Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling

by R. S. Merritt

  “We shouldn’t have to buy our way into any of the bases. I handled the logistics for every single one of them. I know what they have and how many people they can support. If you wouldn’t fit, then we wouldn’t be going there. As long as we can get an audience with the man in charge of the base everything will be fine. If not, we’ll have to look at other options.” Jeff replied.

  “We sure feel privileged and everything to be riding around with the only man on the planet who can offer us options. Can you maybe fill us in on what those are?” Amita asked snarkily. To her way of thinking if the government really had their act together, they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. She was having a hard time following along blindly as Jeff told them to trust him. Especially after he’d identified himself as the face of one of those large faceless government bureaucracies. He was the head of a bureaucracy that’d failed to protect the people from this catastrophe to begin with.

  “For security reasons I can’t tell you anything. You can ask me the same question a million times, but my answer isn’t going to change. If there weren’t any issues with security, we could’ve just loaded up the people back at the cemetery into a trailer and brought them along with us. Now we have to go back and collect them after we drop you all off.” Jeff said. He was getting more than a little exasperated. It’d been a really long day and this power play by the two heads of the fancy pants mansions on the beach HOA was grating on his nerves.

  “Do you think you could figure out a way to charge these motorcycles in the truck? Harley was riding his around, so he must’ve figured out some way to charge it.” LeBron jumped into the conversation before Jeff got stuck going another meaningless round.

  “He probably found a house with solar or maybe a Tesla solar charging station. You could trickle charge these things using just a single solar cell if you had to. I can look at it if you have the adapters and cables and everything they use. Assuming the supreme overlord of the bureaucracy which shall not be named is ok with it.” Amita said casting an angry look at Jeff. Jeff faked a smile and gave her a vaguely patronizing thumbs up.

  “Maybe Carl could take a look at the walls in here. It’d be awesome to see if there’s some way we could reinforce them.” Yue said. She was jumping on the bandwagon with LeBron to give these two something useful to focus on. Otherwise, they were just going to keep on rehashing the same arguments all night.

  “What are we reinforcing them for?” Carl asked looking around the trailer. The walls had already been reinforced with extra sheets of metal and two by fours. As if on cue a crawler slammed into the outside of the trailer. Everyone could see the wall ripple where it was struck. No one bothered answering Carl’s question. It was obvious to everyone now why they needed to reinforce the walls.

  With the crawlerz performing their nightly ritual it became too loud in the trailer for them to hold a conversation. Jeff found himself in the odd position of being thankful for the attack on the trailer. The cranked-up nightmares might break down the walls and kill them all but at least he didn’t have to talk to Amita or Carl for the rest of the night. Those two were a lot to deal with. He hoped they’d calm down by dawn. If not, maybe they’d have at least worked out the solutions to the two problems they’d been presented with. He was thankful to Yue and LeBron for giving the two a couple of projects to occupy them. He’d much rather Amita and Carl have something useful to do than have them sit around whining at him all day.

  Falling asleep next to Yue with a crawler lullaby playing in his ears Jeff was oddly content. There was so much more that could go wrong but at least things were moving in the right direction for a change. That contentment didn’t stop him from waking up in the middle of the night screaming and striking out at Yue.

  He’d had a nightmare that a blood covered arm had come through the wall and grabbed him. It took Yue and LeBron a few minutes to get him calmed down. Once he did, he sat back down hurriedly and apologized profusely. He was completely embarrassed even though he knew the same thing happened to the others all the time. A combination of the very real terror of their situation mixed with the psychic terror those things were generating.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that he saw he’d bloodied Yue’s lip and blackened one of her eyes. At least LeBron had seen what happened so no one could call him a woman beater. Yue didn’t seem to give a crap and LeBron thought it was funny once he made sure Yue was ok. Jeff felt horrible about it. He wanted to go loot a Hallmark store. Finding a card for this particular situation may be a stretch but he was willing to give it a try. Maybe a little creative editing from something in the domestic violence section?

  Amita and Carl appeared in front of him like a couple of annoying genies. Jeff hadn’t even had a chance to figure out if anyone had made coffee yet. He was sniffing the air and looking around like a crack addict. If night terrors and an addiction to coffee were the two worst traits her new beau possessed, then Yue felt like was doing pretty good. Gingerly poking at her swollen lip with her pointer finger she thought she may have to make him wear boxing gloves to bed if this became a regular thing. She was glad that LeBron had seen what’d happened. If Drew thought Jeff had slapped her around then Jeff would be in danger of some serious bodily harm. In a world where everyone walked around with automatic weapons hanging off of them things could escalate fast.

  Amita wanted to let them know that charging the bikes was going to be easy as long as the truck was running. If they did it with the truck turned off it’d kill the battery eventually. Carl wanted to hit up a Home Depot or some other hardware store to get metal brackets and more two by fours.

  “What would we have done last night if part of the wall started caving in?” Carl asked a coffee craving distracted Jeff. Picturing that scenario was enough to make Jeff pause and pay attention.

