the threat chasing the dudes with the most firepower.  When and if they ever catch us, we’re prepared for them.

                Our first order of business approaching the hospital where Fitz died was checking on the perimeter radios.  We had two radios near our approach to look at, and to a lesser degree they were packed with undead.  We knew that any kind of operation at the parking garage with those populations nearby would be met with failure of the higher possible level, so we took the time to smash into them with the HRT and mow them down with fully automatic gunfire.  Yay us.  It’s amazing how much easier doing this is when you have weapons that fire 800+ rounds per minute and people experienced with shooting them.

                I laugh at how hard it was to just drive ten minutes a year ago. 

                Getting the two intersections cleared was short work.  Of course we also knew that our noise clearing the southern two intersections would draw the undead in from the northern two intersections.  It was just a matter of time for them to shuffle, feet dragging all the way down to us where we were in the garage.

                We got to work, as best we could.  Sadly, that wasn’t all that well.  The parking garage at the hospital was far different than the one at the apartment buildings.  The ceiling clearance that allowed us to drive our trucks in at the other place was sadly missing here.  When we started down the slight dip to go into the parking garage it was immediately apparent we would never get either the HRT or the deuce to the top floor, let alone just inside the damn garage.

                We started to think of scrapping the plan.  We knew we’d have undead on us sooner rather than later, and with no ability to drive our wood to the top floor, we’d take hours longer than the last time to get anything done.  That’s when Blake’s eyes lit up like Christmas trees.

                Blake saw that the Deuce was almost perfectly the right size to plug the vehicle entrance to the parking garage.  The concrete barriers and fences would make for a pretty flush plug on the garage.  If we shut a few of the doors and barred them, we’d be in business for keeping things shut out.  We could easily transfer all the wood to the backs of the two humvees, drive that stuff upstairs, set the fires up, and lo and behold, we’d be done.

                We elected to move forward.

                Caleb parked the HRT in the street, well out of the line of fire should we need to open up on the encroaching undead.  Martin pretty expertly parked the deuce across the entrance, ensuring that only undead that were smart enough to crawl under the deuce could get through.  We solved that riddle after we took all the wood out of the deuce.  One of the humvees pushed a pair of cars behind the deuce, more or less blocking the path through entirely.  For better or for worse, we were trapped in the garage.

                Yesterday’s work was back breaking.  Unload all the wood from the deuce, drive it up to the top deck, unload it, stack it on the vehicles we wanted  to set on fire, get fuel from the gas tanks we could, and all the while, shoot and take down the undead that were trapped inside the garage with us.  Which, I might add, was not an inconsiderable amount.

                We had to stop on every single level to get out and take down walkers.  It was something else.  The second level of the garage, which was just above ground level was the deck that fed into the main level of the hospital.  It had nearly three dozen zombies wandering about, and it took us the better part of an hour to find them all and kill them.  Unlike last time, we took the few extra minutes to check underneath all the vehicles.  Yeah, it was a pain in the ass, but it was damn better than getting our ankles bitten.

                We split up the groups into pairs, Ranger buddy style.  One shooter/worker, one spotter.  Four of us worked on the fire building, six of us worked on the drilling and explosives, and the remainder of us took firing positions from the middle levels, taking down anything walking in our direction.  We actually elected to use our suppressed weapons for this task.  Despite wanting to make noise, that exact moment we kind of wanted to be a little off the radar.

                Quan did not approve of the garage here. The floors were much more densely made, and because the garage was linked to the side of the hospital, he felt collapsing the space was going to be a far more difficult project.  It took a full hour longer than we anticipated to get the extra explosives put in.  I mean shit, more or less Quan put enough Semtex into that fucking place to level it twice over.

                Of course in order to drop as many floors as possible, he put the explosives on the second level, and not the first.  The entry level was sunk into the ground a bit, as well as attached to the hospital, so planting the shit to blow that floor was a bad idea he said.  He opted for the next deck up, which appears to him to be the way to go.  I have absolutely no idea how to do anything related to explosives, or building demolition, so… gonna go with him and hope he’s right.

                Our exit from the garage was a bitch.  Despite posting shooters and having them be fairly busy the entire time we were there, a disturbingly large amount of undead had made their way to the base of the garage.  After discussing logistics, Kevin and I made the call to shoot them.  The basic problem was getting over the cars parked behind the Deuce, then INTO the Deuce itself, all without causing any excess danger to whoever took one for the team to do that.

                So all of us piled into the middle level, and opened fire on the mass of undead down near the Deuce.  We didn’t all have suppressors though, so we raised a hell of a racket.  Not SAW kind of racket, we left those on the turret mounts.   Just M4s and AR15 noise.  Not that those weapons are particularly quiet.  We’ve also been trying to rotate our suppressors out.  They don’t last forever, and if we don’t take them off and maintain them, they blow out early and become useless.  We remembered to take them off the weapons before opening up.

                After the first massive burst of fire we sent a team running in the humvee down.  A chain hooked to the tow hook of the humvee yanked the two cars out from behind the Deuce, and the spare shooters popped off the zombies that had fallen or crawled underneath the Deuce.  Within just a minute we’d gone from surrounded, to smashing our way out of the downtown area. 

                The population had started to encircle us pretty good, and that was no more apparent than during the drive out of town.  Undead had managed to crawl their way into the streets and they made our trip out a little more frightening than the trip in.  Fortunately they were spread out enough that the HRT was simply able to ram them over and out of the way.  We hauled major ass through a totally new route to get back.  It was sort of the same way as towards Spring Meadow, but also far enough out that it wouldn’t draw any attention to them.

                Unfortunately, we hadn’t really scouted the route out well enough in advance, and when we ran straight into the road being blocked by a three or four car accident.  From memory it was a fire truck that had t-boned a semi, and took out a few cars in the process.  Fortunately, there were just a few undead around the accident, and we were able to push the ass end of the semi truck out of the way before the zombies on the surrounding streets were able to close in on us.  God bless Martin and his plow welding skills.

                The remainder of our trip home was mercifully without incident.

                Remember at the beginning of all this, I spoke about courage, and fear, and all that bullshit?

                Last night I had a strange dream that wound up with me sitting in a vague white room, at a small round table.  The White Room.

                It took me a minute or two to remember where I was, and what it meant when I was sitting there.  Once I realized where I was, and what was probably coming, I took a few seconds to close my eyes, and soak in the warm glow of the room.  It felt physically and emotionally reassuring to be in that space.  Sort of like the memory you have of being in a parent’s embrace as a child, or when you’re sitting in the sun on a summer day, next to the girl you have a budding kind of love for. 

                It felt good.  Really good.

                When I opened my eyes again I was no longer alone at the table.  Arrayed across from me was Gilbert, and Fitz.  I was not surprised to see Gilbert, but I was definitely sort of shocked to see Fitz there.  He had been a... well, tertiary character in the world of the weird so far, and to have him show up in The White Room of all places was odd to say the least.

                Both old warriors sat at the table, smiling at me, waiting for me to talk.

                “Hey fellas,” I think I said.

                “Son,” Gilbert replied.  Fitz simply sat there, watching.  He had a strange look on his face, like he was watching and waiting for something to make this all go away, like it was an illusion.

                “Another dream eh?  Something noteworthy around the corner huh?”

                Gilbert chuckled, and Fitz joined him, “you could say that Adrian.”

                “What pearls of wisdom are you here to share today?” I asked him.  I remember Fitz leaning back in his chair, looking back and forth between the two of us.

                “You’re getting ready to go try and find her.”

                I thought for a bit, and finally nodded back at him.  I didn’t know what else to say.

                “You realize this is something that could break you?  You know that if you see her dead and broken, eyes as white as sheets your very soul could go rotten from the guilt you carry?”

                Again I thought long and hard about this.  I knew it would be difficult to face her if I found her, but I wasn’t expecting to lose my soul over it.  “Gilbert I need to do this.  I need to either see her alive, or see her dead and somehow make amends.  I can’t live my life anymore not knowing.  I need to move on somehow.  Closure man.  Closure.”

                This time Fitz spoke up, “your bullshit here will get someone killed, you know that right?  These trips you’re taking into the city are dangerous.  Beyond stupid, and incredibly selfish.  There’s no reason to do this other than you cleaning up loose ends in your own goddamn head Adrian.”

                Gilbert interrupted me, “Fitzy my boy, that’s what this is all about.  It’s about everyone else supporting him.  It’s about pulling together to save the soul of all mankind.  Can’t you see?  That’s what so much of this has been about, all this time?”

                I had no idea what he was talking about, so I simply answered Fitz, “man I know this is selfish.  I tried hard to get people to not join, I tried hard to do this alone, but they wouldn’t let me.  I don’t want anyone to get hurt or die for me.”

                Gilbert let Fitz chew on that before starting to talk again, “Adrian this must be done for you to move on.  It’s taken all this time for you to get where you need to be.  It’s taken this long for you to find a real and true reason to move on Adrian.  Promise me one thing son.  You lean on your people.  You lean HARD on your people.  They love you more than you can imagine, and without them by your side, all this is for naught.”

                Michelle. 

                He was talking about Michelle.

                I had no good reason to force myself to move on until now.  I didn’t have the desire to purge my feelings for Cassie until I found someone I wanted in my heart as much as her.  I made excuses, I made up reasons, and I definitely kept myself unhappy, and drowned myself in self pity.

                But I see it for what it is now.  I see this as the struggle.  The whole struggle up until now, from June 23rd 2010 to the moment I write this, the entire struggle was me trying to make myself a better person.  All my pain and suffering served as my crucible.  My great test to make me the person that deserves to survive this, and deserves not only to love, but BE loved again. 

                I’m not the piece of shit I think I am.  I’m a good person, with a future next to someone that I think is falling in love with me.  Someone I think I’m falling in love with too.

                There’s just one more hurdle to step over.

                Cassie, forgive me, but I’m coming to finally put you to rest.

                -Adrian

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                I find it rather impressive how much work this trip into the city is taking.  Never mind the trips into the city themselves, I’m talking about the preparation for these little trips too.

                Primarily I’m speaking of cutting wood.  We have a pretty steady crew of kids and adults that sit there chopping wood all day every other day or so for the stoves, but we need a solid cord or cord and a half of wood for each of the fires we’re intending to set on the top of the parking garages.  The kids spent all day today and much of yesterday chopping the wood up and loading the back of the deuce up for our next trip to the other parking garage.

                Never mind the weapons maintenance, magazine loading, medical supply preparation, and the two hundred other things that need to be done here at Bastion on a daily basis.  I definitely feel selfish having all these people devote this much time to something that mainly only benefits me.  I mean sure, if this parking garage bullshit works out and kills a few thousand undead, we’ll be sitting much prettier.  However, if you look at the odds, look at my luck, and then weigh that against this being successful, we’re already bent.

                Yawn.  I’m tired.  Little cranky too.  I’ve been a smidge under the weather for a couple days now.  Since we returned from the last downtown run really.  The weather has been drizzly and cold, forming some black ice here and there, and I think the time outside coupled with meeting the new folks over at Spring Meadows has given me a wee bit of the cold.  Irritated.  I’m just a little sniffly, just a little achy, with a touch of a headache, and a tiny bit of an upset stomach.  Just a little irritation, but all over.

                I’ve been resting for the last two hours here in my room with Otis.  We’re doing well as a team.  Otis is buried in my crotch as I lay here on the bed, laptop on my chest.

                My mind is running a mile a minute.  I’m having a very hard time keeping focused on the things I need to pay attention to.  I’ve got a small notebook I stole from the office supplies closet in the administration building that I’ve been writing notes in.  I keep double checking to make sure things are getting crossed off in the book, and it is starting to look like more is getting added than crossed off.

                It doesn’t help that my mind is halfway between fear and hope with the tasks directly ahead.  I’m scared to find Cassie.  I know she’s dead, but HOW dead?  Dead and resting dead?  Or dead and walking around dead?  I’m not sure what’s worse.

                I’m also petrified about Michelle.  I really like this woman, and I’m scared of what that means.  I’m concerned I’ll hurt her, or get her hurt on this fucking quest of mine.  I so want her to not go, but I also know deep down inside… she should be there for this.  If this Trinity nonsense means anything, we need to make sure we’re together for the big things, and this feels like a very big thing.

                I keep thinking too about what Gilbert said about how Cassie was like, off limits or something.  He warned me over and over to not try and contact her when I was down on the other side, and like he asked, I never did try and get in touch with her.  I knew she was dead, and theoretically just a “call” away, but I was so scared of being confronted by her, and I knew Gilbert wouldn’t have told me not to unless it was vitally important.

