Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 11): No God [Adrian's March Part 3] Read online

  I heard them roll in from my bedroom. I had the window open and was playing Fallout 3 with Otis in my lap. I almost blew my incision open jumping out of bed and running down the stairs I went so fast. My brother Caleb was hot on my heels and by the time we got out the door and halfway to the line of vehicles, I saw him.

  All those emotions… whoa, Nelly. I didn’t realize I loved William as much as I did until I saw him standing there, near the humvee, talking to Kevin. I didn’t have an inkling of how much I missed him. How… how disconnected I’d been. Seeing him, seeing him happy, and healthy, and tall, wearing a green flight suit… and so tall… I tackled his tall, scrawny ass to the pavement and then Caleb jumped on top of me. My side felt like I’d been stabbed but I didn’t fucking care. I had a brother back. Taken back from the deepest, darkest days of doubt and worry. It wasn’t ten seconds after that I felt Becca crash into us, and there we were… four Rings on the ground, under the summer afternoon cloudy sky, laughing like hyenas with head injuries.

  I needed two Percocets to get off the ground, but it was worth it.

  Caleb and William helped me into the cafeteria and from there, we didn’t move for hours. People came into meet the newest Ring, but we shooed them away so we could sit and spend time together. We talked and talked and talked. Caleb and Becca filled him in on their journey up to the point where they crossed paths with us here, and then we all explained what happened after that to present day. The ending of the story had him quiet, leaning forward, elbows on knees, staring intently with his dark brown eyes at us. I could see what he was thinking. It’s the same thing everyone thinks when they hear us talk about the White Room, and the dead, and the Trinity.

  He laughed a little, shook his head in disbelief, but didn’t say anything else. He went right into telling us an abbreviated version of his story, and boy… he had a good one.

  He was part of the flight crew for a helicopter on his frigate, Reuben James when the end hit. They’d been attached to a carrier group doing anti-piracy work in and around the Horn of Africa. Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, all that. Turns out Somali pirates are a real issue.

  They got the call from the Pentagon when it all went to shit, and the initial orders they received were to help secure regional assets. So they did. His ship and carrier group stayed in that area for months, ferrying supplies into bases all over the area, even going so far as picking up SEALs and Green Berets who were in Somalia doing black ops shit. I want more of that story. He was in the chopper when they went in, and apparently, it was something pretty special.

  Anyway, as we all know it went, the government dimmed, then went dark as the bombs fell on the cities, and before long, their fleet was left without standing orders. The admiral in charge made the call to start ferrying everyone they could get on board back to the states.

  Can we just take a second, and recognize how amazing that decision was? Here’s a person who arguably has control of more military might than ANYONE on the planet, and they make the decision to save lives, and reunite families, and take care of others, rather than any other, shittier decision they could’ve made. Also, let’s throw a big high-five out there to the captains of all the ships under that command for sticking with their admiral, and doing what was best for the men and women abroad. Makes me proud of my little brother, and the people he was working with.

  For weeks they flew sorties inland, and emptied out all the bases they could, picking up survivors and supplies to make the trip back. Thousands. Tens of thousands of people came back to America, and points between because of them. Because of my little brother, who helped fly and crew helicopters that went deep into harm’s way, in some cases into dangerous countries that were ALSO teeming with seas of the undead, and got it done.

  I’ve never been more proud of him.

  His group set course for Hawaii, stopping at ports of call for refueling purposes. They tried to hit many places, but were unable to make safe harbor as often as not, and had to abandon some ships because they had no fuel. Sri Lanka paid off, as well as some place called the Cocos Islands. They swung by northern Australia, but weren’t able to port anywhere. Too many undead.

  They fucking stopped by Vanuatu, and I made a Survivor joke, which no one laughed at. Turns out I’m the only one in our family who watched that show, so fuck me. They made the trip to Hawaii then, through a rugged, rugged storm with crazy high waves, and wound up sailing right into Pearl Harbor, which was a safe zone on the island.

