It took Blake four or five hours to get the backhoe started, and then we were in business. It had no fuel in it, but we always bring a canister of diesel and gasoline with us, so we were good to go. Unfortunately, the damn thing doesn’t drive fast, and we had to creep back across the back roads to the school at about ten miles an hour. The trip back was the better part of an hour too, which turned into a complete pain in the ass for us.
We drove by at least fifteen undead that were walking just fast enough that they had plenty of opportunity to bang on the windows and sides of the trucks as we went. After the first few attempts to slalom them with the backhoe, we just drove ahead in the Deuce and dropped them manually or ran over them so we didn’t have to deal with it. Incidentally, that Deuce is pretty much the worst riding truck I have ever been in. Every bump feels like a giant dagger into your asshole.
So yeah. Backhoe is now onsite, and in use for the moment. It does need work though. We dug a huge length of trench last night for the log wall, and I tell you what Mr. Journal, it easily shaved a day’s labor off in an hour. Of course now we’ll have to switch our emphasis to cutting down trees faster and getting them cut to length. Which weirdly enough... leads me into today’s activities.
We cut down trees all damn day. When we cut them down we cut them to length, trim the branches etc, and drag them back across the bridge using one of the trucks, and some chain. It takes two or three of us to get the logs into the ditch and upright while someone fills the trench to keep them straight. Once they’re standing where we need them, and there’s enough of them standing in a row, we push the earth against the back of them with the backhoe, and voila… we’re done.
It’s more work than that obviously, but you get the drift. The equipment makes it much easier, much faster, and allows us to focus on cutting down far more trees per day. I guess the moral of the story is that it’ll make shit a lot faster. I don’t know how many days it’ll cut off the process as a whole, but I’m sure it’ll be a dramatic improvement.
Let’s see. What else?
Well, I mentioned already that Blake is working on welding a plow blade to the HRT, which is great. He also has given the backhoe a huge once over, and apparently that thing is on borrowed time unless we get spare bits for it. He needs some supplies though from Mike’s Auto and the auto parts store to finish up the HRT as well as repair the backhoe, so at some point we’ll need to roll downtown to get those two tasks accomplished. With the level of undead wandering about town, I imagine it should be fairly easy for us. Granted that’s assuming more of the giant population in the city hasn’t wandered its way back here in the meantime. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that were the case.
The crops are doing well, despite the heat. The plants are growing at a wonderful rate, and we’re at the point now where the kids can help and be productive. One thing that does worry me is Lindsey over on Jones Road. She’s still kind of out of it over losing her kid, and I made mention to Melissa to try and get the two of them back to the campus more often. I don't want her isolating and going stir crazy.
Melissa is doing well. She’s got a baby bump that’s kind of visible now. Well, it’s that or she’s porking up good and early on Ollie. She’s been laid up pretty steady in Hall B in the heat due to her wounds, but today she was up and moving around a smidge. She desperately wants to help around campus, but the more she moves, the more likely she’ll tear her wounds open, or fuck up the dressing. The wound in her leg is still packed a little and we can’t risk that bitch getting infected at all. Infection scares the hell out me ever since that cock biting dog had at me.
She’ll be a great mom. I can see it now. She’s very intelligent, warm, caring, and thoughtful. She’s always putting everyone else ahead of her, even now when she’s laid up hurt. She’s the kind of person that’d rather take an hour to crawl to the sink to get a glass of water than bother one of us on the radio. She just doesn’t want to put herself in front of anyone else. I like her. Ollie loves her, and I’m glad she’s here. I just wish she’d be a little more willing to ask for help when she clearly needs it.
Patty’s good. Might as well talk about her seeing as how I’m apparently doing the ‘around the world of ALPA women’ tonight. She’s really worried about the change in Abby, just like Gilbert and I. Most of the rest of the folks here don’t know her as well as we do, so the change in her attitude and demeanor isn’t as apparent. Patty has stood next to me a few times while we watched her kill undead with a vengeance, or work her injured hand until it’s bleeding crimson through the bandage, and we just don’t know what to do. Abby seems perfectly sane. Just motivated in an unhealthy way. Well, maybe it is healthy. I just don’t know. It scares me.