                But if evil has her somewhere for safe keeping… then this is very clearly a big thing.  This could be my moment.  The single event that determines whether or not I fail at this whole “saving humanity” crap.

                I’m not sure how to play this.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen.  I hate the unknown.

                Sigh.  I need to man the fuck up here and get my shit done.

                Speaking of shit to get done, I’m going to head to bed.  It’s far later than I intended to be up, and we’re heading back into the city tomorrow morning to hit the other parking garage.  First up we’re swinging by Spring Meadow to check in with them.  They’ve had some additional contact with undead above and beyond what they’re used to, and that’s our fault.  We wanted to drop off some bread, some milk, and a few eggs for them.  Neighborly gifts and whatnot.

                After we say hi to them, we’re headed to the parking garage and prepping it to blow in a few more days.

                Remember what happened last March 3^rd here at Bastion?  The hundreds of undead with all the books?  The strange visions and dreams of Cassie?  On the third hour of the third day of the third month?

                If all goes well, I’ll be reaching Cassie’s work by March 3^rd.  I don’t know what hour I’ll be there at, but if I was a betting man…

                I bet we get there right around three.

                -Adrian

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February 24^th.

                I’m glad I’ve got a big toe.  Big feet.  Large size, large toes.  Large piles of shit require large toes to stomp them down the drain when necessary.

                How large a pile of shit?  Allow me to go into some detail.

                Our team left Bastion fairly early yesterday, in force.  We left with pretty much every gun we could muster and headed straight to the Factory.  The roads between here and the Factory were largely clear of undead.  I think we might’ve had to steer to and fro ten times at most to hit and kill a zombie.  It was a pleasant change of pace, and very much unlike some other driving moments later in the day.

                At the Factory we encountered a rather large amount of the dead.  They weren’t ranked up per se, but everywhere you looked in the surrounding streets the bodies were probably three deep.  I’d guess and say no more than ten to fifteen feet of space was between any given undead and another.  To clear us some space to work Caleb punched the HRT and literally plowed us a straight line into the area right in front of the old nightclub.  Once we were close to the building, Abby and myself got onto the roof of the ambulance and we started plinking away with .22 rifles.  At the same time, our two humvee crews dismounted and began to lay down heavy clearing fire, emptying the space of threats at a fast pace.  After perhaps ten minutes of steady fire, we were able to move on with the plan, and pick up three more Factory shooters.

                Two younger men, both around 18, and then Barry.  You remember Barry?  The poor kid from the car dealership way back when?  Good kid.

                We checked on them for about thirty minutes, getting a face to face update with them, and then we headed out to the apartment building parking garage.  On approach we knew we were in for a tough trip.  Tough enough that we almost cancelled it.  The undead were packed in fairly tight around the garage, and just driving into the garage was going to be a challenge.  However once we talked over the radio we decided it was worth a shot, and at worse, we could drive to the top, drop the wood we brought for the lure fires, and then take off before things got worse.

                Caleb behind the wheel of the HRT yet again meant we were making zombie pate.  He loves hitting those things as they walk along.   The entrance to the parking garage barely fit the HRT.  And by barely, I mean we lost the horn off the roof as we drove up the concrete slope into the first level.  I nearly shit a brick when it ripped free, but Kevin in the humvee two vehicles behind us called out what had happened.  I elected to move forward, and Caleb drove on.

                Inside the parking garage there were perhaps a third of the vehicles it could hold on a busy day.  Many of the vehicles still had their doors open, and the floors right below them covered in dark stains of old blood.  These stains are nearly two years old now.  I’m sure many folks running from their places of employment met their demise fumbling with keys, or trying to start their car back in June.  Imagine building the nerve to run out of your office building alone, run through the crowd of undead, into the garage, and reach your car, only to butter finger your keys onto the floor mat long enough to have a zombie yank you out forcibly and eat you?  What a shit way to go.

                To help buy us some time the third and fourth vehicle in the group started ramming parked cars across the entrance to the garage.  The fourth vehicle was a humvee, and with the powerful motor it was able to push a few small cars into the way, forming an impromptu roadblock for us.  Security on the first floor was obviously our greatest priority.

                 The HRT and the Deuce went all the way to the top floor, stopping as needed to take down any and all undead we saw.  Frankly Mr. Journal, I’m surprised at how many there were just wandering around the damn garage.  I’m not sure if they were lost, or that they hadn’t been lured out by any other noises the entire time.  I mean shit, who knows at this point? 

                Anyhoo, I found the overall amount of targets to be higher than I would’ve liked.  We had no difficulty on the upper levels clearing as we went up.  Staying in constant radio contact with Kevin and the first floor crew meant we were only a minute away from supporting them, and vice versa.  We were worried that at any point more of the assholes who shot at us the other day would return, opening fire, but in reality the only threat we had was undead.  Lots of them too.

                On the top floor we emptied the entire back end of the Deuce onto and underneath a pair of parked cars.  The two cars were in adjacent spaces, and we arranged the wood to burn on top, inside, and on the bottom.  As three of us did that, two more went vehicle to vehicle with hoses and gas cans, draining gas tanks.

                Amazingly enough, most of the gas tanks on that level still had fuel. So much fuel in fact, we started prying trunks open to find more fuel tanks to get the fuel.  I forget the exact amount of gas we pulled out of there, but we brought every single one of our fuel cans, including the fat ass tanks in the humvees, and we filled every single one.  I’d comfortable say we left with 200 gallons.  Now if we had brought our 55 gallon drums…

                Makes me want to postpone this trip into the city just to get the damn fuel.  By now though we’re pot committed.  We made far too much noise shooting, drilling, yelling, screaming, and farting yesterday.  By now the garage is crawling with undead, and we need that population to get smooshed by the decks when they collapse.

                There will be more vehicles with gas tanks.  Plus Blake has little to no time to filter the fuel right now.  He’s far too busy working with Martin and Quan, learning explosives.

                Speaking of which, while my crew was upstairs on the top level, those three plus a handful more were downstairs using the concrete drills to make holes to sink the plastic explosive into.  Quan was paranoid as balls about the Semtex due to its age.  I guess it was old, and old explosives are… fickle.  He insisted no one touch them but him, and he simply linked all the charges and hooked them up as needed.  Martin and Blake simply drilled holes where he marked them while the rest of the team provided security.

                I guess they had multiple very close encounters with zombies underneath vehicles.  On the second occasion of one of them dragging themselves out from under a fucking parked car, Kevin radioed up to us , shat brick in hand, yelling for us to watch out for it.  We got really lucky up top, not gonna lie.  Several of us spent many a minute on bended knee at a gas cap getting fuel.  We easily could’ve lost someone.

                I listened carefully the entire morning and into the afternoon until we’d finished with our fire piles.  We didn’t light them yet…  we just got them ready.  Lighting them will be for when we’re about to go, which will be another couple of days.  Four maybe, not positive just yet.

                We relocated to the third deck and called for Blake to join us.  He grabbed one of the humvees, drove up to us on the third level, and one of my crew switched out with him so they had full staffing and vehicles on the bottom floor.  Fortunately while we were doing the swap, we had a brief lull, and no one was in extra danger.

                Blake grabbed the spare car battery we brought along and popped the hood on a car that we knew had a car alarm.  It took us two or three tries to find a car that didn’t simply have a starter kill feature, and an actual car alarm.  In case you were wondering Mr. Journal, car alarms are useless.  I can’t even tell you how many times I heard a car alarm going off in the distance and did nothing about it.  Now starter kill on the other hand was far more effective.  Anyway, Blake got the battery into the car, jury rigged it, and after playing around with a few wires, the car alarm went off, right on cue.

                Noise maker now effective, we packed up and went downstairs to back up Kevin’s team as Quan and Martin finished working on the explosives.  Quan was wrapping up the final wiring on the radio controlled detonator when we arrived.  We were pushing the two cars blocking the garage out of the way less than twenty minutes later, and after smashing through a few dozen undead milling about beyond the cars, we were back on the road, all in one piece.

                I know I drew the lucky straw upstairs with my group setting up the fires.  I also know that was entirely intentional on Kevin’s part.  He’s trying desperately to keep my safe, yet also putting me near enough the action so that if something really bad DOES happen, I can be there to help.  It’s a fine balance.  On two fronts really.  He’s trying to keep me safe while still using me, as well as keep me in the  loop, but not offend me.

                I am also sure a huge portion of this is Michelle’s handiwork.

                We ditched the Factory guys back at their base of operations, and took the long drive home in shitty weather.  While we were inside the garage the weather turned south on us.  Sleet and freezing rain were the order of the day, and the roads were treacherous.  We had one gut buster moment just as the sun was done being useful for the day.  A zombie was coming down a side road right near Gilbert’s old warehouse.  It must’ve heard us coming from a bit away, and just as we were crossing the road it was on, the damn thing slipped in some freezing rain and went down hard on its back.  I think it cracked its skull too, because it was still very still when the fourth vehicle passed it.

                I guess it’s good to be lucky every now and then.

                Things here at Bastion are quiet.  We’re prepping for our next trip to the other parking garage near the hospital.  Not sure exactly what day that’ll be, but I’ll let you know as soon as we iron it out.

                Getting nervous Mr. Journal.  That went fairly well yesterday, and I’m sure that despite how crappy it actually was, that was still just the calm before the storm.

                I may or may not think about Michelle when I turn out the lights.  Otis wants some company, so I’m gonna turn this laptop off, and give my homeboy what he’s jonesing for. 

                A scratched tummy.

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                Is this a fucking leap year?

                Hm.

                I’m sitting here looking at my ghetto style homemade calendar, and I’m pretty sure it might be a leap year this year.  Not that it’ll be the end of the world if I fuck it up, but I want to be a proper scribe, or Scribe, if you prefer.  I think in the admissions office I can check and see.  I don’t trust the calendar on the laptop here.  I’m not sure if it updates without the internet properly.  I’ll let you know what I find out.

                Where was I?  Where were we?

                Scatterbrained tonight something fierce.  Otis has been up in my ass like a bike seat all damn evening since I settled in my room.  He’s smashing his face into me, and rubbing his little wet nose all over the place.  Plus he’s been tossing around this little catnip mouse one of the kids got for him like he’s sky high on meth or something.  Miss my buddy.  Seems like he misses me too.

                Here’s the good news for the day:  Nothing is happening here at Bastion.  Nothing.  Like, nada.  Ollie and Ryan are making serious headway into our food situation on two separate fronts.  Ollie has managed to get one of the cows pregnant, which is HUGE.  Not sure exactly how pregnant the cow is, but if he can get two more knocked up in a jiffy, we’re going to be buried in milk and meat.  Gotta increase our livestock!

                Ryan has managed to get four hydroponics stations built.  He’s fully rehabilitated finally from the sickness that nearly killed a dozen of us, and he’s being super productive.  Each hydro station is about the size of a large freezer.  You know the kind you’d find in a basement?  They don’t require electricity, operating on gravity feed, and they seem awesome.  He’s got them seeded already, and he’s already working on building more.  My sister Becca is tending the hydro units already up and running, and there’s been no drop off in food production.  She’s also organizing planting cycles so we’ll have stuff coming into season year round.  She’s so organized. 

                School is going well.  Syl is really starting to come out of her shell.  She’s managed to join the school two days a week, and working with Blake’s wife Kim one on one.  She’s also talking, and is now able to converse more or less as normal, as long as we don’t bring up her past, or her parents.  She shuts right the fuck down if we do.  Michelle couldn’t be happier.  The other kids and the adults surrounding her have taken her in and made her feel welcomed and wanted, and that’s done a lot for her.  The amount of compassion that child is receiving is stellar.  It’s important that we all learn to be nice to everyone.  If anything she’s teaching us that.

                Here’s the bad news of the day:  Both the Factory as well as Spring Meadows have been receiving what they classify as “above average” contact from the undead.  I think this has very mundane reasons behind it.  Both areas have seen additional foot and vehicle traffic the past few days, and we have been making quite a racket as well.  We went into the city from the Factory the other day, and we spent several days making noise at Meadows as well.  Perfectly legit reasons for increased contact.  Both areas are reporting that the contact is manageable with melee weapons, but the presence was alarming enough to report to us.

                All things considered, I believe we are in the calm before the storm.  I think because we are heading into the city tomorrow to set up the first parking garage as our major lure site, we are getting a basic reprieve here.  It’s my firm belief that we’re going to be absolutely, positively SMASHING shit down the drain tomorrow, and this is the powers that be giving us a few days of easy street to get us rested.