  If you’ve never been to Hawaii, or were just unaware, Honolulu has a massive military footprint on it. Giant naval base with Marines and SEALs there, plus an airfield, and Coast Guard facilities, etc. Considerable amounts of secure buildings and islands with tons of guns and trained people to use them.

  He describes what sounds like paradise there, and so long as they could keep their crops growing, and police up anyone who died before reanimating, they had a real good shot at a future on the island. Their fleet put down anchors there, and provided security to the Pearl Harbor area, and Hawaii as a whole for months. That lasted until a portion of the forces there put up enough of a stink about wanting to return to the mainland to see if their friends and families were alive.

  Now keep in mind that long range communications weren’t working right, okay? Ham radio was shitty, power networks were down, fuel supplies for generators were getting thin, and it had been months since anyone there had heard anything. The commanders in Hawaii made the call to form a new, smaller, faster battle group with the mission to return to the mainland to scout the port cities on the west coast, and deliver those who wanted to return home to shore. They called this fleet’s mission Operation Homeland Support.

  William’s boat was selected, and they went underway. Up and down the coast they went for months, porting where they could, dropping retired military personnel and sailors off as possible so they could go home. He wouldn’t tell us much about what it was like over there, but he what he wouldn’t say in words, his body language screamed.

  I don’t think California fared well. At least the big cities on the coast didn’t. It didn’t sound like Oregon or Washington State did all that hot either. Big cities, man. Too many people. Just too many people. Not enough resources, or land to grow, or any ability to survive long term. Lack of medical capacity and infighting amongst survivors happened at a higher rate than here in the sticks, contributing to deaths, and you get the picture. They went up into Canadian waters, and fared better there. Got a good amount of supplies, and were able to get more people to shore safely. Less people in Canada. They’re more spread out than the American west coast.

  Isolation can be a successful survival strategy.

  But Operation Homeland Support had no intention of being isolated. They realized the west coast was a wash, and had plenty of people wanting to get home east, and there was the motivation to try and get in touch with Washington, or any potential command structures, so they made the ballsy call to sail south and try the Panama Canal, and that failing, go all the way down and around the tip of South America. Cape Horn.

  No one was running the canal, so south they went.

  Bad sailing, was how he described it. Really rough seas, and bad weather the further south they went, though he said they were able to get fuel from ports easier than up north. Less boats competing for the resources, I guess.

  Months, I guess it took. Two? He was vague.

  They reached the states heading for North Carolina, and made port in Norfolk, where the Navy has a major presence. Been there a few times myself to visit Tommy. There’s a SEAL squadron or two based there. He was assigned to the beach there at one point. William said Tommy wasn’t there, which I assumed when he didn’t lead with, “I saw Tommy in Virginia.”

  They were fighting hard there on a daily basis. The surrounding area had been smashed with bombing runs, and the sheer amount of the dead in the area was devastating. They were holding up, but they didn’t have enough firepower to render the area safe. All the local military could do was isolate in a siege situation and resort to a slow burn eradication of the threat surrounding them.

  Translation; they started to make bows and arrows, and use spears to kill as many zombies as they possibly could to conserve ammo for the really troubling times.

  From Norfolk they were able to sail north and make a connection with Lancaster’s people who are trying to rebuild The United States. They were taken control of by them and have been working as the core component of what passes for their first fleet. He’s achieved the rank of Chief Warrant Officer Two, due to combat promotions, and has learned how to fly a Seahawk like he always wanted to. He’s a full-fledged pilot now.

  Five ships. Two frigates, two destroyers, and a supply ship. Four Seahawk helicopters.

  “The dreams, right?” he said kinda out of the blue. “That gave it away. Started the ball rolling.”

  “What?” I asked him.

