The Failed Coward (9 page)

Knowing that the ice on the lake became a major liability made me want to break it all as best I could so the zombies couldn’t fucking walk across it again. I knew it’d be tough and possibly dangerous work, but I really felt it needed to be done. If only to let me sleep at night. 

Yesterday the weather was pretty sweet, and instead of accompanying Patty, Abby, and Gilbert out on their small house clearing project, I decided I’d play “ADRIAN SMASH!” The girls and our elder Green Beret operator went off down Route 18 towards our new gas station to clear three houses they felt safe doing. They were good sized homes spread a fair bit apart, and with proper procedure, they were confident it would go well. I think they felt pretty good about hiding their nervousness to me too, but I could see it in their eyes. It almost made me go with them, but they really needed this for themselves. 

Breaking the ice turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be. After eating a late breakfast solo, and watching some porn on the big screen with some hand lotion and a tissue (also solo, much to my dismay), I grabbed an eight foot length of 2x4 from our wood supply, and headed to the bridge. 

The recent drizzle and subsequent fog has unnerved the piss out of me, but it has eaten away at the snow and ice like acid. The snow is half gone from our February high, and the ice around the bridge at the mouth of the stream/river is busted into large chunks that appear to be somewhere around four inches thick. Seeing that it was already broken up somewhat, I simply leaned over the railing of the small bridge and hammered the end of the 2x4 into the edges of the large slabs of frozen lake. Repeated smashes chipped away dinner plate sized bits that floated away from the larger chunks. I did this for about four hours, taking a break every thirty seconds to make sure nothing was creeping up on me.

I took a lunch break, finished off the last of our milk (and boy did I hear about that when the girls got home last night) and made myself a package of ramen noodles and mushroom soup. Not too shabby all things considered. I put more hickory sticks on the fire in the smokehouse treating the venison we got the other day, and I migrated my tired ass back to the bridge, and smashed apart the rest of the huge icebergs near the bridge. I was happy with the situation there, and made my way up river away from the lake, making sure the ice across the stream couldn’t hold the weight of a person or zombie, as the case may be.

I worked up the stream for a few hundred yards out past where Hall E was. (worked up the stream? Sounds like I’m having a problem pissing) The majority of the water was open and pretty safe in terms of a potential crossing, but there were a few points where the ice spanned from boulder to boulder and if a zombie had even a stitch of balance, they could make it across. I couldn’t smash all that ice, but a few well aimed Glock shots broke it up enough without me risking my ass falling in the river. Good luck had it that I wrapped up just as Team Vagina + Gilbert returned with the Tundra and the Chevy overflowing with lootage.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the women quite that giddy. Positively overwhelmed with joy. Even Gilbert was grinning and laughing, and that shit is just infectious. I laughed the moment they hopped out of the trucks and the entire time we unloaded everything into the cafeteria and the halls we’re using to store stuff.

Once I saw what they’d come back with, I couldn’t help but get a wee bit silly myself. The three houses they had cleared were reasonably affluent homes that were left untouched after June. They were pristine, and very well appointed. The largely useless yet cool loot was jewelry, clothing, perfumes, cologne, and bedding. The good shit they got though was awesome shit. 

You know those tempur-memory foam beds? One house had two, and one of the other houses had two more, and they got all of them into one truck. Gilbert already had one at his house, and now so do we! I slept last night on a cloud of happiness and comfort. Granted I’ve traded in room space for a Queen sized bed in a small dorm room, but fuck it. I slept like a goddamn baby last night, and I LOVE SLEEPING. I don’t mind having to walk across my bed to go to the closet.

The ladies also brought back a metric assload of booze. We are now knee deep in the expensive shit as well as the cheap shit. Very exciting for trade bait for sure. They also came back with boxes of canned food, as well as more soda and pasta, boxes of crackers, bags of flour, huge supplies of all kinds of spices and salt and pepper, and a ton of awesome kitchen appliances. Apparently one of the houses was owned by a chef or restaurant owner. It was a major food score to say the least. They also had more stuff of no particular note, but the best of the best stuff they left behind, and we retrieved it this morning. One of the houses had another gas powered generator. A pretty robust one as well. It took us all morning to get the damn thing out of the house and into the truck. Right now we’ve got it in the gymnasium to power our larger woodshop. No final home for it yet.