                As I just said, we’re leaving bright and early, crack of dawn style tomorrow to roll into the city edge to the parking garage that was scouted the other day.  We have an insertion plan and everything.  Should be pretty slick if we don’t encounter a mountain of undead there.  If we do, that’s not even the worst thing that could happen.  I mean that’d be a distraction, and we’re all about distractions right now.

                We had a bunch of our younger kids work on splitting wood and loading the deuce up today.  We’re setting up multiple large piles of wood on the top level of the garage in a manner so when one is about to burn out, the second pile next to it should be just getting going.  If it goes well, the fires will burn visibly on the top levels for about six to eight hours.  We’re not sure how long the car alarms will go off for, but we’re betting it’ll be long enough to draw in a fucking absurd amount of undead.  Either way, we’re going to do our best tomorrow to get that garage ready.

                Large team of experienced shooters, multiple vehicles, a good plan…  Should be horrible.  I am not giving that bitch Fairy anything to work with right now.  She can suck my fat cock.

                Headed to bed.  Early morning, and I still need to clean some of my weapons for tomorrow.  Can’t deal with a dirty weapon…

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

I'm writing this from Spring Meadows. Spring Meadows is the gated community that we'd been eyeing for some time, and visited yesterday. As you can clearly tell, I'm still alive, and I am happy to report that we met some survivors that didn't shoot us.

I'm not sure quite how we made it all the way to this phase of the planning without having the realization that there could be people living in the community, much like we ourselves wanted to. Silly in retrospect that none of us even considered the possibility that someone else was using the area already.

When we arrived at Spring Meadows yesterday morning we knew immediately there were probably survivors inside the walls. Spring Meadows is large, 18 houses large, all on about 2 acres each. It's a central road leading into three cul de sacs arranged like a cross. Six houses on the straight road in, then four houses arranged on the circles at the end of the three roads. Surrounding all of this luscious property is an eight foot tall, two foot thick concrete wall covered in red bricks and ivy, and topped with ornamental wrought iron spikes. Looks classy from a distance, but it means fucking business.

The main gate to the community is also wrought iron looking, but is actually very sturdy steel with a coating to age it with a neat looking patina. Just outside the gate is a guard house with the controls to open the gate. When we arrived the controls were inoperative, but the gate opened with little fuss. Especially when we asked the locals and talked to them. Insert smiley face for avoiding violence.

Our first huge tip off to survivors was the number of dead bodies arrayed right at the gate. Not undead bodies mind you, actually dead bodies. I'd guess at twenty or thirty, all close enough to have been killed with melee weapons from through the gate. It told us someone inside had killed undead outside, and likely fairly frequently, and recently based on the condition of the corpses.

So with our team in the front of the gate like that with likely survivors, we formulated a new plan: try and talk to the people.

I mean talking has gone so well for us in the past right?

I got on the HRTs loudspeaker and let out a quick holler, announcing our peaceful presence at the gate, and asking if anyone on the inside would be willing to talk to us via radio, or in person if possible.

As you'd suspect, we received no reply for several minutes. Long enough for them to gather their weapons, and get themselves into shooting positions at the two closest houses. Ethan was with us, and through his scope he had their two shooters eyeballed long before they were ready to fire on us. Finally, after sending my second message out, a tall man and woman came down the straight portion of the road towards us. I was going to go out to greet them but Kevin told me to toss his salad, and he went out instead. The Warden takes his job seriously, despite his clever use of the English language.

The couple were tall as I said, and blonde. They looked Nordic. Swedish or Norwegian or something. Hawkish features, long arms and legs, and very clean. They looked like theyd managed to get all this way after the end of the world without missing a single shower. Both of them had a blade and a pistol on their belts. Pretty folk, especially considering the state of the world. They had slate like faces until they got to about forty yards away. Once they saw the humvee, the deuce, and the military issue hardware all over us, their expressions changed immediately. They had confidence before, but after that moment, you could feel their unease. I knew immediately that these people were used to being safe, and having the upper hand. Now they looked like they felt the opposite might be the case with us.

Kevin had his throat mic turned to on, and we could kind of hear them, but the sound was utter garbage. The man spoke first. He introduced himself as Anders, and the woman as Agnes. They politely explained that the Spring Meadow area was their area, under their control, and they were unable to share any of their dwindling supplies, and that they had ample ability to protect themselves should we object with them. After about that I had enough and walked up to talk with the two of them. Ethan shat an acorn on the spot and thumbed his safety to off. If either of their shooters did anything funny, they'd be dead.

I said hello, and introduced myself. They saw the Mohawk and instantly thought less of me. I feel very Road Warrior esque when I meet people. They don't see the fun and humor in having a Mohawk. They only think likely violent and or flesh eating moron who is immature. I might need to rethink this haircut if we keep meeting people.

I told them plain and simple that we were from a settlement outside of the city, and we were making runs for supplies into the city, and we saw their community, and thought it would be absolutely perfect as a secondary place to reinforce. Walled, gated, large houses well spaced, and lots of lawn and garden areas that could grow a lot of food. I essentially framed my talk about how it was awesome that they had already secured the place, how happy we were for them, and how much of a shame it was for us that they were already there.

Agnes and Anders both agreed with me on all counts, and were civil and pleasant. After asking a few questions about us and our and various locations, they became far more comfortable, and started to ask us about how we able to go into the city. I told them we had military men on our side, and fuel still, as well as ammunition and whatnot. Without sounding threatening, I made it clear that we were armed, able, and willing to do whatever it was that needed to be done to stay alive, and help others around us stay alive.

That's when they opened the gate, and invited us in. Three of us went inside and headed for the first house to get out of the street. Just about at the same time a few undead had managed to catch up with us, and they needed to be dispatched by one of us with a halligan. It made a lot of sense for us to all move inside the gate, so we did.

Inside the first house Kevin and I sat down with the two who'd met us, as well as a few others. Three more adults, all armed with sidearms, though not holstered, as well as two younger teenagers. They looked hungry, and a little cold, but they also looked hardened. Like survivors. Like people who'd been through it and were still kicking. I had respect for these people right from the jump.

There are four families left in the neighborhood. Agnes and Anders are the Jessen family. They have two kids, a 13 year old boy, and a 14 year old girl. Other families include the Winthrops (mom and dad plus two kids and an uncle), the Cartwrights(mom and dad plus two kids), the Whites (mom plus two kids), and the Littrell family (mom and dad plus four teenage kids). Thats a grand total headcount of 22 souls. Most of which are less than 18 years of age.

Luckily, the youngest of the kids is just 10, so even the littlest of them is still somewhat productive.

An hour turned into two, two turned into four, and before you know it, they're sharing some of their small amounts of freshly made beer with us, and were sharing some of our fresh food with them. It was really pleasant. We had brought enough food for days with us, so as a gesture, we gave them lunch out of our stocks. We ate chicken salad made with Melissa's new homemade mayo, and some potato salad, also made with the mayo. These people absolutely, positively devoured our food. I don't want to say they were starving, but I think they hadn't had chicken in a very long time.

After the food and the stomach aches from eating all that food, we asked them about their situation. The four families still here have been here since that day. They happened to be home that day for whatever reason, so they didn't get caught up in the bullshit in the city. They also managed to miss the bombings late in the summer of 2010. (which apparently were enormous and loud. From the sounds of it, there were several runs late in the summer on the city, and based on their descriptions of the noise of the bombs, it was probably a huge drop of cluster munitions. They're pretty unique when they go off.)

Anyhoo, they knew shit was bad, so they got some chains from their sheds, chained the gates shut early on, parked their Escalades and Expeditions against the gate to prevent ramming, and hunkered down. Lucky for them many of the nice homes in the community already had large organic hobby gardens in the back. They had a ripe harvest that first fall, and with careful rationing, they made it through to last spring. They expanded their gardens over the year, and now they're essentially vegetarians, and self sufficient. Miraculously, they have been able to save rainwater and snow for hydration up to this point. Of course it's been really dry the last week or two, so they're starting to redline a bit.

I wonder how you make a pond?

They have had to fend off several groups over the last year and a half. Many more than us, but with such an excellent wall and gate, as well as multiple firearms theyve managed to do well for themselves.

They were still jealous of our chicken, and I think that was the straw that broke the camels back for them. As we were winding down into the early evening they made the offer for us to stay in the house inside the community to talk more with them. They needed some technical help fixing things the next day, and we didnt want to drive back in the dark unless necessary, and frankly, having the bulk of today to spread our people out and bullshit with them was super helpful in coming to the agreement we just came to with them.

They want to join our network of friends.

Essentially they wish to become like the Factory is to Bastion. A linked separate settlement that can offer assistance both ways when needed. Safety in numbers and all that jazz. Plus, they've got a solid ten or twelve acres of land that we could easily transform into farmland for them when winter is over. God forbid we have more crops growing, right?

We told them we were preparing to mount a large mission into the city within a week or two, and that wed love be able to use Spring Meadows as a launching point to help us with timing the operation. We didnt say what the mission was for, but they were more than willing to assist us.

We're still here tonight, socializing and whatnot. These are nice people. People that had money before the end of the world, but that worked for it. New money people. Workers. Not trust fund assholes. They're still here because they busted ass, and made good decisions that day and every day since.

It'll be a pleasure slowly bringing them into our fold. If tomorrow goes well, well leave them with one of our walkies. Not our military comms, but just a walkie. We cant quite reach Bastion from here, but we can contact the Factory, and the Factory can contact us at Bastion. Better than nothing, and it'll give them some much needed reassurance.

They aren't alone anymore.

Yesterday while we were moving here a second team of our people moved into the western edge of the city to the parking garages to scout them. Contact was very heavy, and they were forced to stop and engage over a hundred targets on the way in and out. Fortunately they brought a SAW in the turret, and that was the ultimate equalizer. I'm not too happy about the timing on the noise, but I can't complain.

Mike and Patty (who were in charge of that run with Blake and Quan) said the garage is perfect for the idea we have. It's only four floors, which means easy in and out for us, but also enough floors to cause some serious fucking damage when that Semtex goes boom. Quan said it'd take him maybe six hours to get the loads in, and he might be able to shave that time down with some assistance on drilling, and some really special prep ahead of time.

We return home tomorrow.

-Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                We have a plan.  It is without doubt risky, but if it works, we’ll be heroes.

                Kevin, Mike, Patty, Michelle and Abby went around the past couple of days and built support up for a deep incursion into the city.  I am shocked to report Mr. Journal that everyone was willing to lend whatever assistance we needed.

                Kind of shocking.  I didn’t expect everyone to be willing to help.  I mean, obviously there are people who have little to nothing to offer, but for so many to simply offer up whatever they had to help is very humbling.

                Step one of the plan is roll to the gated community and clear it.  We’re going to roll out in a large team of about ten with the deuce so we can get inside the gates, and set up camp after we clear it out.  We’re anticipating clearing out the exterior areas and a single house on day one.  We’ll batten down the hatches overnight in that house, and then we’ll start clearing houses immediately on the day following. 

                Once the entire neighborhood is clear, and we’ve assessed the situation as far as supplies and fortifications are concerned, we’ll initiate step two of the plan.

                Step two is preparation for the lure.  We need a large set of lure locations that will draw in from a wide area.  Therefore, we need it to be either very loud, or very visible, or both.  Now wherever we lure the undead to needs to be where we can kill them, preferably efficiently.  As I said a hundred times, we do not have enough bullets to do this with guns.

                Our initial idea was to lure them to the Factory, and kill them there, but quite frankly, we have no frigging way of killing hundreds let alone tens of thousands of undead there.  I mean our options at the Factory basically boiled down to throwing rocks off the roof to kill them all, or taking the HRT out for a spin, and attempting to drive over a few thousand packed in undead.

                All aboard the failboat, if you please.

                We spun through multiple ideas.  Lure them to the college basketball arena?  Wasn’t feasible.  Too many entrances and exits to seal, plus there was too high a chance that the arena became an emergency shelter that day, and was still filled with the dead.  Opening it would make our lives worse.  What about underground?  There’s a small traffic tunnel we might be able to block off one end of.  Lure them in then… what?  Besides, the tunnel had zero visibility, which was part of the plan.

                Fire?  Fuck fire.

                So we started thinking of places that we could either seal off, or allow us to use some of our existing supplies or weapons in a vastly more sufficient manner.  We’ve already learned bombs and explosives are marginally effective, see my fire comments above, and I already said we don’t have nearly enough bullets.  However…   Kevin has an ample amount of Semtex on hand from his time in England.  Semtex is plastic explosive, and plastic explosive, if used correctly, can easily bring down a building.