I feel for Patty. Really I do. So much bullshit for her to live through, powerless to stop it, or change anything. I guess I should feel bad for everyone in that case. There isn’t a person here who hasn’t lost someone close to them recently, or watched horrible things happen to those we care about.
Oh fucking well.
Heading downtown the day after tomorrow to get Blake his parts for the HRT and other assorted automotive/mechanical issues. Tomorrow we are going to build as much log wall as possible. If we aren’t interrupted in a major way, I think we can do forty to fifty feet in a long day’s work, which would be awesome. At that rate, we can probably get the entirety of an exterior first wall done within fifty or sixty days. Maybe faster if we can borrow some of the Westfield bodies to help. Of course it isn’t like they don’t have their own problems to deal with.
Life, or what passes for it nowadays. Back to the grind tomorrow.
Mr. Journal, I say good day to you.
-Adrian
June 8
th
What a pair of days Mr. Journal. I feel certain renaissance coming on. Almost like we’re headed back into the good old days. Well, back when more stuff was going right for us than wrong for us. I shouldn’t say that. I know better than to say that crap now. That asshole Jinx Fairy hangs out near me far too fucking often for me to be running my yap like that. She brings down the sparkly pwnage wand and just like that, I’m bent.
Fucking Jinx Fairy.
So yesterday was a great day on many levels. Legitimately pretty frigging awesome. I already mentioned that in order for Blake to finish up his upgrades on the HRT as well as get that backhoe in 100% good shape, we needed to hit the auto parts store as well as Mike’s Auto. We did that yesterday. Because I am alive and typing this, and I’m not being a melancholy bitch about life, you know we made it back okay, and I didn’t die. Yay for the little things.
As I suspected, town was largely wide open. The amount of undead kicking around the joint has dropped to pre summer levels. I would almost go so far as to say that it’s safe to walk about on foot now. They’re few and far between, and as long as you kept moving, I think it’s safe enough in most neighborhoods to be on foot if you know what you’re doing. Doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous still mind you, just means it’s much better now than it has been. I fear as usual, it’s just the calm before the storm. Fucking storms. I bet they hang out with that asshole Jinx Fairy.
Alright so we actually went out fairly light today in terms of a force. We wanted to give some of the new people a spin in front of some danger to see how they reacted, and we also wanted Gilbert to continue to work on reloading 5.56 and resting his eye. I’d hate for him to completely lose the eye, and with the extra living, breathing bodies we’ve got here now, there’s little incentive to stress the old guy. He’s certainly earned a frigging rest after everything he’s been through, and that’s not even counting everything since last June.
It was Blake, myself, Abigail, Amanda, and Angela in the HRT, and the Deuce. I think I will continue to rave about the deuce for some time because it’s such a huge ass beast of a truck, and we can shoot accurately and safely on the move from the rear of it. It’s high enough off the ground that there’s plenty of clearance from being grabbed, and it’s a military vehicle, so it’s tough as nails. The suspension is like some kind of medieval torture device, but beggars can't be choosers. I’ve thanked the two sisters a hundred times each for having brought it, and I’ll thank them a hundred times more before the thing shits the bed on us. Blake says as long as we can get spare parts for it, he can maintain it until he drops dead of old age, which does seem like an unlikely way to go given our current world, but hey, I have to appreciate the thought.
Our first stop was Mike’s auto. Town was largely clear as I said, and we were able to drive straight up to the garage. Blake moved the few cars he’d been using as a wall/gate, and we backed the Deuce right to the damn garage door, and we emptied the bitch. Blake took everything he could, and vowed that at some point we had to return to pull the lift. The garage doesn’t have an in-floor one, which is nice. It’s the kind that’s standing on both side of the car and it slides some swing arms under the vehicles, then raises it. If the clunkers we’re using need serious undercarriage repair at any point, we’ll be needing that to make it easier on us. For the moment though, it’s a pretty big project we don’t need to accomplish anytime soon. It can wait.
