Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

Freya remained quiet as Nate and I discussed this, admitting to me later that she felt a bit useless as she couldn’t contribute. I reassured her that her work here was just as important and all the inventory she was doing on the mass of spreadsheets on this laptop was vital. We have to know exactly what we have and how much of it. Just because she’s no fighter doesn’t lessen her value in any way. When Nate and I returned, she took some of the stuff we brought back and made tasty-as-hell pasta bake with canned tuna, canned vegetables, and covered in cheese that was still in date.

I’m going to miss cheese so much when it’s gone. My heart breaks at the thought of no dairy in my life.

Keeping those home fires burning is every bit as important as me and Papa Reaper shooting and kicking the bad things. She just wants to feel like she’s contributing, and I assured her she does, not least because I have a friend to return to that isn’t a fifty-something Terminator. At the moment, Freya is mega-important to my mental health. Her and Particles are my tribe. Well, and Nate too obviously, but he’s like our grumpy dad. Freya’s my sister from another mister.

Plus, I reminded her, that I probably wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t done her commando strike on Theo as he tried to eat my face. She does not lack contribution.

Well, I doubt we’ll be doing anything today, so I’m going to help Freya with the inventory while Nate works out the stages of his master plan. I fucking hate inventory like I’ve said, but it’s a good opportunity to do some girly bonding with my home girl.

July 31st, 2010

BORED!

I’m so fucking bored.

Actually, the correct description would be I’m bored of waiting. I know Nate said we had to plan and do things right, but Jesus, this fucker is slower than a turtle swimming in peanut butter.

Stupid similes aside, I’m getting impatient. I just want to be doing something. Freya and I have counted everything and no, I’m not recording it here for posterity because that shit is boring. Suffice to say, we’ve got a fat haul of good loot and it’s all checked off. Now, I need to do something productive with my time, even if that’s to just go and find a console and some games so I can Mario Kart my days away while I’m waiting. Fucking love that game.

Ooh, hang on. Papa Reaper wants a word. Be right back.

Finally! Something to do!

Recon and acquisition. Nate’s two biggest requirements before we even consider liberation are communications and hardware. Comms so we can keep in touch when doing recon, and he’s adamant that he’s not doing anything with shotguns and limited pistol ammo. He wants real hardware, preferably a scoped rifle.

New bombshell, Nate is a trained sniper. Of course he fucking is. Next he’ll be a demolitions expert, or possibly even trained in the construction of a thermonuclear warhead if we can rustle up some weapons grade uranium and plutonium. Pretty sure he’s probably close to finding a cure for cancer.

I challenged him on it and all he said was that, “Men in my unit needed to cover a number of disciplines for operations behind enemy lines, which is what this will be.”

If that isn’t black ops speak, I don’t know what is. I fucking knew it.

Anyway, what we need are walkies, with a secure channel if possible, and some more hardware. Nate wants to hit a cop shop to see if there’s anything left there. That means going into town, which is itself a risk, seeing as how Bancroft will have a major boner for our messy deaths. Further through town there’s a big electronics store on a small retail park, so as a backup we might be able to get something basic there as a fall back.

Today, I also watched Nate make some homemade smoke bombs, and I was fascinated. Asking why, Nate again shows his super-forward thinking.

“We’re massively outnumbered and if we’re ever pinned down under fire, we can use these to cover a potential escape.”

I shrugged, but watched him do it anyway, fascinated. I like learning what he has to teach. Powdered sugar, baking soda, potassium nitrate (which is apparently used for fertilisers and there was a tub of it on one of the nearby farms), and newspaper. He made his mix of three parts pot-nitrate, two parts sugar, added hot water, added baking soda, and mixed it all up until it was dissolved and made a dirty looking liquid. Pouring it all into a big plastic box from the kitchen, he then separated the sheets of a newspaper and started laying them in, one at a time, soaking everything up. When the liquid was all soaked up, he hung them out to dry outside. Once dry, he rolled the newspaper sheets into a single tight roll, tying it all up with quick rings of duct tape.

Then the clever bastard made a couple of fuses, getting some boxes of matches and grinding all the sulphuric heads off with a small pair of pliers into the tray, taking a couple of small plastic straws—the thinnest he could find—off some juice boxes we’d brought back on one of our supply runs and scooping up that mixed flammable dust into them and packing it tight. Sealing off the bottom and the top of his new makeshift fuses by wrapping it in a tiny bit of shrink wrap, voila. Fuse just jammed into the centre of the tightly packed new, dried, smoke bomb, and they were ready to go. Honestly, I was pretty amazed. Haven’t seen one on the go yet, so I’ve no idea if it will actually work, but hey, when has the old dog ever been wrong?

I hate writing details. This is getting like a fucking textbook. I’m