The Failed Coward (33 page)

Constituency. That’s a big word for me huh? I deserve a fucking snack for that one.

So things in the school are good. Very good actually. They have damn little to complain about all things considered. They have two very, very pregnant ladies that are both about to pop. Megan is due in late May, and I think she’s about 25, and she’s kinda pretty. She’s huge. Lisa said Megan’s got just one baby on board, but judging by the size of her belly, I think the kid is coming out the size of a fourth grader. Poor woman. I get the impression her junk will be destroyed when she gives birth.

The other preggo chick is Jeannette. Jeanette looks about my age, maybe a little older, and she’s due at any moment. She reminds me a lot of my little sister. Well, if my sister were a few years older. Pretty brown eyes and hair, and a cute face. I guess Lisa is more excited for the births than anything. I’d be shitting bullets having to give birth without a full medical staff in a hospital on hand, but I guess she’ll make it work.

After meeting them, Mike and I took the grand tour of the school, yet again. This tour, unlike the other one, was specifically designed by Mike so I could meet a bunch of the women, rather than see what the school offered in terms of defenses, and survivability. Oh, he did show me how they’re putting the water we’re trading them to work. They’ve got the water truck parked right next to the building, and they’ve got a manual pump set up connected to fire hoses, and when they get the water back here, they pump it to a tank on the roof where it feeds downward into the water system of the building somehow. It’s a lot of work, but it seems pretty slick from what I gleaned. 

Overall, the women of Westfield are decent looking, and pleasant enough. The older ladies are as you’d expect, some good looking for their age, some not. The younger women are all fairly good looking. One upside to the end of the world: dieting. Everyone is much thinner than we were before the dead stopped staying that way. The biggest person I’ve seen in some time was Melissa, and she’s nowhere even near what I’d call fat. Just, curvy I guess.

My normal type for women would be the curvy ones I guess. I like butts, and boobs. I also like short chicks. Shit. I pretty much just described myself as Sir Mix-A-Lot, didn’t I? Goddamn it. I do like a nice butt, I am unable to lie. I guess there’s no denying it. 

There’s some irony that Cassie was taller than I normally would be attracted to, and thinner than I normally would like. I guess maybe I don’t have a type. Maybe my type is whatever is currently available. Females preferably. Males in a pinch. Don’t judge me. I’m fucking desperate.

Like, literally.

I shouldn’t be fussy. I’ve always said low standards makes for a more interesting sex life. It might not be top shelf ass, but there’s something to be said for quantity.

The more I talk, the more I realize that I am probably a terrible person. I bet the devil has a Lay Z Boy right next to some lava waiting for me.

I arrived so that when we were done with our stupid little meeting, we’d have time to wander about, then go to lunch with the folks there. I chummed a bit with Hector and LaFrenz, who I’ve gotten to know reasonably well through our little trade meetings, but after saying hi to them, I wandered over to a table filled with younger girls. Don’t be a fucking perv Mr. Journal. They’re legal. I’m not that terrible a person.

I think they were mostly mid twenties. Maybe one or two at my age. It’s so hard to tell now. These younger people are survivors, and they carry themselves like it. They’re harder, wiser, more skeptical, and it’s just harder to gauge their age. The end of the world is an accelerated maturation process so it would seem.

I ate lunch with them, and I’d say within maybe five minutes I was the most unpopular man there, amongst the other guys I mean. Seething hatred was coming my way from the men. It actually got a little uncomfortable when a couple of the dudes came over to strike up conversation with the girls, basically to cock block me. They were pleasantly talking to the girls, and staring at me the entire time. Almost saying, “Fuck you buddy, this is our harem…” Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it.

I played dumb, and shot the shit with everyone, but Mike swept in like a cock enabling superhero, and got them whisked away to do something menial. Once the lunch kind of ended, I chilled out at the table, and three of the girls remained behind to talk. 

This is gonna sound bad, but I can’t remember two of their names. I know one of them was called Siobhan, and I can only remember her name, because it’s kind of cool name. The other girls had fairly common names, and they were also nice, but in that forgettable, uncompelling way.