                Quan is the closest thing we have to a demo expert.  It also helps that Martin and Blake are technically intelligent.  These three men working together gave us the inspiration for the plan we’ve settled on.  The only way we can efficiently use the Semtex to kill undead is to create either enough shrapnel to guarantee strikes to the brain, or to create a situation with the explosives that will result in a catastrophic event, destroying the entire body, or so much of it that they won’t be a threat anymore.

                We needed this all to happen in a place that didn’t need significant clearing, and preferably was nearby the downtown area I’d be heading into.

                I thought of our time at the hospital, and immediately had the perfect solution.  I asked how much Semtex we had, and how much Semtex we’d need to bring a building down.  We had enough for a few small buildings, or one really large one.  It’d depend on whether or not we had the time to place the explosives appropriately into the load bearing supports of the structure.  We’d need a construction drill, which fortunately we had.

                I asked if we had enough explosives to bring down a parking garage.

                Turns out, we do.  Two or three easily Quan said.

                And our plan was set.  We are going to move to the parking garage at the hospital, a mere ten blocks from Cassie’s workplace, as well as the parking garage sort of near the Factory for two large apartment buildings on the edge of the city.  The hospital garage is four stories tall, and the apartment garage is four or five stories.

                On the top floor of the garage we are going to build a massive fire.  Quan says he has some ideas on pyro shit he can mix up to make the fire burn very bright, and last a good long time.  While we set up the fire on the top level, we are going to drill and load explosives into the concrete pillars on the first two levels, ensuring that when we blow the explosives, the entire garage goes down in a heap.  We’ll do this of course when the garage has drawn in a few thousand undead, hopefully ten thousand each or so.  To assist in the overall lure factor, we are going to bring some spare working car batteries, find a car in the garage with a car alarm, jury rig the car with the new battery, and set off the car alarm.  Blake has assured us he knows how to set them up to go off indefinitely. 

                Once we have a full house, semtex goes boom, pillars go kaplowie, the garage collapses, and we make zombie brie.  Worst case scenario, the explosion and collapsing garage structures will make such a tremendous racket everything in a five mile radius will come a shuffling to find out what’s going on.

                While all that’s happening, we slip into the heart of downtown, and I try to find Cassie, or at least some kind of information as to what happened to her that day.  I have a sinking suspicion that I won’t have to search too far and wide for her body.  My bet is I’ll find her crashed car nearby, or she’ll be a starved husk in her office kitchen. 

                Not sure what I’m going to do if I have to put her down.  I might need to lean on my friends to get that done for me.  I’m now very glad Kevin will be there.  If there’s anyone in this whole world I want there with me to do this, it’s him.

                We start tomorrow.  We’re packed and ready to go with the HRT, one humvee, and the Deuce to visit the gated neighborhood.  While we’re doing that, another small team is heading to the Factory to get ready for a quick recon from there of the parking garage close to them.  For the first time in a long time, we’re not worried about making too much noise.

                We’re worried we might not make enough noise.

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                I’ve made the decision to go into the city to Cassie’s work.

                I have sat up the past few nights, thinking long and hard about it, and Mr. Journal, fuck it.  I need this.  I need this because I need to move on, it’s the right thing for me to do, and Michelle is right.  I’ll never be able to fall in love until I move on.

                I want to be in love again.  Not like Mallory and I’s relationship either.  That was based on lust, and desperation, and not wanting to be alone.  She and I didn’t meet under the right circumstances, and we certainly didn’t do things the right way when we were getting our ball rolling.  I don’t regret Mallory and I for the relationship.  I regret Mallory and I because of my emotional detachment, and the way my lifestyle and choices compromised her ability to trust me and love me as a person.

                Mallory if you ever read this, I’m sorry.

                This evening I asked some of my closest friends to a private dinner in the upstairs of Hall E.  There’s an open space up there that used to be a common area, and I wanted privacy and their opinions on how I could do a run into downtown in the city as safely as possible.  My initial plan was me alone, but very quickly that got shot down.

                I am part of a Trinity, and the other two insisted on going with me.  I complained and complained, but the two of them simply would not take no for an answer.  I told them I’d just slip away in the middle of the night, but both Kevin and Michelle said they’d simply follow me.  They knew where I was going anyhow, and if we didn’t roll together with a solid plan, by leaving alone I’d just be guaranteeing that they’d arrive at the same destination in a much less safe manner.

                Within ten minutes of telling them I wanted to go alone, the idea had blossomed into a full fledged, Bastion wide operation.

                I could not allow all these people to help me on this without some secondary benefit.  It was unwise, and simply retarded.  The question became what secondary benefit would be enough to make it worth it, and what secondary benefit would motivate people to help me on this?

                Nothing I could retrieve from the office building where Cassie worked would be worth it.  Stacks of white copier paper, and files on her company’s clients would do us no fucking good whatsoever.  It became apparent to us that the assistance they provided during my “quest” or the benefits gained in preparation for said “quest” would be the activity that gave us the secondary benefit.

                This would need to be done in stages to work right.  No run into the city could be done without massive front end work to draw large amounts of the dead out of the center of the city.  Putting Lady Gaga on a CD player and hanging it from a few traffic lights simply wasn’t going to cut it.  We knew from our new visitors that some areas of the city were literally shoulder to shoulder with the dead, and moving that crowd out of the way would be essential for success.  I didn’t want to die carrying this task out.

                But where to draw them to?  And what to do with them once we got them there?  We didn’t come up with a concrete answer tonight, but the next couple of days, that’s one of our braintrust problems.

                Something we wanted to achieve in this:  capture and fortify the gated community we saw south of the city.  It’s a second settlement we can guard effectively, as well as being very strategically positioned for us.  It’s within radio range, positioned in an altogether different cardinal direction of the city, has tall brick walls surrounding we think ten to twenty houses, and has a very sturdy iron gate that we can park a truck behind to secure.  Once we’re in the place, we can clear each of the houses at our own speed, and viola… we’ve got Bastion 2.0 in a whole new place.  Water will be a concern, but with the yards and the fact that it is gated, we can easily plan an asston of crops in the spring, and by summer’s end, have a local harvest there to sustain whoever decides to move there.

                The motivation to take over a nearly fully secured settlement will be very popular.  If only to use as a big old Plan B should this place burn to the ground, or we get overrun by Jinx Fairies.  Either way, it’ll be good.

                We can use the new settlement as a staging ground for incursions into the city as well.  We can send one group in from one location, and a second group in from a second location.  Distract the undead, all that jazz.

                Sound good so far? 

                I can’t think of much beyond the second settlement that’s worth working for.  Quite frankly, that’s huge in and of itself.  Now the second large reason to do this is simply for sheer eradication’s sake.  If we can figure out a good plan and work on it for a few days to get it rolling, we might be able to lure out a buttfuckington of zombies, and get rid of them en masse.  Kevin and Martin and all them have been working on a plan for this for over a week now, and they’ve got some good ideas that might be worth putting to work.  We simply cannot shoot them all.  We do not have a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition left, and there is simply no way we can risk trying to kill that many undead with melee weapons.  More on that later.

                When it was all said and done I told everyone that their help was amazing, and how much I appreciated these people as friends and family. Abby and Hal (who incidentally sat next to each other at the small dinner, and are *clearly* giving each other the “look”) both said they would come with me.  Actually Abby said she’d go, and then Hal said “well if she’s going, I’m going” and that was the end of it for that pair.  Mike and Patty said they’d love to go, but they thought they’d be better off staying, and we all agreed.  So that makes five.  A small fire team, but one of good experience.  Michelle is a little bit of a bump on the proverbial log, but for some reason I really feel that she needs to come for this.  Savior of my soul that she is supposed to be.

                Speaking of Michelle, once everyone cleared out and started heading either to their individual rooms here in Hall E, or back to their rooms scattered across Bastion, Michelle was the last to leave.  She lingered upstairs, gathering dishes and empty glasses, picking up, and then she brought everything down to the kitchen where I was putting the small amount of leftovers we had away.  We had this really awkward moment when she was done, and I was about to head upstairs.  We hadn’t spoken at all since I gave her that flower, and to be honest, as elementary school as it was, I knew it was a big gesture.  Assuming of course she even knew that I was the one that gave her the flower….

                “So I had a question for you,” she says softly so that no one else on the first floor can hear her.  She wasn’t quite looking at me when she asked.  I think she was still washing a cup at the time.

                I stopped, leaned over near her, danger close, and said back, “yeah?  What’s the question?”

                She stops, thinks for a good long moment of awkwardness, and then says back to me, “I got a small rose on my desk the other night.  A silk one.  A little bleached from the sun but still very pretty.  Any idea who might’ve given that to me?”  As soon as she finished saying that, she looked up from the sink and right into my eyes.  God Mr. Journal that woman is just captivating.  Her eyes were almost, desperate to hear me say that it was me, and yet also afraid to hear the answer.  It’s hard to explain just how much she was saying with her eyes.

                “Well, when we were out the other day I grabbed it off a table at the hospital.  I didn’t know quite why I grabbed it.  I figured I’d give it to you.”  I was blushing.  Nervous.  Had that little butterfly feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Fear too maybe.

                She smiled.  Just a tiny, knowing smile that told me she already knew I was going to say that.  “I thought as much.  Does that mean we’re Valentines?”  She looked at me again, this time a tiny bit more playful.

                I couldn’t help but smile back at her, “well I realize you are probably more used to dating guys with Master’s degrees, and Argyle socks, but in an apocalyptic setting I felt pretty good about my chances.  Hope I wasn’t out of line giving that to you.”  Go with humor.  Always my first response.

                Michelle looked at me for a few seconds, put the cup she’d just washed in the dish drainer, and dried her hands on a towel.  I was leaning against the counter next to her, trying to stay close so our voices would be low.  With her newly dried hand, she reached up, gently ran her fingers around my ear in the sweetest way, said, “not out of line in the least Adrian Ring.  You and I can be Valentines any day,” and she leaned in and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek.  One more smile later, she put her coat on, and left the dorm for her bedroom near Syl’s in Hall C.

                I’m in deep shit with this woman Mr. Journal.

                Deep shit indeed.  I don’t want to push it down the drain though.  This is the kind of shit guys like me need to get in. 

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                There is no way I can fit all of what I need to write in one sitting.  Far too much detail to cover.  The question becomes, where do I begin?  For starters, the weather held.  It was actually fairly nice the entire trip out and back.  Solid 45 during the day with sunshine, though it dipped down pretty damn abruptly when the sun settled.

                Vehicles on the run to the hospital and their passengers:

                HRT: Myself, Caleb, Abby and Hector

                Humvee One: Kevin, Amanda, Quan, Ethan

                Humvee Two: Martin, Fitz, Angela, Hal

                Deuce: Amanda, Mike, Patty

                Fifteen souls.

                Our plan worked so flawlessly for so long we felt like geniuses.  We felt like we had the whole city by the balls.  Our first real issue was when we stopped to plant our first noisemaker for our return trip.  Remember how I said we’d leave one set up at an intersection to draw zombies off our trail?  We’d managed a small posse on our ass by then, so we knew leaving the radio was a good idea.  The Deuce was best suited for putting the radios up.  The bed in the back was high up, and had space for us, and with a small step ladder we were more than able to get the ropes up around the lights and get the radios hung.  Other vehicles pulled security, and everything was fine.

                The problem when we hung that radio was not the encroaching of the dead.  Kevin called out movement to the south and half of us swung our guns in that direction.  I wished I had my ACOG on my weapon at that moment, but I didn’t.  The Aimpoint was all I had.  Several of the folks with optics said later on that they saw human movement.  Faster than the undead, moving from cover to cover, watching us.  Kevin said it was two people, one male, and one female.  They never did anything threatening to us, and when we felt things were stable, and the radio was playing, we left.  We’d adjust our route and plan home on the move.

                After that we had smooth sailing for some time. The hospital is right beside the college campus.  Same campus that Becca was at when the world shit the bed.  The building is shaped more or less like a giant U.  Inside the U are the docks we intended to breach at.  The ER that we wanted to avoid is on the wing of the hospital, near the large parking garage.

                The initial plan was to do a full loop around what amounted to a four block area.  It wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d give us a damn better idea as to whether or not getting out of the vehicles was even a good idea.  While not the center of the city, we were perhaps ten blocks away from what you’d call the center.  Where all the tallest buildings and the financial areas are.  Downtown if you will.  Downtown is where Cassie worked. 

                Our drive in and the loops around the hospital showed us it was feasible.  Surprisingly the amount of undead around the hospital was very low.  Incredibly low in fact.  Swerving the HRT back and forth slightly Caleb was able to hit and run over almost every single walker in the streets.  That bought us a tremendous amount of time when we hung our perimeter radios.

