Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8) (29 page)

 
“Adrian you must prepare yourself.  Trials and tribulations are the way of the world now, resting is not part of what judges our worth.  Everything happens for a reason Adrian.  Sometimes we don’t understand when things happen, and sometimes we never understand.  Just understand I always loved you, will always love you, and that you are needed by more than just me now.  Someone must be the memory.” 

And like a candle being blown out, the world went dark and cold. Cassie was torn out of the strange bed she was sharing with her love, and thrust back into her corpse body violently, like being slammed forward in a massive collision. The transition was painful, and her dead body ached like it never had before.

The Voice was angry. Angry with her. “Stupid, stupid woman. For this he shall suffer. Your foolish arrogance will be the end of him. He’ll never make it to meet you and see your dead face now.”

“He won’t break. He’s too strong. He understands now that he can move on, and love another. I told him everything. You don't know him."

“We’ll see. I suspect he’ll make the trip to you no matter what you’ve said. You see… his guilt over failing you is greater than his love for you ever was. He’ll eat himself alive until he puts you to rest, and when he comes to you… oh dearest Cassie he’ll have to deal with all of it, every single ounce of his pain, all at once, and all while staring his dead, rotting love right in the face with her white eyes. Do you think he’s so strong to walk away from that?”

Cassie’s corpse would’ve wept if it could.

February 28
^th

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 from the gate at the community when we saw the fucking mob of undead, milling about in the center of the crossroads where we hung our very first radio. I want to give the Meadows people a high five for saying that this number of zombies was just 'above average.' 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. They're good like that. 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, sort of like loading a shotgun with a hormone problem, slide that bitch shut, and seconds later you’re lobbing a fun and exciting explosive high through the sky 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 40mm 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. Like riding a bike.

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. We'll just have to use them versus the living. Shucks.

The SAWs have no such drawback. They kill everything equally well. 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. One less mouth full of teeth that wanted to sink into our flesh. 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.

Not too far away from that, Spring Meadows had a small crowd of undead at their gate. I think ten, maybe twenty stayed and didn't come towards the sounds of our shooting. 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, the liberating force. They’d been laying low, trying to make as little noise as possible hoping the undead would simply leave. It was a decent plan, and many of the dead had in fact walked away towards the sounds of our dying radio. 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 of supplies, 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. See: famous last words. See also: Jinx Fairy.

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 four intersections cleared on all sides of the parking garage was short work. We started in the south. Of course we also knew that our noise clearing the southern two intersections would draw the undead down 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. Getting them moving isn't the worst problem, as often as not, that means they're spread out, and can be easier targets. After some suppressed M4 action to the south, then some suppressed M4 and M9 action to the north, we wrapped up the exterior street work with halligans and crowbars. It took over an hour, and was dirty work, but from the safety of the vehicles, and at range with people you trust covering your back, it was more methodical than frightening.

We got to work after that, 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 another wave or two of 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. Ferrying by hand or in a jump started vehicle wasn't a pair of option we cared for. 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 fit 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 using that plan.

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 one of the humvees pushed a pair of cars behind the deuce, inside the garage and 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 and inside the vehicles we wanted to set on fire, simultaneously getting all the 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 a considerable amount.

We had to stop on every single level to get out and take down walkers, very trip up, and every trip back down. 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 on the first trip up. 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. Abby's shin guards notwithstanding, we wanted to be sure.

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 of each level, taking down anything walking in our direction. We actually elected to use our suppressed weapons for this task. Despite wanting to make noise, at that exact moment we kind of wanted to be a little off the radar. With the living shooters we dealt with the last time we were there, it made sense to keep as quiet as possible. Says the guy who can't hear well today because of the concrete drills.

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, Quan put enough Semtex into that fucking place to level it twice over and he still wasn't sure it would be enough. Kevin disagreed with him, but who really knows? Quan it said it would likely work, but he wouldn't guarantee it. Too late now though.

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 at the Deuce. 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 over the railing and down 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. They'd already pushed enough out.

After the first massive burst of fire we sent a team running in the humvee down to the entrance. 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 less than five minutes we’d gone from surrounded, vehicles trapped inside, to smashing our way out of the downtown area in our full convoy.
 

The population had started to encircle us pretty good on the surface streets, and that was no more apparent than during the drive out of the city. 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 south that it wouldn’t draw any attention to them. We certainly couldn't afford to run a trail of the dead that large to them.