Amongst the three houses they managed to find another Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun, two hunting rifles, one in .223, and one in .30-06, as well as a .357 revolver, and a .380 Walther. I haven’t done an ammo count yet, but it looks like about 30-50 rounds in each of those calibers.

The rest of yesterday evening was us going through and categorizing the stuff they brought back. Gilbert used some of the new food to cook us all an awesome dinner, and oddly enough, Abby was attached to his old ass the whole time. Patty said they had a nice heart to heart about the whole Gavin issue, and Abby does really like him, and Patty is now onboard with the idea of them playing house. I think Abby watching Gilbert cook was the first moments of Abby’s willing domestication. I almost cried watching her help Gilbert. She must *really* like Gavin. Abby of eight months ago would’ve told a boy to go fuck himself sideways with an Xbox controller if he asked her to make a dinner.

Our little girl is growing up. I really wish Charles was here to see this. 

I miss Charles and Randy. I hadn’t thought of them in some time, but last night and today with Abby and whatnot they’ve been on my mind. I feel like Abby’s surrogate father now to some extent, and I almost feel like I’m stealing Chuck’s glory. Shrug. I hope I can do justice by his wife and daughter I suppose. I’d hate to think I failed them as a protector, and even moreso as a friend.

After dinner and organizing, Gilbert sauntered home, and the girls and I watched a chick flick in the living room. We all crashed reasonably early so we could head back to the houses and retrieve that generator this morning.

Which we did. Oh, I totally forgot. The girls cleared the three houses themselves with Gilbert providing exterior cover support. The girls encountered something like seven zombies during the house clearing, and they said they handled them with no issues. I am very proud.

Today however was a bit messier. Their activity yesterday drew in about twenty five undead, which made for a small bit of trouble. We took the plow truck and Gilbert’s Chevy, and I took out about eight of them with the plow. The rest we took down with accurate rifle fire. Messiest part of the whole damn morning was having to smash the heads of the not quite dead folks I hit with the plow. I went to kill one of the male zombies I hit with the truck and noticed just as I was about to brain them with the halligan that I knew him. It was one of the teachers from the school. Mr. Chin, our Chinese language professor. He had the summer off last year and wasn’t on campus when everything went down.

I wonder if he’d still be alive if he had gone to work June 23
^rd
? I wonder if he would’ve survived with me, and instead of having me stave his forehead in today, he might be helping me do the same to someone else? The twists and turns life takes I guess. I killed him like the rest of the zombies before him, and we got the generator loaded up.

To save on energy we used the engine lift to get it out of the trucks and into the gymnasium. It was fortunate we did so, because not five minutes after we got into Hall E to clean up, Mike came over the radio saying he was a few miles out, and heading in shortly.

Mike came in a single humvee loaded to the gills with goodies for us to trade for. He also brought Gavin, Ollie, and Ollie’s woman Melissa. And officially, they are a couple now. Ollie and Melissa are sugary sweet, and obviously very happy being together. 

Gavin shot his skinny ass right to Abby the moment the truck door opened. They paired off and spent the entire visit together “pulling security” outside. On at least one level, I was happy having them doing that. I mean hell, Gavin has military experience, and I’d go into the bowels of hell with Abby now. As long as the two of them don’t drop their pants and go on a sexual expedition somewhere “down south,” I feel very safe. I hope to fucking hell they’ve got the good sense to wear a frigging rubber though. We don’t need another pregnant person here.

Speaking of pregnant people here….

Ollie and Melissa are expecting! Can’t say I didn’t see that coming though. Those two look happy as pigs in shit. And, interestingly enough, they are interested in relocating here to live on campus. I know… weird right? I never saw it coming with Ollie. I got the impression he and his dad were inseparable. I figured he had worked on his dad’s farm his entire life, and would never want to leave there.