                Because we wanted nothing to see us drive away from the radio hanging, we dismounted from our vehicles, and those of us with suppressed weapons engaged immediately.  As I said, there weren’t that many undead.  I think at each of our four stops we had to put down less than a dozen walkers, which by my estimation is a motherfucking miracle.  We put holes in heads, and rolled out.  Nothing new to report there.

                The alley/street that the inner portion of the hospital was on was large.  During days of regular use, it was where the hospital parked their MRI truck, and where they took deliveries of supplies.  We figured the docks would be right near the storage areas of the hospital.  It didn’t make sense that they would cart shit all over the place when they had a dock.  We were right, for the most part.

                On the alley we parked a humvee at each end for security.  We put two bodies at each end of the street as shooters.  We parked the deuce and the HRT right at the dock, and proceeded to get the operation on.

                Five shooters stood in the back of the deuce, pulled away from the dock.  Nothing falling out of the dock could land in the truck, and nothing on the ground could reach up and into it.  They’d have to climb in, and as we’ve seen over and over, dead folks can’t climb for shit.  Martin bored a large hole into the metal dock doors with one of our more industrial drills, and he slipped a steel rod attached to a chain through the hole.  The chain was attached to the rear of the HRT, and with a slight push of the gas pedal, the heavy metal dock door came screaming off the tracks.  Caleb drove the truck forward, pulling the door well out of our way.

                When the door opened, we knew right then and there we were in for a long fucking day.  The door blasted away and we saw three undead standing where the door used to be.  They must’ve been drawn to the sound of us drilling the hole in the door.  I snapped two dead right off the bat, and Ethan put the other down.  They fell over the lip of the concrete dock and landed head down on the pavement.  Their necks and heads smashed into strange shapes when they landed.  There was no time to fix their fallen bodies. 

                We cleared the door off the chain, picked the chain up, and got the HRT situated out of the way of the humvees should they need to move to either end.  We left the deuce right there, away from the dock, the wall, and anything that could touch the bed, and we left Amanda in the back with a suppressed M4 to cover the center of the alley, and the docks should something slip behind us.  As I heard once before, if we lost the dock, we were fucked.  We’d have to fight our way out the front of the facility, through whatever was out there.

                So if you do the math, two shooters at each humvee plus one shooter at the dock left us with ten for the interior.  That’s a really large team for any kind of building clear, and at that point we’re looking at friendly fire problems.  It’s easy for three people to avoid shooting one another.  It’s a lot harder for ten people.

                The interior of the dock was a receiving area still largely filled with pallets.  A quick check told us the pallet contents were useless.  Inside that and to the right side was what I’d call a dirty warehouse, and then a clean warehouse.  The dirty warehouse stored linens, bed sheets, uniforms, etc.  The clean warehouse on the other hand… was a goldmine.  It was far enough inside like the medical warehouse that the temperatures stayed stable.  The doors were also heavily locked, and we needed to use halligans and a lot of muscle power to get the doors open.  There were clear signs that someone had tried to get into the rooms too.  Scratch marks on the metal frames, hack marks in the door itself, and smashed knobs.  Lucky for us, their patience ran out before the doors gave up the ghost.

                We almost filled the entire deuce in the first hour we were there.  IV bags by the case, boxes and boxes of medication, and highly valuable hospital supplies of every sort.  I cannot emphasize how large a haul that secure storage area was.  We should’ve stopped there, but we were so prepared to go deeper into the building, and we had another area to check out. 

                Right outside the “dirty” warehouse was the main hospital corridor.  Sitting on the inside of that door listening for movement was the closest thing to being on a landing boat during D-Day I can imagine.  The moment right before everyone leapt up out of the trenches to charge the enemy back in WW1.  Impending doom just inches away, and the only keeping you from it was a moment of courage.

                We opened the door once we were sure there was nothing on the other side.  Well, nothing standing right on the other side.  Ethan tugged the door open slowly with Martin as muscle behind him should we need to slam it shut fast.  The dark hallway beyond the door was cavernous.  Kevin and I were in the space of the doorway with barrels up, waiting for anything to come into view.  Nothing did, so we cracked chemlights and threw them down the hallway in each direction like light grenades.  One went about ten feet and stopped, the other skidded for quite some time.  I poked my head around into the hall and surveyed the scene.

                The shorter chemlight direction had about five undead moving our way.  I barked out contact as fast as I could and got my weapon up.  The first two or three rounds shot true, hitting faces and heads, but my next few sailed.  I stepped into the hallway further when I saw Hal and Abby moving to cover my back, and once I was in the clear in the hall, I put the others down.  Further down the hall in my direction I saw more targets, and I opened up on them as best I could.  Behind me as I engaged targets I heard Hal and Abby open up with their weapons.  Fortunately we were all equipped with suppressed guns, and our hearing wasn’t utterly demolished by firing in such a confined space.

                I turned to cover them and simply watched as they shot down body after body.  I think our headcount in that hallway alone was fifteen. 

                From there we had maps, and we knew where we were going.  Our main goal was the cafeteria.  We felt there had to be food inside it.

                The cafeteria was on the second floor, fortunately away from the wing of the hospital that had the ER area.  Judging from the appearance of the crashed cars and ambulances on the ER side when we were doing our perimeter sweep, we KNEW that side of the hospital was going to be bad news.

                The corridor ended in a set of double doors, turned right after that set of doors, and proceeded down the radiology department to a large emergency stairwell at the end of the building.  In all, it was maybe fifty yards of walk.  Not that far, but in a zombie infested building, you might as well be running a fucking marathon. 

                Doors doing in directions we were not heading were sealed with either chain and a padlock, or a special iron bar/hook that Martin made up for us.  It slipped through the handles on double doors preventing them from opening, yet could be removed easily by us when we needed to get through that door.  We barred all of the doors going away from us, and shut every other door that would stay shut without a human trying to open it.  That allowed us to move further into the hospital as a team, posting less sentries along the way.

                The second corridor after the double door was better than the first.  I think our headcount in that area was maybe a dozen, and the hallway was longer so they were more spread out.  By this point in the operation we were starting to get a good feeling.  I know that’s just stupid.  Literally giving the Jinx Fairy a plate at the dinner table, but dammit it felt good.  Our plan was going more or less flawlessly.

                That’s when we got radio contact from the humvees.  Caleb was the voice, “we’ve got live targets moving on us.  We’re taking sporadic inaccurate fire. We might need an additional body out here if they get closer.”

                We stopped, evaluated where we were and how we were doing, and decided to send Hal out to support them.  He was a good shot, and quite frankly, inaccurate fire can kill you just as easily as accurate fire.  Hal left us and went out to cover Caleb and Hector.

                Inside, we moved on.  The bottom floor was cleared by us in twenty minutes.  We secured the doors and entered the stairwell heading up to the cafeteria on the second floor.  The stairwell was empty of everything, so that went quickly.  A huge feather in our cap as we were about to enter the second floor hallway was the small window looking in.  It allowed us to see some of the action on the other side in the hall.  I smashed out the small window and that drew the attention of the walkers on the other side.  Kevin’s M4 had a flashlight on it, and he held his over mine, illuminating the shuffling dead.  The trick was that the door was an emergency bar door, so once they started pushing on it, the door would open.  We put two solid feet on the door, and started firing fast.

                It was mathematics at that point.  I went through a magazine and a half putting headshots through the window, never even opening the door.  Once we were reasonably sure the vast majority of the zombies were dead, we opened the door (or more accurately, let the dead bodies stacked up against the door push it open for us) and we were in the corridor that led to the cafeteria.

                Martin didn’t have to seal that doorway to the hallway.  There were stacks and stacks of tables and chairs blocking it off already.  It looked like a pretty classic last stand barricade.  There were three or four mangled zombies unable to walk, and we put them down with melee weapons.  Fortunately the cafeteria had a ton of floor to ceiling windows, spanning almost the entire room, and the natural light streaming in meant we saved batteries and chemlights.  The kitchen was wide open, and after a sweep to clear the space, we checked the kitchen and the stockroom. 

                We found nothing.  The place had been emptied.  Every single last bit of food had been eaten by the people in there.  It looked an awful lot like the people in the hospital had fallen back to the cafeteria, blocked off the entrances to the area, and lasted as long as they could.  Clearly the majority of them didn’t make it.  Some of them could’ve escaped from the stairwell we came up in, but there’s no way of knowing how many did.  Sadly, the vast majority of these people died right here.  Trapped in a hospital.

                That’s when things started going south rapidly.  Fitz was searching the body of a cop that had died in the cafeteria, taking his service pistol, handcuffs, pepper spray and all that jazz, when gunfire spidered several of the windows of the cafeteria.

                Fitz was crouched down, emptying the stuff into a small black duffel when he got broadsided by the gunfire.  He was right next to the windows, and the shooters outside must’ve seen him.  Kevin started screaming in anger, and the rest of either dived for cover, or went to the windows to find the shooter.  Ethan, Kevin, Quan and myself all moved fast into shooting positions, and we saw the shooter within seconds.

                I cannot stress to you how nasty we got.  All four of us dropped our sights on some motherfucker crouching down behind the trunk of a black Impala and went cyclic.  No mercy.  The suppressed weapons made no noise, but the bullets smashing through the glass made a racket.  I can’t say for certain how many rounds we sent into that car and the prick trying to hide behind it, but I know I swapped mags once and I was half out at the time, so at least 15 rounds from me.  More from the rest of the guys.

                Protip #1:  trunks do not stop 5.56. 

Protip #2: no trunk in the world can stop that much 5.56.

The man dropped to the ground bleeding out.  Ethan dragged Fitz into the middle of the cafeteria and started to administer first aid while we searched for more targets.  We were perfectly facing the area of the city where Caleb’s living targets were, and from the second floor, we had an excellent elevated vantage point to fire accurately on them.

I know I put down three.  I watched my little red dot walk across their center mass, and I felt the recoil, and I watched them fall.  I know three went to the great beyond using a ticket I punched.  I am fairly sure Quan and Kevin put one more down each, likely more. 

I called out to Quan and Kevin to go help Ethan and I pulled overwatch through the windows.  From the ground I worked with Caleb, and had them move out to check bodies and finish off the wounded as needed.  We took no more fire from living targets that day.

Ethan, Quan and Kevin were unable to save Fitz.  He took a large caliber round straight through his liver.  We can’t put a band aid on that kind of injury.  It fucking blows to lose a good person, especially for no good goddamn reason.

No survivors on the street level.

We managed to accumulate a rather large collection of good weapons and ammunition from the attackers though.  Still not sure why they attacked us.  If we head back into the city again, we’ll be damned sure to be very careful. These people had decent guns.  They weren’t that good with them, but beneficial accidents happen.

We got the fuck out.  Searching the rest of the hospital was pointless.  We wanted to get Fitz’s body back home, and get back to sort through all of our shit.  Plus, time was a factor, and the longer we were there, the worse it would be for us trying to leave.  It didn’t help either that the locals shot the joint up and made a fucking ton of noise.

The road back to Bastion was flush with the undead.  Caleb driving the HRT helped.  He’s played an awful lot of Grand Theft Auto, so he’s really good at hitting things with a car.  We completely avoided the radio we set up on the return trip.  We saw more living folks there earlier in the day, and we felt that might have been a precursor to the attacks later in the day.  Ergo, we said fuck it, and made a wide berth around that area.  In fact, with little to no snow left on the ground we even avoided the trip past the Factory, and drove straight here.

Our first order of business was putting Fitz on the fire.  Not a good scene in the least.  I won’t go into how the guys all reacted to it.  How we all reacted to it.  Michelle said some very nice words as Fitz went up in smoke.  I know this sounds bad, but she really looked beautiful as she spoke.  Just beautiful.

Fitz will be missed by all.

I already said the shit was a haul.  Meds, blah fucking blah blah.

Kevin’s been incognito and under the radar since the trip.  We’re all giving him space.  Emotionally we’re all fucking wrecked right now.  Ever since the damn clinic night we’re all beaten up, now even Kevin moreso.  It blows.

We’ve withdrawn quite a bit.  Laying low, sorting our shit and trying to be supportive of one another.  Focus has shifted back to the school and helping Michelle.  Hector, Martin and Blake are doing oil changes on our vehicles, and assessing our fuel supplies.  Low on gasoline, if you’re keeping track Mr. Journal.  We looked at some gas stations we drove by on the way in the other day and all the lids were off the tanks.  Not a good sign at all.

With the relative success we had the other day, I think we’re able to mount a small unit insertion into the city.  Deep into the city.  I don’t think I can do it alone though.  I will need some help setting up distractions.  I think I’m getting close to closure.  I think I can finally do this.  I think I can get over Cassie if I can just find her body, and put it to rest.