I still wanted to have sex with at least one of them though. Let me make that perfectly clear. Any port in a storm Mr. Journal. 

So I sat with them for the better part of a half hour, and we shot the shit, flirted some, and if I’m not an entire moron, I’m pretty sure they were all doing the delicate jockeying of position to get my interest. I left them kinda high and dry (pun not really intended, I would’ve preferred to have left them high and… wet) and wandered back towards Mike’s office/room to check in with him and see what he thought of the two girls.

I was stopped in the hall by a powerful whack to the back of the head. Damn near sent me flat out on my face, and I spun as soon as I righted myself expecting to defend myself from some jackass who felt I was encroaching on his territory.

When I faced off with my attacker, it was fucking Mallory, the stylist chick who came to campus with Mike and Lisa back in.. February? She had a shit eating grin on her face, and I nearly smacked the snot out of her for jumping me like that. I gave her a rash of shit about hitting a man in the head that was carrying a gun, and she told me to hike up my skirt and drop a pair.

What a dipshit. 

She told me I looked like hell, and it would be professionally unacceptable for her to allow me to leave the school today without giving me another haircut. It’s hard to believe it’s been what? Almost two months since my last trim? Time flies when you’re killing undead on the regular it seems.

Mallory has a sweet classroom all to herself on the first floor that she has set up as a salon of sorts. Someone somehow got a stylist chair back to the school and placed in there, and she has a few mirrors set up. If you ignore the fact that she doesn’t have one of those fancy sinks to wash your head in, it looks and feels pretty much just like a normal place to get your haircut.

She insisted I let her give me a haircut more fitting for me than the “high and tight” I got last time, and after she flicked my ear several times, I told her to do whatever it was she wanted. I was sick of her hitting me. Abusive chick Mr. Journal, sketchy.

She gave me a Mohawk. Mind you my hair isn’t that long anyway, so it’s not like a Sid Vicious punk rock style two foot tall hawk, it’s just a quasi Mr. T on a white guy Mohawk, and even that’s a stretch. I’ve never had one before, and I gotta hand it to her, it was a cool idea. I can rock a Mohawk.

I thanked her, gave her a quick hug, and made my way over to Mike. It was nice to see her. I dig her, she’s a hot shit.

We sat down, and I asked him about the three chicks I talked to at lunch, and he said I’d be good to go with any of them. He said there were no claims on any of the three, which is one thing I wanted to make sure of. I really didn’t want to step on toes any more than I already did. It was bad enough I was already here, and basically had the sanction of Mike to pick through the women to try and get laid.

God this is wretched. I feel like such a scumbag. However, Mike seemed to think that it was a fairly minor deal in the big scope of things. He explained it all like this: 35 survivors, and of them, just 8 men. The odds of the remaining men getting some was pretty fucking good, and if I struck first, then good for me. Early bird gets the vagina.

Shrug. 

Mike and I made permanent plans for them to come visit us on the 25
^th
, which was chosen because that’s when he thought they’d be just about ready for water again. We went over basic supply needs, and I told him at the rate we were going, I’d need another crate of 5.56mm soon. He said they had a fair amount left, and that he’d bring one with him on the 25
^th
.

I got home just in time for dinner. Gilbert was absentee for chow, as he has been spending the nights back at his house lately. I think he’s sick of us, and plus at his age, I can’t help but think he needs relaxation time away from us youngins. We move obnoxiously quick compared to his plodding pace. I am pleased to announce as well that everyone thought that I can indeed, rock a Mohawk.

Abby and Gavin had made this kind of vegetarian lasagna cheese casserole mess. It was actually... damn good. They took cans of that cheese soup, mixed it with canned carrots, green beans, peas etc, and added in layers of lasagna noodles making basically poor man’s veggie lasagna. They baked it in the oven to give it a little crust, sprinkled some of the remaining bread crumbs we have on it, and placed it in the middle of the table like it was a solemn offering to a collection of kings. I was skeptical at first, but it turned out good.