  “Stick a rifle in the hole and hope we had enough ammunition to last all night?” Jeff responded. He’d actually given it some thought. It was hard not to when you were sleeping in a giant coffin with monsters from your nightmares trying to break in the entire night.

  “That’s a great plan if you’re trying to get everybody killed. What I’d like to do is draw up a design to reinforce the insides of these trailers. We should be able to do it without adding too much weight or losing storage space for supplies. I’m assuming fuel efficiency is going to keep getting more and more important as time goes on.” Carl said.

  “Yes please. If you two can write up what you need and give me a copy, we can work on scavenging everything needed the next time we send out a team to loot. Keep in mind we may have to do it without your help. I don’t plan on returning to the place we’re taking you guys to very often. Every time we go there, we risk leading the crawlerz there.” Jeff stood up and started walking towards the smell of recently ground java beans. He left Yue and LeBron to work with Carl and Amita on getting their ideas down on paper.

  Coffee in hand Jeff got on the radio and ordered the first patrol out. The first patrol consisted of Mikey, Drew and a few other Marines from the middle truck in the convoy. They’d clear the area to make sure it was safe to send the drivers to the cabs. Now that surgers were becoming more and more rare the job had become much safer. Like with any task in the new normal complacency was the enemy. Drew and crew kept that in mind every time they hit the dirt. Being able to maintain that ever vigilant mindset was one of the reasons they were still alive when so many weren’t.

  Even with that attitude and the professionalism of the team there were still going to be casualties. This morning proved that sometimes being alive was more a matter of luck than skill. Drew was walking along the side of the third truck in the parking lot with one of the older Marines when there was a sudden blur of motion. A crawler driven mad with rage streaked out from behind the last set of tires and body checked the officer at full speed. The crawler rode the struggling man down the grassy median like an inexperienced surfer riding a body board down the face of a twenty-foot rogue wave.

  B
y the bottom of the median the officers throat was ripped completely out. That was one victim who wasn’t going to be coming back as a surger. Drew was standing at the top of the gentle slope staring down at the blood covered crawler when Mikey trotted over to join him.

  “Should we shoot it?” Mikey asked. The monster was lying there in the early morning sunlight like it was hypnotized. It’s body covered in blood by the severed neck it’d been viciously ripping into seconds before. Shooting it might attract more surgers. Not to mention the gunshot could alert the people Jeff had them dropping in on later that they were coming.

  “Maybe we just beat it to death or stab it? We can’t just leave it there. This is exactly the kind of a problem that could come back and bite us later.” Drew said. His heart had finally stopped beating a mile a minute. It could so easily have been him lying down there with his face slowly becoming more and more pale as his heart pumped out its last bit of blood. He could be the one stuck staring up into the clear blue sky with sightless eyes. His head barely even attached to his body.

  “You’re pretty hard core, aren’t you? Let me go see what we have we can beat this thing to death with. It’s getting pretty bad when they’re so dirty you can’t tell the males from the females anymore.” Mikey said before heading back towards the truck to find some sort of kill stick. Drew stayed on the side of the road with his rifle to his shoulder ready to pull the trigger if the thing down there so much as twitched. He’d seen how lightning fast it could move. He wasn’t planning on taking any chances. He’d pull the trigger and they could deal with the consequences later.

  Mikey showed back up with a wooden canoe paddle and a resolute look on his face. He walked carefully down the embankment before stopping to stand beside the very dead Marine and the androgynous infected. He wound up and began wailing on the crawler’s cranium with the paddle. He whacked away until the lifeless corpse of the crawler was intertwined with that of the nearly headless Marine. A gallon of gas and a match later they felt like they’d done the bare minimum to honor the fallen Marine without having to touch him too much. Drew got on the radio and gave the ‘all clear’ for the drivers to transition with their escorts to the cabs.

  Drew and MIkey climbed into the cab with Harley. Mikey taking the time to let everyone know about the Marine they’d just lost. They offered up a moment of silence for his sacrifice before starting up the big rigs and rolling out of the parking lot. The smoke from the impromptu burial the only funeral marker the Marine was going to get. Once the fire died down, he’d be just another pile of bones at the bottom of a ditch.

  The road they were on began zigzagging around a huge lake as they approached the mountains. Up in the lead truck LeBron stared out at the picturesque body of water. It suddenly dawned on him where they must be going.

  “Which dam are we headed to?” He asked Jeff. Jeff looked back at him with a guilty half-smile playing around on his lips.

  “What are you talking about?” He asked.

  “When you were looking for places to put people preserving the power grid must have been a big part of that. I’m seeing a big lake that I’m thinking is man-made. It’d make sense from a power supply and water supply point of view. A big concrete building would also be a great place to stay relatively safe from the crawlerz.” LeBron said watching Jeff’s face to see if he was hitting the mark.