  “When people started to realize how our dreams were screwed up, that’s when it all started to come together. When people became aware of the strangeness of it, then the strangeness was able to interact with people more. Once one of us believed it was happening that way, then the rest of us had an easier time of it. Did it work that way here? Because once one person on our boat started talking about how they dreamt only of the dead, most of us started to realize it, and from there, the dreams of people talking about you and Kevin, and Michelle started to crop up. I mean, not all of us believe it. Some people still aren’t buying it. But that’s how I knew this was… that it was worse than what we could’ve thought.”

  “Because your older brother was sitting in the middle of a shit sandwich?”

  He laughed and nodded. “Masturbating in a diaper, reading Guns and Ammo. Yeah. I mean,
if there was a list of people I wanted to help decide the future of humanity, no one in my family would make the top hundred.” He turned to Becca then. “No offense, midget.”

  “None taken,” she said. “I wouldn’t put myself in the top thousand.”

  “I know enough from other people we’ve crossed paths with to digest the truth of it,” he said. “I know you, and Kevin, and Michelle were really a Trinity somehow assigned as the leaders of this, and I know that what you endured had something to do with purging North America of the undead, and that’s amazing. Hard to believe, right? But still. Thank you. Thank you for staying strong, and doing what you had to do. I guess what you were supposed to do.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Kevin said. “But we had faith in each other. And Adrian is as solid as a rock.”

  I gave him a dirty look and laughed.

  “So you going to do it?” he asked me.

  “Do what?”

  “Go to Europe with us. Figure out what’s going on there. See if we can do there what you did here,” William said. “Help them.”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. Being here hurts my soul. I’ll never be able to see this place in the same way again. Might as well take a vacation where I get to pop the skulls of a few hundred million undead and try to save the world some more. It’s good to have goals.”

  “Good. That’s real good,” he said with a smile. Same smile I saw on him after he cashed his first paycheck when he was sixteen. “We’ve got a plan for it. You’d ride on my boat. Floating base of operations. We’ve been plotting this for months. Since before Lancaster came up here to scout it out to see if you’d be willing.”

  “That’s a big-picture plan. Long time in the dark room to develop.”

  “You don’t do anything quickly,” he said, and we all laughed.

  “That’s true,” I agreed, then we were quiet.

  “I’m sorry about Cassie, man. Michelle too. I wish I’d gotten to meet her. And all the people you lost here since it went down. I haven’t had to lose too many friends. Being on the boat has been safe. We haven’t had to face it like you have.”

  “Well little brother, if we decide to head to the old world, you’re gonna face it. Bloody teeth, spilled guts, and dreams that’ll make you never want to close your eyes again are all in store.” I stopped myself from saying more when the images of what it might be like over there started to run through my imagination. Seas of the dead in the cities, roaming the countryside, and all in a series of nations that have about ten percent of the weapons we have here.

  “If it means we can save people, then let’s do it. There’s no turning away from this. Whatever is happening over there has arrived here again, and we can’t stop it unless we do something big, like you did. I’ve heard about the idea that there are other Trinities. I believe it. I believe that there is a group of three survivors over there that need some help, and I think the only people who know how to find them, and figure out what kind of help they need are sitting right here.”

  I looked at Kevin and sighed.

  Kevin’s face got a little uglier than usual, and he sighed too. He has a kid now. He shouldn’t go anywhere. Certainly nowhere I take him.

  If I do decide to do this… do I go alone? Who should I ask to come with me?

  I don’t know.

  You know, Mr. Journal, there’s only one of us left unaccounted for now. Tommy. Where is he? What’s he doing?

  You know, I look around and see all my brothers, and my sister, and I don’t see good fortune. I don’t see a lucky family. I see a plan. I see purpose. I see… the powers that be at work. So you know exactly what my brother is doing.

  He’s surviving. He’s a survivor, you see.

  Runs in the family.