In the cafeteria, on the table next to where Fitz died was a small single stem vase.  It had a cheap silk rose in it.  I snagged it for whatever reason at the time when we were clearing out.  I put it on Michelle’s desk this morning.  It’s not the best gift, but it’s something.

It’s Valentine’s Day after all.

-Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

Here's the plan:

We did noise tests, and the radios we can bring to make noise can be heard in about a fifty yard radius. That's not that far at all. That means we need a minimum of four radios set up in a perimeter at a minimum of 100 yards outside our AO. That gives us a hundred yard noise buffer from where we will be, and where the radios are making noise theoretically keeping the zeds off our back. Four radios are ready to go, and we've got four CDs fully prepped up. Noisy songs that will play for a long ass time and can be set to repeat incessantly. If we can't kill the zombies with gunfire, we will annoy the fuck out of them with 1970's disco, Swedish death metal, and some old yodeling music we dug up.

Shit if I had to listen to the mix CDs we made, I'd fucking kill myself. Shotgun mouthwash just to make the pain go away.

Our road plan will be exactly the same as before to the Factory, then we will switch to roads one or two off from our original route so as not to let anyone set up an ambush if they are anticipating us returning. From there we will continue forward, leaving behind a fifth noise maker in a major intersection that we can skirt around later on if need be. That way on our return, if we have critical injuries or just need to get the fuck out fast we can drive around any mobs of undead that might be there. Plus, it'll help with us being followed by any undead into the city. Does that make sense? I feel very rambly or something. Too much thinking the past few days.

Been good about thinking about Michelle too.

Ah fuck. Kiss of death.

We are rolling with an additional vehicle on this trip, and three more shooters. Were using the same exact team from the pharmacy run (Caleb, Abby, Hector, me, Kevin, Amanda, Quan, Ethan, Martin, Fitz, Angela and Hal) plus new bodies in the form of Amanda, Mike and Patty. The'yre going to be riding in the deuce and a half. We debated bringing the box truck, or the heavy duty military tow rig, but the logistics of those vehicles didn't add up to the value the deuce gave us. They're built to take a pounding in the worst situations you can throw at them.

We roll in a perimeter of the hospital on arrival, assessing the situation and if all seems well, we post our noisemakers as planned on traffic lights or street lamps, and contract in to the hospitals rear docks to breach through the doors there. We can secure the alley/street the docks are on fairly easily, and we've got exits in both directions we can use. On the map the alley looks like a nice defendable location for us with minimal exposure.

We have only our memories of the inside of the hospital to go on, which is bad. We have no internet to use to try and find a floor plan of the joint. We are expecting a nightmare inside. A full on plugged tub requiring our toes to bring it to order once more. The jinx fairy doesnt even need to show up for this to be a fucking disaster. We've got some internal breaching plans to help minimize our risk, and we're getting the supplies ready for that now. For example, we're anticipating the ER area of the hospital to be overrun with the dead, and the docks where we are going in are pretty far from that area of the hospital. We're going to bar the doors to that section, and attempt to simply avoid the majority of the fight going near there would bring on us.

Downside to this plan: we are pot committed once we're in the shit. Theres no QRF to call if things go south. We sink or swim on our own on this, so pretty clearly we're shitting bricks and hoping this goes well. The alternatives will be very bad.

Having said that, we are super excited. This is a serious operation and will test our limits to get things done in a tactical sense. The payoff could be huge too. A hospital, even one that was in crisis when it was last open, has got to be full of good shit. Were hoping for lots of IV bags and medication. Bandages, sterilization equipment and chemicals, surgical tools and soaps, blah blah blah. Basically anything medical that is consumable will be huge for us.

The other downside is that the hospital might be completely empty, and were doing this all for nothing. What a shit moment thatd be for morale.

One thing I am definitely doing this for is that if this goes well, well be very informed on how the city is on the interior. Ill know just about exactly what to expect if I want to go deeper into the city to Cassies work. Searching for closure and all that jazz

We are leaving first thing in the morning on the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow we finish gathering supplies and working on things we need to bring with us. Kevin is spending the entire day doing weapons and gear prep. Apparently I am finally getting my M203.

Huzzah.

-Adrian

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                I think Michelle was right.  She’s rarely wrong.  I’m not saying she was right simply because she’s rarely wrong, that should be clarified.  She’s right because she’s right.  I’ve never given myself closure on the whole Cassie thing.

                I need to move on.  I need to forgive myself.  I need to understand that despite my mistake that day, I am a person that deserves to enjoy his life.  I deserve to love again.  I deserve to give Cassie’s memory rest and peace if only in my own mind. 

                I just don’t know how to go about doing that.

                It’s on my mind now though.  On my radar like a goal for Bastion.  Something I WILL achieve, not something I will discard.

                What does throw me for a hardcore loop is the whole “I’m supposed to fall in love with you” story Michelle gave me.  I haven’t slept good since that night, and I haven’t really seen her either.  She’s been avoiding me, and I’ve been avoiding her.  I don’t think she ever intended to tell me about that, and in her alcohol haze it came out.

                Mindfuck, am I right?  Like, serious fuck with your head bullshit.  I look at her in an entirely different light now.  I used to think she was pretty, and intelligent, and warm and caring and wholesome and all those things that I see as unattainable now.  I see her as someone that I could ruin, instead of someone that could make me a better person in the long run.  I don’t see her as someone I could make happy.

                That’s how my mind works now. 

                God I’m really fucked up.  Like legitimate head case bullshit.  As if I didn’t have enough shit to think about, now I am nearly obsessed with finding out if being with her is a possibility.  It’s the first thing I’ve thought about when I open my eyes in the morning, and I think about it late into the night when I try to fall asleep.

                Do I have a fucking crush now?  Is that what this is?  Jesus.  How old am I?

                I can’t let this get in the way of getting things done.  As much as it would be amazing to be… intimate with her, I can’t let my physical and emotional needs get in the way of being a good leader here.  I have too many people relying on me, and too many decisions to make.  Too many other people to let down.

                I wonder how I’ll get closure on Cassie.  Do I need to go… find her?  I mean fuck.  Our tiny foray into the city the other day came out way in the black, but hell, it could’ve done really fucking south, really fucking quick.  A real trip to the center of the city to the office building she worked at to try and find her would be a goddamn logistical nightmare that’d require every ounce of manpower we could bring to bear to accomplish.

                And for what?

                So I can sleep better at night and get my dick wet without having a gigantic fucking guilt trip?  Yeah that’ll fly when I explain it to people here.  It’ll be like a wet fart in the middle of a fucking funeral service.  I’ll be walked out the back by a bunch of angry men who sodomize me to prove a point.

                Sigh.  I need to put serious mental effort into figuring out how exactly to do that without being treated like a selfish moron.

                Can’t worry about THAT trip into the city right now.  I need to worry about the trip that’s necessary at the moment.  We need far more medical supplies, and the only place that we can think of is the hospital in the city.  It’s near the college where Becca went, and it’s on the far side of the city.  We could skirt it the same way we did to get to the pharmacy near the airport, and according to our people who have been there post-that day, we’ve got a fairly decent and attainable route.

                I should say that our sick folks are now much better, but it took a LOT of the fluids we obtained to get them there.  We’re still what Ethan and Joel describe as being “dangerously low” on bags, and they’re being pretty insistent that we get a move on to get some more.  All of our sick are now off the drips, but if we get a strong hit of that bug again, or we have some folks badly injured we’re going to be bent over and on short notice to get unfucked.

                So we’re formulating a plan to head into the hospital.  Tomorrow we’re sitting down and starting to look at maps to make a planned route in, as well as setting up areas as “noise traps.”  We want to use a similar idea to the radio on the traffic light to draw them out and away from the hospital.  We aren’t quite sure if one will be enough, so we’re going to do some measurements on how sound carries tomorrow to see if we need to set up multiples.  That’ll draw extra trouble our way though, but it might be less trouble than not setting up these traps.  Plus, we can roll up to these noise areas after we’re done (assuming we aren’t running at top speed for our lives) and lay down some HEAVY lead to put the entire mob listening to whatever music we’ve got playing down for the count.

                Distraction and organization for more efficient removal.  Now if we could figure out a way to kill them without wasting serious ammunition, that’d be great.  Unfortunately, fragmentation weaponry is not that effective, nor is fire.  Launching a series of grenades into the crowd will likely knock a bunch of them around but not kill them.  You see shrapnel usually kills by doing internal damage to organs and blood vessels.  Most folks don’t die in a bombing or explosion due to head wounds.  It’s either lacerations to organs, or tremendous overpressure that ruptures your shit.  Zombies laugh at that crap.  Kevin said they did extensive testing in England while they were there.

                Fire as I’ve clearly explained sucks balls for pretty much the same reason.  Fire doesn’t destroy the brain nearly fast enough, and you’re left with an enormous crowd of zombies that are now on fire.  Clearly a “less than” situation.  Now if we had something like a… MOAB, or even just a handful of 105mm artillery shells that we could detonate right on top of the motherfuckers, we’d be in a different boat.  That’d cause enough overpressure to crack skulls and kill these bastards.  Sadly… the collateral damage to structures nearby would be high, but it’s not like we’re going to be using these city buildings any time soon.

                I’ve got the brain trust working on a more efficient kill solution than “spray and pray with the SAWs.”

                Once we have a solid plan in place, we will put it into action, and head into the city once more to secure more medical supplies for Bastion.

                If that goes well, I’ll be far more informed about a trip to find closure.

                To find Cassie.

                In the meantime… I need to stay occupied so I stop thinking about a certain blonde woman that I am supposed to be falling in love with.

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

February 7^th.

                I’ve been very overwhelmed by life of late.  It’s almost as if the little things have started to pileup so high they’re finally surrounding me.  I feel…

                Trapped.

                I think my priorities are fucked.  The things that should matter most today as I write this are the things that are not on my mind.  I am bothered substantially by some shit Michelle said last night, and not by the strife and turmoil that has enveloped my people here.  I think I’m being selfish again.  I don’t know quite what to do, or where to start.

                Our trip into the very edge of the city was a phenomenal success.  No one was hurt, we got the supplies we so desperately needed, and we put down hundreds and hundreds of undead in the process.  It could not be a more impressive victory on our part.

                Our sick have stabilized and are now getting better.  The IV fluids and medicine Ethan and Joel are pumping into them have returned them to life.  They’re still in the clinic, under armed guard and constant medical care, but all signs as of today point that they are going to survive.  Another clear victory on our part.

                We’ve posted as heavy a guard as we could since we returned, and our long circuit home that led past the Factory hasn’t brought anyone back to our location.  The security cameras there as well as the people there haven’t seen anyone following our tracks.  We also ran back past MGR, so we had multiple places watching our trail.  No one followed us, no undead seemed to have followed us, so once more it appears that we scored a victory.

                We have held our ground on the morale issues.  Alex is still very withdrawn and sad over the death of George.  Poor guy must’ve been so in love, and seeing him mope around, lonely and alone is murderous.  The same can be said for Martin.  Martin’s sadness and his dedication to being a father to little Chester right now is heart breaking.  The kid is torn up over his mom dying, and Martin is torn up over watching his son.  On a selfish note, without Martin’s labor and how-to knowledge, there is a lot of shit that’s not being done right now.  However, I just can’t get myself to the point where I ask him to get back to work.  I just can’t ask him to put everyone else before his grief, and before his son.

                Jeanette is struggling with the loss of her baby boy.  There’s nothing I can say that’s more impactful than that.

                I don’t even want to go into the other people right now.  It’s just total crap. 

                Having said all that, after our return a few days ago we decided to have an event to celebrate our achievement, and mourn the loss of the dead.  Basically we wanted a large gathering to give us a reason to eat, drink, and attempt to be merry.

                It didn’t make much sense in a logistical way though.  Food has been tight, and even with all my jokes that our food consumption “got better” from all our bad luck of late, we are still stretched a little thin.  Having a party where we indulge and overeat and drink is stupid.  However, trying to bring us all back together and a little happier is a bigger deal.

                Michelle led the charge on this, and she did a great job.  She decorated the cafeteria, organized everyone (even the sad and distraught), got the food and drink ready, and made sure everyone showed up on time and was as ready as they could be to have a good time.  Michelle even somehow found the time to light a large candle for each of the dead.  I don’t know where she found all those thick white pillar candles, but there was one for every person who died the other day.  They were lined up on a table, off to the side, silently flickering, reminding everyone of why we were there last night, and why it was important to celebrate their lives, instead of just being sad, and hurt.