Ollie and Melissa has such solid reasoning for coming here though, none of us could deny the logic of it. Ollie has run his father’s farm with him since he was old enough to be helpful to his dad. That’s a lot of useful experience to spread around. When spring hits and we start planting, Ollie already knows how to do everything. All we need to do is be Ollie’s brute labor, and he is our agricultural brains. Ironic that my first impression of him was that he was dim-witted. Turns out he’s pretty smart, he’s just moving at a different pace than the rest of us. Add to that the fact that my first meeting with him was at gunpoint, and I guess it’s easy to get the wrong impression about folks.

He and Melissa also went on about how they wanted a fresh start, with fresh air, and new people. She went on at length that the school had too many sour memories in it for her due to Sean’s asshole nature, and she wanted out one way or the other. With everything else, it makes a lot of sense for them to come here. 

I like Melissa. I can see why Ollie digs her. She’s a smidge chunky, but not fat. Mid length brown hair, and a pretty warm smile. I think she’s about thirty, but it’s hard to tell. She has a very youthful face, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was years older than she looks. She’s chesty as all hell too. When she gets late into the pregnancy she’s going to have boobs the size of motorcycle helmets, poor woman. Her back will be busted. I also get this odd feeling about her. I like her, don’t get me wrong, but she seems… seasoned or something. Like, sort of hard. I got the same feeling from some of the soldiers I served with after awhile. You get this certain expression, or way about you that just exudes experience, and a history of dealing with shit. I think her experience with “that day” was pretty rough or something.

I think Ollie deeply loves her, and I think she loves the stability he represents. He’s got this unending charm that just pervades everything. His kind of round face, easy manner, short red hair, and big smile are welcome wherever he goes. You can see how much Mike admires and appreciates his company. You can also see the pain in his face when Ollie and Melissa talk about leaving.

We talked about just them for over an hour, and the consensus opinion is that they were more than welcome to move here at the end of the month. That would give us about two weeks to change our minds about it, and also allow them time to pack, say their goodbyes, and let us prep an area for them. We’re thinking Hall A is the obvious choice, but the more I think about it, I’m wondering if Hall B is the better idea.

Hall B is the closest dorm to the athletics fields, and if Ollie is going to be our HFIC (head farmer in charge) then he should be close to the fields? It’ll cut down on his walking, and on any gas he might waste going back and forth over the summer from Hall A to the fields. Of course you realize Mr. Journal we’d have to install a generator in Hall B, as well as try to find another woodstove for there as well so next winter we save on our heating oil supplies. Shrug. I’ll figure it out. There’s always work to be done.

After that discussion Mike made the expected announcement that Gavin was interested in coming here too. Now as much as we want Abby to be happy, we desperately need this to be worked out clearly, and make sure that Gavin understands the reality that moving here for a girl might not be the best idea. We all talked and agreed that if Gavin was well aware that a relationship might end, and it could be ugly, he was more than welcome to come and stay here.

We also all agreed his answer would not come today, and he’d have the same waiting period. Mike said he’d handle the talk with Gavin later when they got back to the school in Westfield. Mike also said there were five or six other people interested in coming here, but for the sake of maintaining sanity, we had to agree to take on more women. We were taking Ollie, and likely Gavin from them, and they were already super lopsided with chicks. If we don’t take females in from there, the school will turn pink, and soon be filled bottom to top with shoes. I told Mike we’d take a few of the pretty women off his hands. He laughed, but I think he wanted to shoot me some.

Our trade for the day was large and in charge. Mike positively busted a nut when we told him we had a few venison steaks for him. He immediately said he was interested in that, as well as four of the 12 packs of soda we got the other day, and a few bottles of various liquors we’d acquired over time. We refilled all of their water jugs again, which is saying something because every time they come here to trade, there are more water jugs.

For all that, we got four bottles of milk, a chicken to eat, four loaves of hearty fresh bread, a dozen eggs, a M4 rifle with 4 empty magazines, and another IOTV from their base. Mike said he had a spare ACOG to mount on the M4 if I wanted it, and I said hells yes. I’d kill for an ACOG. He said he’d make sure it was available on our next meeting.