“Where’s Harley?” One of the men asked.
“We told him when he came with us that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave once he knew the location of the base. He’s going to be staying there and focusing on his new family.” Jeff said smoothly. Drew nodded along with Jeff’s story. He liked how Jeff was dancing around the truth. He’d just skipped some of the minor details like the woman getting killed and Harley’s failed attempt to leave.
“Harley said he’d come back.” The man said.
“He wasn’t authorized to leave the base. The location of these places is a secret. Only people authorized to know the locations are allowed to leave once they get there.” Jeff explained for what felt like the hundredth time.
“That kid you’re with doesn’t look like a special forces type. He was allowed to leave?” The man asked indicating Drew. Jeff realized his error too late in bringing Drew with him to talk to these people. It’d be hard to convince them Drew was a trusted agent of the government. Luckily, he hadn’t pulled LeBron out of the truck to come down with him as well. His obvious youthfulness would’ve really screwed them over. He couldn’t give himself credit for not bringing him though. He’d only left him behind so he could watch over Yue. This meeting was going downhill fast.
“He’s part of the team I’m working with to help out groups of survivors like yours. We’re here to transport you to somewhere you can begin to rebuild. A place with supplies and shelter for you and your families. It’s no guarantee of a better life but it’s bound to be better than squatting in a graveyard until you starve to death.” Jeff said.
“Pretty words. Where do you plan on taking us?” The man asked. He wasn’t one to be easily convinced. He was the type who’d check every tooth in the gift horse’s mouth.
Jeff sighed in frustration. It didn’t help that he didn’t know for sure he actually had anywhere to take them. All of the bases he’d coordinated getting setup were connected via some sort of communications hub. They all had some sort of power source. It was very possible they’d all been locked down by the President with specific orders not to take in any refugees. Those had been the standing orders since the beginning of all of this anyway. Orders that Jeff had personally had a hand in writing.
Orders that were supposed to be updated after the initial wave of the infection swept over the country. The men in charge of the depots were supposed to begin distributing the supplies to the refugees. That’d all been starting when the previous President had died. Based on the conversation Jeff had with their newly sworn in commander in chief the survival of the refugees was no longer a primary objective. The survival of the President and his cronies was now the primary objective. He hadn’t phrased it that way, but the intent had been clear. The supplies the government had secured were for people the President deemed critical. Government resources were absolutely not to be wasted on the riff raff trying to survive out in the open.
“Honestly I’m not supposed to tell you and again there’s a very legitimate reason for that.” Jeff said starting to get a little exasperated. Trying to help these idiots was exhausting.
“Does it have anything to do with drugging us and stealing our women?” The man asked. His gun snapped up as did the others in his little group. Drew and Jeff both took a step backwards. Drew had his pistol in his hand. He was aiming it in the general direction of the men aiming weapons at them. Jeff had let his rifle hang off the bandolier and was holding his hands up peacefully.
“We have no intention of drugging you and taking your women.” He said firmly. His heart was sinking though. Harley must’ve let them know what’d happened to them when they rolled up into the warehouse. Based on the circumstances Jeff highly doubted these guys were going to climb into the back of a truck with their families now. At least not with the men from the government who they thought planned on making slaves out of the men and using the women to breed a new generation. The optics were pretty bad.
“Well, we have no intention of going with you or of letting you drive out of here with trucks full of supplies. Not when we have women and children who are starving.” The man said.
“If you don’t want to come with us then we’ll leave you with all we can spare. We really don’t have that much with us right now. This was supposed to be a supply run.” Jeff answered. He was fine with leaving these people supplies. He knew how to find more. It may be inconvenient, but it was the right thing to do. He couldn’t really blame them for not trusting him.
“Hey Jeff! There’s a couple of pissed off looking women sneaking around over here. They’re aiming rifles at me!” Mikey had slid over to the passenger side of the lead truck to yell out the window to Jeff.
“Back here too!” Gus yelled out of the window in his truck. He was parked right behind Mikey on the narrow cemetery road.
“We’re willing to give you most of the supplies we have in the truck.” Jeff said. He was rapidly losing his patience with these people. He wasn’t a violent man but the idea of scattering these morons with some gunplay was starting to sound very appealing.