                The shindig was… awkward.  It felt forced, and a little contrived to me, but with so many ex military guys, it all starts to come together when the booze beer and wine sets in.  Old Army stories come out, brothers in arms share tales of their boot camp woes, and then we get to this point where we all sit around quietly near each other, heads hung low, and start to really remember someone.  You talk about how they laughed, how they cried, moments when they stood by you, no matter the danger or the stupidity, and you remember just how fucking much someone really means to you.  Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they don’t still mean something to you.  It makes me realize how much I love my friend Kevin.  Being with him at the party last night and reminiscing about old times, and listening to him talk with his crew about the death of Roger and Kyle made me realize how much I enjoyed our times in the Army together.

                That’s neither here nor there.  I’m still hung up on the real issue that’s bothering me.

                A handful of us got completely plastered.  You’ve probably gotten that much out of my disorganized ramblings. 

                I was just about three sheets to the wind when I caught Michelle’s eye from across the room.  She was watching me talk to Kevin I think, and I raised a can of Canadian beer to her and nodded.  Sort of a “tip my cap” to her moment.  She’d done a decent job at getting this going.  Immediately she started over towards us, and despite being pretty fucking drunk, I remember her being really tipsy as she crossed the floor with the music playing a little too loud.  Kevin managed to stray away just as she showed up, and that left Michelle and I standing there, more than a little awkwardly.

                She and I talked for a few drunken minutes about the party, and how bad things were, and how she hoped that this would bond everyone, and give us a collective “chance to mourn.”  Which I should say she said in a very drunken, yet professional manner.

                Somewhere after that, not too long after, but also not exactly the next thing, we managed to walk over to a side cafeteria table and sit down.  Then she starts asking me “what my plan for myself” was.  I can’t exactly… you know.. remember what I answered her, having a head swimming with booze at the time, but I remember going on and on about how I was worried about doing the wrong thing, and how I felt like I had “make things right” for all my mistakes and shit, and she sat there, staring at me intently.  Then out of the blue she reaches up, gives me this… sweet and awkward caress on the cheek, leans in and gives me a kiss.  It wasn’t quite on the cheek, nor was it on the mouth.  It was… I don’t know.  Affectionate and also innocent at the same time.  I remember being totally shocked as she pulled away slowly, looking at me. 

                I can’t tell you a damn thing about the shit us guys talked about last night, but I will remember the words she said to me next until the day I am old and grey.  Michelle sat there, hands in her lap, looking me dead in the eye, and starts talking without taking a pause.

                “Adrian I was told by many that you and I would fall in love.  They said we’d be together, and when we first met I thought about how wrong they were.  You are rough, raw, vulgar.  Your actions can be rash, and your heart sometimes makes you do the wrong thing.  But now that I know you, I see you for who you are.  I see the sweet man who wants to be there for those he cares for, and to protect anyone he can, despite how dangerous it might be to him.  I have watched that man struggle with the weight of leading, and the crushing weight of his own guilt.  Adrian I’ve talked to people about you and your story.  I’ve heard how you hate yourself over what you did.  How you hate yourself over leaving your girlfriend behind.”

                Michelle stood up at that point, and caressed my cheek again, holding her warm palm against the cool skin of my face, “Adrian I’m falling in love with you.  Not because of some prophecy, or just because God wants it that way, but because you are a tremendous man that I want to learn more about, and to be closer to.  I see you for you the man you are, and the man you can become.  But until you get closure on her, and until you forgive yourself fully for what happened with Cassie, there’s simply no room in your heart for anyone, let alone me.”

                And she left.

                I don’t even know what to do about this.

                -Adrian

NEXT ENTRY

                Well.  It’s official.  The city fucking blows.

                Bigtime.

                Any kind of clearing action into the urban areas is going to require an absurd amount of ammunition, and careful planning.  I think we managed to drop somewhere around six or seven hundred undead yesterday, and that more than likely was just the tip of the zombie iceberg.

                After visiting the Factory and dropping off some ammunition, water, and some foodstuffs, we moved along due south down the side of the city, then cut east across the very southern edge.  Most of the area we moved through was suburban.  Very similar to the area surrounding MGR in town.  Mostly two or three story buildings strung down the main corridors, backed up by neighborhoods of varying monetary valuations.  There were a few trailer parks, as well as a few five star neighborhoods.  I saw one gated community off in the distance before we got into the area of the airport’s flight path and that made me wonder if that should be our next major operation.  Pop the gate, secure it, clear the houses inside… and we’ve got a premade mini-Bastion to work out of, right on the edge of the city.

                Food for thought.

                During the drive we passed at least a hundred undead.  Because the roads were still thick with crusty snow still, we couldn’t swerve much to hit them with the HRT plow blade.  We also didn’t want to shoot and make unnecessary noise, nor did we want to just drive past them.  They would follow us for sure, and we didn’t want to dredge up another massive wall of the dead to drive home through.

                Our solution was to slow down to a crawl, and engage them with our suppressed 9mm pistols.  We are still heavily stocked with 9mm, and it was excellent shoot on the move experience.  I’d wager a bet and say just on the drive there we put down… 80 to a hundred undead.  We wasted a fair amount of ammo on misses, but the overall level of satisfaction dropping them cowboy and Indian style from the moving stagecoach was excellent for us.  Improved morale ftw.

                The areas closer to the airport were far more troubling.  Milling about, stuck in the snow and making their way towards us were far too many undead for comfort.  At a point where we realized we would be in trouble if we kept moving without thinning the threat level, we upgraded from suppressed M9s to using our suppressed M4A1s.  Far more firepower, range, accuracy, and all kinds of goodness.  We were far more able to put lead downrange and we churned through another eighty or so undead.  It looks like a complete shitload of people went to the airport before it all went to shit.  Lots of cars on the road, crashed, pulled over, etc.  Traffic was a bitch to weave through.     

                At the major intersection leading into the airport perimeter road area, leading to the industrial park where the medical supplies building was, we implemented our top secret plan.  “Operation Lady in the Red Dress.”  Or if you prefer, “Operation Androgynous Singer That’s Worked Before.”

                From the roof of the HRT I hung a large radio playing… you guessed it, Lady Gaga on a traffic light.  The light was  clearly too high for the undead to reach, and with the duct tape and strap I used, it wasn’t falling anytime soon either.  I set it to repeat “Lovegame” and we got the hell out.

                We didn’t head directly into the airport.  It isn’t a huge one, but neither is it a small one.  We stuck to the perimeter road, and headed directly into the park.  The park itself was only about fifteen structures, arranged along the circular perimeter road.  None of the businesses were worth raiding immediately yesterday, but we took note of what was there.  It was a fluke that one of us remembered seeing the name of the business in the first place.

                We saw the sign for the medical supplies business (ANJ Medical Supply Wholesalers, if you’re curious Mr. Journal) and we pulled in.  We were ecstatic to see that we had tremendous visibility in all directions, and that there were so few undead in the industrial park.  Before we got five feet from our vehicles, we engaged the foot mobile visible undead and secured a perimeter.  Because we brought so many people on this run, we had extra bodies. 

                Twelve made the trip.  It left us a little short on home security, but we felt the risk was necessary.  By vehicle we had Caleb, Abby, Hector and myself.  In the second humvee we had Kevin, Amanda, Quan and Ethan.  In the third humvee we had Martin, Fitz, Angela and Hal. 

                All in all, a great team.

                We posted four outside on foot strictly for security, three in the vehicles as drivers in the event we had to leave in a serious hurry, and we took the remaining five into the building for the clear.  Visibility into the building was limited.  The only windows were in the front, and they were intact (a good sign), and they looked into a set of offices.  The warehouse where our prize awaited was obscured by a series of mundane offices. 

                The main door of the building was unlocked, and after pulling it open as if it were still open for business, we went in and made the building safe.  A central hallway ran straight for twenty feet or so, then turned left for ten, then straight for twenty more, terminating in the double fire doors that opened into the reasonably small warehouse.  I could easily throw a rock from one side of the warehouse to the other and hit the wall on the fly.  The offices were entirely abandoned and devoid of anything dangerous.  Heading into the warehouse though, was a little more frightening.  With no way to get natural light into the space, Kevin and I decided to clear the entire warehouse using NVGs instead of with flashlights.  A little untraditional yes, but we were reasonably sure the warehouse would be empty.  After going up and down the warehouse rack aisles for nearly twenty minutes in the dark, we had the place made safe, and we got the light into the building.  After opening the rear dock and getting a couple of our large lamps turned on, we were in business.

                I am happy to report that we found a LOT of usable bulk medical supplies.  Syringes, bandages, first aid supplies literally out the fucking asshole, casting equipment, saline solutions of various concoctions, and all manner of things I can’t even remember today.  We filled the HRT floor to ceiling, front to back with supplies, and we left a LOT behind.  We took the most essential supplies only, and after securing the warehouse we moved on.  While we were inside (I think about two or three hours) the team outside had to put down about seventy to a hundred more undead closing in from the airport area.  They seemed to be heading from the airport itself towards the sound of the music.

                Our perimeter team was equipped with suppressed weapons though, and they attracted no undue attention to the building we were in.  A relatively quick swing around the park and down another exit off the perimeter road, and we were on the street where the pharmacy was.  I could see the front doors were smashed out, so we didn’t expect much on the inside.  The parking lot and immediate street were peppered with undead heading our way.  The density of them was bad, but not so bad that we needed to bring out the heavy guns yet.  All of us with suppressed weapons firing in a coordinated fashion was enough to keep us safe.

                We were pretty far and out of Lady Gaga hearing range, so we had no distraction to pull undead away from our position.  The sound of our vehicles running was also a big draw so this was a much more hairy operation.  The firing outside during the breach was constant, and we had to pull our vehicle people to bolster exterior security.  The breaching team of five was all action the entire way through.  The pharmacy was a large one with about ten aisles, and we had undead in almost every aisle.  I was firing on lead or Kevin was.  Our guns never stopped snapping off suppressed rounds for a solid ten minutes as we crossed the tops of the aisles, firing down the length at the undead shambling towards the registers at the front where we were.  By the time we got to about the eighth aisle the undead were coming out the end of the ninth and tenth aisle, and the rest of our team had to open up to keep them off of us.

                Sadly, the remainder of our team did not have suppressed weapons, and the sudden roar of normal weapons was deafening in the store.  Previously the loudest noise was the sound of a zombie dropping dead and knocking some shit off the shelves on the way down.  The noise hurting our ears was the least of our problems though.  From outside our team informed us the gunshots were just as loud, and very likely to draw in more trouble.

                The pharmacy in the back mercifully was still sealed.  The steel shutter had been dropped exactly like the pharmacy in town, and after repositioning the HRT in the store opening and attaching the winch to the shutters, it came down with little effort.  We also were able to grab multiple plastic bins from the shelves (pretty much the only things left in the store), and we headed into the pharmacy.

                Ethan had a boner a foot long.  The shelves were obviously raided already (he guessed by an employee, which made sense because the gate had been shut after the theft), but at least half the medications were still present in some usable quantity.  When we were feverishly half way through emptying the remnants of the pharmacy, a call for assistance came from outside.  Abby and I responded. 

                Our gunfire had drawn in well over a hundred undead.  When Abby and I stepped outside and took stock of it, she went left, and I went right.  I had my gun up and firing almost immediately, putting the walking dead down that were closing in on us like a vice.  It was practically a wall of zombies in a circle around us.  After maybe two magazines of my own fire I hit my comms button and asked Hal and Hector to open up with the SAWs on the humvees.

                The ripping fire from the light machine guns sounded like the sky being torn in half.  We’d been firing the nearly silent suppressed weapons the entire time and when those loud ass fully auto guns started barking… Mr. Journal I tell you it sounded like God himself had started tearing the clouds from the sky and throwing them down on us from on high.  The effect on the encroaching plague of undead was immediate and devastating.  The bodies started crumbling to the ground with exploded skulls like a violent tidal wave.  Just ten seconds of accurate, intense fire from the two men with the support weapons annihilated the danger.  I felt so powerful as they let up on the triggers, leaving a few mangled, twitching bodies in their wake.

                We returned the interior to help emptying the pharmacy.

                About fifty more undead visited our location while we continued to fill and remove containers of pills, fluids, and medical supplies.  We are very much set for basic medications for some time.  Shit, we could start a meth lab with all the shit we got there. 

                We rolled out fast, and went back for our radio, still suspended from the traffic light in the middle of the intersection near the radio.  A light rain had started, and when we arrived at intersection, the visibility was getting bad.  It also didn’t help that it was late afternoon, and the sun was setting on us.