Ollie and Melissa joined us in Hall E, and all is well. Ollie says he needs help tomorrow getting the tractor up and running, then moved here so he can start working the field. He’s actually working on prepping the land right now to make it more fertile so it’ll take to growing food faster. He’s assembled all the bags of fertilizer and potting soil type shit we have, and he’s getting ready to mix it and spread it. He keeps bitching about the field grass and the soil. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing, but he talks an awful lot about it, and he seems to know his shit. He seems really fixated on the grass. I don’t mean weed. He wants grass trimmings to use as compost or something. 

Gavin suggested we save our own poop as fertilizer, and not only is that gross, but it’s kinda dangerous. Bacteria, parasites, etc. Ollie looked like he was gonna smack the stupid off Gavin’s face just for suggesting it. I know in third world countries they use human waste as a fertilizer, but oddly enough in third world countries, they have a real problem with intestinal worms, parasite, diseases, sickness, blah blah blah. Not risking it.

So tomorrow we’re helping Ollie get the tractor. Either Gilbert or I will do it, depending on how the OG feels in the morning. The rest of us are peeling off to head back down into town to clear more houses. 

No rest for the wicked right?

Speaking of being wicked. When I left Mike, I asked him if he could do me another solid, and check in with the three girls I spoke with and ask if they were into me, and make a good call and maybe bring one back here on the 25
^th
so I could maybe institute Phase 2 of Operation Snatch. Is it funny to you too Mr. Journal that all this shit is going down at a pair of high schools? Seems like we’ve stepped back in time a little.

I’m excited for the 25
^th
. One step closer to… sex.

Speaking of sex. Gonna go have some with my hand.

-Adrian

April 18
^th

I found a letter in a house today. It was written on a piece of yellow legal paper sitting on the floor in front of a man who had tied himself to a radiator. He was dead. Undead actually. He fought at the ropes he’d managed to bind himself with as we walked inside the house. I killed him, saw the note, and took it.

I thought it was worth copying here. I did the best I could, but there were bloody smudges all over it, and the handwriting was… difficult in places.

Amanda,

I tried to last it out. I’m sorry I failed. Your mother and father wouldn’t leave the house here before we g
[illegible]
rrounded, and I told them we’d die if we stayed. I was right.

Your dad ran out of insulin, and you know him, he just was
[illegible]
lling to watch what he ate. I hate to say this about your dad, but he was a fat asshole, right up to the end. He had one of his insulin reactions right after you left when we ran out of that shitty boxed macaroni and cheese he ate all the time. I swear your mo
[illegible]
was trying to kill him with that crap all these years. Ironic that a lack of it did him in.

He went down in a heap in the kitchen, smashing that ancient department store piece of shit table to bits and pieces. 

Your mother screamed in hysterics until I tackled her and held her to the ground. I had to stuff a dish towel in her mouth to keep her qu
[illegible]
It didn’t work. She kept cry
[illegible]
nd making these sad noises, and within just a few minutes, those damn things were outside again, banging on the windows. 

She finally calmed down, and I apologized and let her up.
[There’s a few sentences here where I couldn’t make anything out. Smears of blood covered too much of the writing for me to make sense of it.]

She sat there next to your dad’s beached whale carcass for an hour. I snuck off to the basement to get some time away and fire up a smoke. I ran back upstairs when I heard her scream.

I hate to be the bearer of more and more bad news, but your dad killed your mother. When I got upstairs and back to the kitchen, he was pinning her to the floor with his massive girth just I had earlier. Except I was trying to keep her quiet, and he was eating one of her breasts. 

I wish I could say something wise, and comforting. I’m sure when you read this, if you make it back here at all, you’ll be crying yourself hysterical, just like your mom. 

I beat your father off of her with the busted leg of the table. He kicked and scratched at me while I crushed his skull in. He was a tough man Amanda, and I guess there’s something to be said in him not going down without a fight.