Once we had the good shit taken out of the garage we drove our asses out. I should mention that we only had to kill a single zombie while we were there. Amanda dealt with it while we loaded shit. She’s got this golf club she brings with her everywhere. I think it’s a nine iron, and I tell you what, that is a mean broad with that fucking short iron. Once I saw her yell 'FORE!' before clunking a dead guy in the head. Crushed the side of his skull above the ear like it was a fucking eggshell. Note to self: get some golf clubs. Club head speed seems directly linked to, and pretty effective at destroying brains.
From Mike’s Auto we made our way the couple of miles across town to the auto parts store we hit up on Blake’s behest some time ago. There were a couple of zombies milling about nearby down at the pile of trash outside the base of that large apartment building down the street. They were shuffling their feet looking upwards at the building for a bit before heading down our way, which makes me think there are people still up there. I’m wondering if we should attempt to make contact with them soon. They might need our assistance, or at least have some kind of information to offer.
Shrug. People kind of scare me. Most of them try to kill me and my friends.
So we dispatched those assholes once we got parked and situated, and we spent nearly four hours cleaning the place out. One of the joys of small town auto parts stores is the diversity of the inventory. Because they frequently had to fill orders for parts for things other than cars, they maintained a large inventory of more commercial style parts. Tractors, diesels, hydraulic repair gear, blah blah. I guess the point of this giant bullshit rant is that they had a lot of really useful parts, and not just for fixing cars. Blake was like a kid in a candy store, especially when we realized that we had a lot of time to really clean the place out. We were concerned at first that we’d have to do a quick in and out if there were too many undead about, but that wasn’t the reality.
The Deuce was loaded up big time, and we were off. The trip home was about as clean as could be. I was in the lead in the HRT, and Blake was behind me in the Deuce, and all was well until we got to Auburn Lake Road. We were maybe a half mile up the road, and it was just about at that point where the sun is at the horizon, and it’s just past that golden hour of sunlight. Sort of that dawn-esque into dusk time.
I was plugging along, and just like that BAM! A fucking deer leaps over one of the rock walls in the front of someone’s yard. I slammed on the brakes, just barely missing the damn thing. Now, I had like... one second to make a decision on the deer, and I nearly blew it. I reached down and tried to get the M4 up and out the window, but the barrel caught on something, and I dropped it and got the Glock out. The driver’s side window was already open, and I leaned out, and just as the deer started to bolt away off the road, I let fly about four rounds at the thing.
Three of the rounds I clearly saw impact in the rib area of the deer, but the fourth walked off of it. I was firing more or less gangsta style sideways out the window, so I was bound to miss at least one. I should talk more shit about having used a handgun after avoiding an accident in such a badass way. I feel very 80’s action hero-ish. Have I mentioned how fucking loud it is to shoot a gun inside a car? Geezum. As if I wasn’t deaf enough already.
The deer, like they always fucking do, still made it off the road and into the brush, so I threw the truck in park, and jumped out to chase it down. I didn’t have to go far. Three .45 slugs to the chest cavity at maybe 25 feet do some serious damage. I think the deer made it maybe 30 feet off the road before going down in a heap. Right when I got to the body Gilbert came over the radio asking if the shooting was us, and Abby let him know it indeed was us, and we were okay.
I put one more round into the deer, and gave it a quick gutting to get back. In retrospect, I should’ve waited until I got back, because despite not liking it that much, the organ meats probably would have been good eating, at least for some of us. Ollie might've been able to compost them or something. Oh well. Spilled milk.
I dragged the carcass back to the truck, roped it to the grille as best I could for the drive up the hill, and after getting a “fucking A!” knuckle bump from Blake, we were home in short order. After we pulled in we had a brief powwow talking about the deer, and what exactly to do with it. With all the mouths to feed we decided it was best to not go to the trouble of smoking the meat. We dressed it up into edible portion sizes, and put the rest into the assorted fridges across campus. We figure it’ll keep until it’s all eaten. With all the folks here, that should be just about right for timing.