                The intersection was entirely filled with a tightly packed HORDE of undead.  There were no less than four hundred undead there.  I guarantee you Mr. Journal there were at least four or five hundred.  It was horrifying in the worst way.  I haven’t seen that many undead mobbed in one place in a damn long time.  Not since Bastion was laid siege to back in March of last year.  We rolled up on them and came to a halt about a hundred yards away. 

                I hit my throat mic and said one word quietly, “SAWs.”  It took maybe ten seconds for Hal and Hector to get their guns up and firing.  The mob of undead had turned in our direction by then and were starting to shamble our way.  Sadly for them, they were no match for 800+ rounds per minute out of two barrels.  Hal and Hector were accurate enough that they were hitting at head level consistently, and the bodies hit the freshly packed flat snow like falling stones.  Both men had to load fresh belts of ammo, which tells you they were firing for quite some time.  I’m sure a lot of those were misses, but with that overwhelming amount of 5.56mm flying out into a crowd that packed in, you KNOW there were mostly hits.

                It took all day for that crowd of undead to form, and it took us three minutes to put every fucking body in that crowd face down in the fresh red snow.  It gave me some hope that one day we might be able to actually clear the fucking city once and for all.  We just need about… 125,000 rounds of ammunition and some armor plated vehicles.

                No problem.

                We drove over the dead bodies, retrieved our radio from the traffic light, and took a wide route home through empty neighborhoods and areas that have long since been abandoned.  We didn’t want to be followed home by someone with ill intentions, especially while so many of us are still sick.

                We were greeted like epic heroes of old.  Then we got down to work emptying the vehicles, getting the medicine stored away properly, and getting the fresh IV bags into the still sick.  Things are bad with them, but like wilting plants, they spruced up within an hour or two of having the fluids inside them.  Crazy how that works.

                I’m wiped.  I’ll say things are still shitty here, despite our good fortunes in the city’s edge.  People are still depressed, withdrawn, scared, and disturbed by the deaths the other night, and it’s only by the virtue of the Michelle, Melissa, and Kim, that folks are keeping it together.

                I’m hoping our supplies last us for a bit so we can focus on getting somewhat back to normal. 

                Normal.

                Ha.

                -Adrian

 NEXT ENTRY

                MGR found no tracks that were followable.  The wind was blowing a little too hard, and with the walking dead moving about as well, there was no way to get a clean follow on them.  With nothing to go on for that, we opted to hit the house with the generator early yesterday afternoon.

                Because of the overall level of tension with everyone, we came up with a plan that made everyone feel safe.  We wanted to send a team of people that had experience, was able to work together, but one that also wouldn’t leave Bastion unprotected, nor would it totally neuter our ability to respond to MGR fast.  Kevin Mike and I got The Factory on the line, and they’ve committed to sending assistance if needed, but they don’t have the firepower, nor the vehicles.  Plus, coming from the edge of the city is scary, because if the undead presence is flaring up, they can’t respond either.

                They are unreliable, but in a pinch, they’ll send help.

                Anyhoo, we opted for a team I was infinitely comfortable with.  Myself, Patty, Abby, Angela, Harold and Blake.  We’d roll out in the deuce, and the HRT.  The humvees would be left back for the QRF, and Kevin’s entire team minus Hal was then still available to pull security for Bastion as well as respond as the QRF should MGR be attacked again.  If that happened, we’d abandon our house clear, and head back to staff Bastion immediately.

                We left the campus at about noon, anticipating we’d need twenty minutes of transit, two hours of clear, and then twenty minutes back.  In reality the house was closer than that, but with the snow, we figured it’d take longer.

                It did.

                The side roads the house I took us to were all still covered in about six inches of smooth, ice crusted snow.  You could hear it crunching under the wheels as we went.  As long as we took it slow, we were fine on the roads.  What was disturbing though, was the presence of undead on the side road.

                The house was maybe two miles down a tiny road that connected two slightly more major streets in town here.  One of those old cow paths that people built farms on a century ago.  As time went on, less cows walked on the path and more wagons, then cars, and here it is now as a road with five houses on it.

                Anyway, with just five house on it, there was little intelligent reason for there to be about fifteen undead walking up and down the road.  It was also strange because the snow surface on the road was still fairly smooth, indicating that the undead hadn’t wandered there recently.  Very odd.

                The first couple of undead were in the road, and I simply drove the HRT right over them.  The plow blade makes for a highly effective zombie smashing weapon, and it also saves us the time and physical risk of getting out of the truck.  When we got close to the house in question, I realized that we were in a bit of a pickle.

                The house was nestled in the elbow of a corner in the road.  The driveway was small, and opposite the house was an twenty foot drop to a stream.  We had damn little area to drive the vehicles.  I parked the HRT in the curve of the road, completely blocking it, and Angela parked the deuce in the driveway.  I don’t know how she managed to turn it around so smoothly and back it up perfectly, but she did, and it was awesome.

                Right at the house as we were parking we saw three undead.  Two of them immediately started at the vehicles, trudging through the snow as fast as their disorganized, frigid bodies could move.  I slid out of the HRT, walked around the front of the truck calmly, took a breath, got rid of the heart in my throat and bad memories of being shot in the head, and put the first one down.  Lining up that beautiful red dot on a head makes shooting quickly so much easier.  The first bodies impacted the crust on the snow, and nearly disappeared under it.

                Abby was out the other door of the HRT simultaneously, and she needed two rounds to put the second zombie down.  Hers fell sideways into an overgrown hedge at the front of the house and never quite made it to the ground.  It was a pretty, young woman in a thin summer dress.  She looked very out of place in the cold of January.  The reddish grey mist of her brains looked very strange painted across the porch behind the hedge.

                What a world.

                From the driveway behind Abby and I we heard Patty snap off a round from her AR at the third undead coming down the road.  She was accurate on her first shot I can happily report, and within a minute, we were ready to breach.  I remembered the layout of the house pretty accurately, and I knew it was narrow hallways, and lots of small doors.  It was an old house, and if you’ve ever been in old, small houses, they are kind of claustrophobic.  When we checked inside the windows we could see a few moving figures, so we knew the breach would be violent. 

                As a result, I decided I’d breach the house on point with a 12 gauge.  Nothing against the M4A1, but I wanted the knockback power of a shotgun.  The 5.56 rounds are so high velocity, they can frequently buzz right through someone and barely stagger them.  However, buck shot from a 12 gauge to the chest… does a bit more than stagger someone.  And besides, close is often good enough with a shotgun.

                We breached with a team of three. I was on point, Harold second, and Abby third.  Abby and I are a pretty well oiled machine for this, and Harold in the middle was added comfort.  He’s a good man, and a very good Marine.  Royal Marine to be specific.  Have I mentioned I dig his accent?  It reminds me of watching Guy Ritchie movies.  I had Angela make noise on the far side of the house as we prepared to go in the door.  Hopefully she would attract the undead inside away from us.

                I pried the door open with the halligan and we were in.  The house was tight, just like I remembered.  The main hallway led straight, then hooked right sharply. To the left was the kitchen and living room. Bedrooms were all off the right side of the hallway, with the stairs up after the hook right.  Does that makes sense to you?  Makes sense to me.  I hate describing shit like this, I feel like I suck at it.

                The hall was clear, and I went left into the kitchen.  An older lady was in the doorway at the end area of the room, facing towards the dining/living room.  She was gone, and after calling out contact, I bucked her up side the head with the 12 gauge. Her head disappeared, and I stepped over her body into the dining room.  Immediately after stepping through the door jam I saw two more zombies turning from the windows to face us.

                I saw Angela through the window, and after racking another shell into the chamber of the shotgun I motioned for her to get down. I didn’t want her to catch any errant shotgun blast bits through a window.  Once I saw she was out of danger, I blasted the dead older man in the upper chest, disconnecting his head from the rest of his body.  He went down on his knees for a moment before falling face down on the hard wood floor.  The other undead was just a young teen boy.  He’d been bitten several times on the neck and chest, and judging by the blood on his grandparent’s faces, they’d done it to him.  I pumped the scatter gun, and put him down, breaking the window behind him in the process.

                The rest of the house clear was fine.  We took our sweet ass time checking the upstairs, as each door was locked.  The whole house smelled bad too, so there was no way of telling if a room had a zombie in it just by smell alone.  No fun.  Fortunately, no injuries, no deaths, no problems.

                We radioed Bastion all was well on the breach, and started clearing the house.  As usual, Patty and Abby took everything not nailed or screwed down.  Blake and I focused on getting the generator in the basement out of the bulkhead door, which meant shoveling an assload of heavy snow, covered in ice.  Unpleasant work, that.

                The generator was a beast though, which is nice.  It took Hal, myself as well as Blake the better part of twenty minutes just to get it into the back of the deuce.  Heavy fucker.  The old guy also had some pretty awesome handyman books in the basement too, which we grabbed.  Blake was impressed by them, which meant they had the how-to on stuff he didn’t know… how to do.  New information is great.  As I’ve said before, Google is still down.

                Which reminds me… we need to hit the town library.  I’m sure there is a ton of useful information still there.  Books on practical knowledge that we really need.  Farming, agriculture, construction, electrical engineering, all that jazz.  Maybe there’s a book on how to build a small hydroelectric dam, or solar cells, or something that’ll help us out as we slowly and steadily run out of resources.

                Gotta be renewable Mr. Journal, or why bother?

                We were on site for longer than we figured, about three hours.  As you might know, anytime you are anywhere longer than you want to be, you’re opening yourself up for exposure, which means attack.  Luckily the only thing we saw was a scattered walker or two.  Nothing really pressing that we couldn’t deal with.  Most of our haul for the day was the generator, bedding, a few tools, nails, screws, bolts, the books, and a shotgun with ten shells. 

                I was unable to turn the HRT around, so we had to drive the long way home.  The roads we took led us very close to the area of town where I saw a few of the fires from MGR, so we naturally were nervous we were driving into an area that had hostiles.  We saw nothing moving, nor any fires, and we didn’t encounter any hostility, so that was nice.  I didn’t really feel like getting into a prolonged firefight after having to lift that motherfucking generator.  I’m still sore today.

                Not much else to report.  We left the generator in the deuce for delivery to MGR in a day or two.  I am not looking forward to hauling that fat bitch up the stairs.  I wonder if there’s a way for us to hook it into the power grid for the building in the basement.  One floor down is a lot better than five floors up.  Of course one more generator running means more gasoline consumption, which is shitty.  But, the electricity there will help them get through the winter.

                The dog situation here has been sorting itself out nicely.  Angela and Amanda have been doing the rear gate feeding thing, and the animals have been much quieter, and far more obedient as a result.  They are now largely staying at the gates, waiting patiently for us to feed them twice a day, and they’ve even barked a few times when an undead came nearby.  They are serving as an excellent auxiliary warning system for us.  I just hope we have the food to maintain it.  Some of the kids are getting attached to the nicer, cuter dogs, and that scares me.  One more thing we can disappoint the kids over.  I guess let it ride as long as we can.

                Syl is the same.  Michelle said she’s getting better at being around people.  We can now have two people in the same room with her and she won’t get violent.  Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement, but it’s something.  Michelle also had James and Mike trudge over to the cabin to get some photos and keepsakes for her.  Now her room is far more “homey” and maybe that’s what is helping.

                Mallory is the same.  Getting better, getting used to having just one arm.

                MGR is quiet, for now.  We are setting up a plan to establish ambush points to get the jump on the folks if they attack again.  There are a few small storefronts we can get inside, and when and if they try to come at the tower again, surprise motherfuckers.  We’re behind you, on the surface.  Hard to retreat through gunfire with no cover.

                Granted I’d rather they just disappeared, but I’ve got the sinking feeling that isn’t in the cards for us.  These people are crazy or desperate, and if losing one of their number wasn’t enough to scare them off, not much else will.  I guess we’ll see what happens.

                Something I noticed yesterday that I didn’t say anything about was Abby and Hal.  There was a moment when the two of them were inside the house, alone, and I caught a glimpse of them through a window.  They were talking, and when Abby turned away to go do whatever, Hal gave her a playful pat on the ass.  She turned, DIDN’T glare at him, then walked away.

                There’s something in the air between those two.  I am not displeased by this.  I’m hoping that Abby moves on from Gavin, and if she’s going to, Hal is a damn fine man to do it with.  Kevin has said nothing but good things about him since they got here, so I’m sure he’ll be worth her time.

                Kids.

                I might take a few day shift at MGR here just to relieve some people there.  We’re slated to move some folks in tomorrow, and I can easily insert myself into the rotation when we bring the generator and supplies.  We’ll see.

                I’m off like a prom dress.  Widescreen porn awaits.

                -Adrian

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