  “You should never play poker.” Yue commented watching Jeff give everything away with his facial expressions.

  “You’re too smart for your own good. Fontana dam. We should be there in a couple of hours. Assuming the roads are all still in one piece. It’ll be interesting to see if they let us drive up or if they start shooting at us when we get close.” Jeff answered. He didn’t seem overly concerned one way or the other. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it until he got the chance to talk to them.

  Chapter 4: ‘Dammed’ if You Don’t

  The dam was in the middle of a massive forest. They drove down narrow tree lined roads for what felt like forever. The trees slowly closing in on them the closer they got to their destination. It was a sunny, cold day in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Any other time they’d have found the scenery beautiful. The problem was Jeff freaking them all out by staring out the windshield waiting for them to be ambushed. He took every opportunity to remind them that they could be attacked at any time. There was a tiny bit of desperation evident in his voice as he repeatedly used the radio to try and raise the commander of the base.

  When they finally got a response to Jeff’s repeated transmissions it wasn’t the heartfelt welcome they’d been hoping for. The radio crackled to life and a man’s voice informed them that they were approaching a military installation in an unauthorized manner. They were ordered to turn around and go back the way they had come. Jeff responded by telling them who he was and the purpose of them approaching the dam. The man on the radio came back and told him they had no space or supplies for refugees.

  “Fontana actual this is convoy actual we are transporting needed supplies and resources to the dam. Resources include engineering resources to ensure the dam remains in good working order as well as engineers to assist in power redistribution efforts. Resources being transported with their families.” Jeff transmitted.

  Yue liked the way Jeff was spinning it like he was doing the men at the dam a favor. It was a last-ditch effort since they’d already said they wouldn’t take any refugees from a humanitarian standpoint. They’d also danced around accepting that Jeff had the authority he said he had. It hadn’t helped when Jeff couldn’t remember the name of the commander he’d appointed for the base. You lost your credibility when you said you’d been intimately involved in setting up the base but couldn’t remember anyone’s name who’d been stationed there.

  “Do you think that’ll work? Between Amita and Carl I bet they can pull off doing the engineering stuff. We just need to let them know they’re supposed to be able to do it.” Yue said.

  “Convoy actual this is Fontana actual proceed to the gate and put your vehicles in park. We’ll come out to meet and discuss. Any aggressive action from you will be met with overwhelming firepower from us.” That response from the commander of the men responsible for the dam was slightly less discouraging than the previous responses had been.

  “He’s having us stop at a certain point on the road and park there. That’s pretty much him telling us where to go for the ambush. All they’d need to do is deploy some claymores and we’re toast.” Gus commented. That made sense to everyone seated up in the cab. Especially after the pessimistic doom and gloom Jeff had been marinating them in all morning.

  “That’d be too loud. They’re bound to be trying pretty hard to keep the crawlerz from showing up. They’re not going to set off explosives that close to their base.” LeBron said into the silence. They’d find out soon enough which of them was right. Turning a corner, they came to a standard metal gate with a rusty chain and padlock holding it closed. It had an orange sign hanging off it saying the area was off limits to visitors by order of the national park service. Trespassers would either be shot or prosecuted to the full extent of the law. LeBron wondered if they got to choose the option they preferred. He was cool with being prosecuted.

  Nowhere on the sign did it mention having your body ripped apart by hundreds of C4 propelled steel balls. Yue and LeBron both thought it was unlikely that they were being lured into an explosive ambush, but the heightened stress was still palpable. In the front of the cab Jeff and Gus were in full on pucker mode. Jeff was trying to keep his cool. Gus was moving his lips in silent prayer and slouching down as low as he could get in his seat. When the fully armed Marine in the front seat is making deals with god that’s a good time to turn the safeties off.

  A couple of fit looking men showed up at the gate on mountain bikes. Despite the chill in the air both men were dressed casually in shorts and hoodies. Rifles hung loosely from straps across their backs. Other weapons were more than likely conceal
ed under the thick hoodies. The men leaned their expensive looking mountain bikes against the gate and nonchalantly walked over to the truck. Gus and Jeff rolled down the two front windows as the men approached.

  “What’s up with all this crap you’ve got welded onto the front of your rig?” One of the men asked by way of saying hello. The man was staring at the cage of metal rods that was bolted and welded onto the front of the truck.

  “You guys not have cable up here? World’s been overrun by infected killing machines that like jumping through windshields. Not as big a deal back when insurance covered windshield replacements. As a bonus if the crazy people who jump through the window survive, they try to eat you.” Gus answered.

  “This cage actually keeps those things off you? That’s pretty slick.” The other man said. Jeff didn’t bother correcting him. No way in hell would he let himself get caught sitting in in the cage at night. He had zero confidence it would hold if a dozen determined crawlerz sensed an uninfected human hiding out in the cab. It worked great during the day against the occasional group of surgers though.

  “You guys here to open the gate?” Jeff asked after the silence had stretched out an uncomfortably long period of time.