  -Adrian

  A Man of God

  Mid May 2011

  “How does that feel?” Tommy asked Katrin as she adjusted the fit of a night vision device on her head. She fidgeted with the tight band around the back of her head, then sighed in defeat. “It has to be tight. Otherwise the device swims away from your eyes as we move. Then you’re blind, and stopping to fix it. Nothing good comes of that scenario.”

  “It’s not bad when you get used to it,” Stephanie said as she walked around the dark storage room in the hangar they’d occupied in Erfurt Germany. She wore the same kind of goggles Katrin was learning to use. “Everything is green, and it’s hard to judge distances, but it’s workable. I’m sure it’ll get better with practice.”

  “Keep walking in circles, trying to touch stuff,” Tommy said. “Try jumping to a point in the distance and see how close you land to it. After a few minutes, your brain will start to do the math for you, and it does get easier. It’ll never be perfect, but you adjust. When we’re out there, moving towards that church with the tunnel, you won’t have to do much more than lead Glen and I. Remember, we need to run as fast as we can, for as long as we can. The less we’re exposed to the streets over the three kilometers we have to cover, the better. If we’re running for more than twenty minutes we might as well start yelling, turning on flashlights, taking our clothes off and smearing barbeque sauce all over our bodies. We’ll do the shooting and fighting. We’ll deal with doors and anything fancy.”

  “Fancy?” Dennis asked. He too wore the tubular goggles.

  “Formal wear,” Glen said from his sitting position in the corner of the dark room. He didn’t wear his NVGs. He sat in the dark, head leaning back against the wall. “Tuxedos, ball gowns, etc. We in the Navy have a penchant for formal wear.”

  They laughed, and continued to try to interact with their world wearing the night vision gear.

  “Using hands,” Glen explained. “Turning knobs, dials, switches, doors, and especially, fighting. That’s all fancy to us. You be the map, and the eyes to keep watch, and we’ll handle the fancy parts.”

  “An hour until full dark. It’s cloudy, so that’ll help us move unseen. Then, we launch a mortar round into the distance to draw the zombies at the fence, and the ones banging on the building away, and we make a break for it. Find a map somewhere, and get to the church,” Tommy said. “Normally we’d do a lot more planning ahead of time on an op like this, but time is a big factor, so we’re going to improvise as we go.”

  “What happens after we get there?” Katrin asked. “Your entire group of soldiers and all your supplies will still be here.”

  “We figure out the smartest way to get all that to the Citadel,” Tommy answered.

  “It won’t be possible to do such a thing safely,” Stephanie said.

  “I didn’t say the safest way. I said the smartest way,” Tommy said. “Because right now, there is no way in the world we can make this trip safely, but that kind of thing is what we do for a job. Now, while we wait for the sun to finish setting, can you describe to my teammate and I how the ground entrances to Petersberg Citadel work?”

  The 60mm mortar illumination round exploded out of the weapon firing it and ascended high into the sky above the German city. There, it deployed a small parachute and exploded again, creating a miniature white sun that began a lazy descent to the ground. A second round in the opposite direction boomed upwards, and the dead white eyes of the sea of hungry zombies turned up to the twin stars.

  The maimed and killed staggered in circles at first, unsure of how to react to such strange things in the empty sky above, but then the irrational, primal hunger of evil took over, and they began to run at the powerful draw of manmade light. Tommy, Glen, and the three German locals all watched on from inside the hangar’s office as the zombies peeled away from the side of the building to speed off at their peculiar, disjointed jogging gait to find the light, and then try to murder it.

  “Each round stays lit for thirty seconds, give or take,” he explained. “In ten seconds, when all these dead assholes are at the fences heading north and south towards the mortar rounds, we book it east towards the city and this church with the tunnel. I lead with Stephanie at my back. Glen is our last person. No one strays from us, no one picks a fight before us, and no one talks unless we prompt you. The safest place in this city is within six feet of us. Do not stray from within six feet of my partner or I. Seven feet and you might as well be on the moon. Everyone ready?”