“How about you give us all the supplies in the truck and then maybe we let you walk away. The man stepped forward and shoved his rifle barrel in Jeff’s chest. Jeff clutched at his chest where he’d been poked and held up both hands.
“Nobody shoots! We’re not trying to kill these people!” Jeff looked up at the incredulous face of the man standing in front of him. He looked like he was ready to swing the barrel of the expensive looking hunting rifle at him again. He didn’t even notice Drew had his pistol aimed at his head. The other men in the group alternating between aiming at Jeff and Drew. In between wondering if they should shoot or not, they were all nervously glancing up towards the truck. Mikey had scooted over and had his M-16 pointed down at them.
“You said you were going on a supply run right?” The leader asked Jeff.
“Yep.” Jeff muttered. He’d gotten the wind knocked out of him when he was hit in the chest. He had a sinking feeling as to where this guy was going with his question.
“Excellent. You’re taking us with you for the supply run piece. We’d like to skip the whole date rape drug dance afterwards though if that’s ok with you.” The guy said it like he’d just won some kind of bet. Jeff sighed. All that fighting and these scumbags were just going to do what he’d asked them to do in the first place? Really?
Chapter 13: That Whole Robin Hood Rebellion Thing
No one thought it’d be a good idea to roll up on the warehouse in the dark. The refugees knew that the base they were headed to had been completely overrun. The group had taken the information in stride. The man in charge of the ragtag group of refugees shook his head and lamented that nothing was easy anymore. The scraggly leader turned out to be a pharmacist. Between his medical knowledge and his skill with a gun he’d wound up the leader of the small group when Harley had left.
His skills with a weapon didn’t come from any sort of military or law enforcement background. He’d grown up in a house where the different hunting seasons were more important than secondary holidays like Christmas. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed being dragged into duck blinds at butt early or sitting in deer stands in the cold until his legs felt like they were going to fall off. That youthful experience had given him skills that were super useful in this new normal though. He owed his survival more to those childhood hunting trips than he did to the college education that his family had spent the equivalent of a nice house in the suburbs on.
His family had pictured him graduating as some sort of surgeon. His inclinations and abilities had taken him down a different path. Where they’d seen him as Dr. Thomas Gideon the neurosurgeon, he’d been more than happy to become Tom the pharmacist. He learned to live with the constant look of disappointment from his parents whenever they came around. His deep understanding of drugs was going to be useful until the drugs eventually ran out. While everyone else worried about clean water and ammunition he worried about polio or smallpox wiping out the
next generation. Assuming they were somehow able to best the millions of crawlerz that were coming for them.
“We’re not going anywhere tonight so how about we sleep in our trailers and you sleep in your spot. Unless you’d rather hop up in a trailer for the night?” Jeff asked. Tom gathered his men together for a quick pow wow to discuss.
“We’ll split up and put people in both trailers if that’s alright with you. We can transfer everything over tomorrow before we head out.” Tom said.
The next hour was spent hurriedly throwing together the sleeping arrangements. Tom forgot he was supposed hate them when they started pulling Yue out. He immediately went into doctor mode. After they’d gotten her comfortable in the trailer Tom handed her a couple of Ibuprofen for the headache. There wasn’t much more they could do without an MRI machine. He joked with her that they’d also have to find a guy who knew how to operate an MRI machine. Then he told her to get some rest. He made LeBron promise to keep an eye on her and let him know if anything seemed off about her.
Jeff was thankful for the second opinion on Yue. He eyed the pharmacist with a great deal of grudging respect. There was also some avarice in his eyes. People with medical training were hugely valuable in a world where you could die from pretty much anything. None of them could tell appendicitis from irritable bowel syndrome. They were all malnourished and routinely dealing with different sicknesses from eating or drinking something that should’ve been tossed. Other than Twinkies pretty much everything was expired now. That’s why MREs were so awesome. They’d last five years easy if you didn’t leave them out in the blazing sun. Ten years wasn’t too much of a stretch for the flattened packets of beef flavored goodness.
The nightly crawler assault began promptly at sundown. With a dozen refugees in each trailer, it was pretty cozy. The body heat from everyone helped to keep the temperature in the trailers much more comfortable. The little Coleman stoves they’d been using as heaters were barely even needed. That was a good thing since Jeff was pretty sure it wasn’t healthy to use them in an enclosed space. He had to willfully disregard the big red warning sticker on the back of the stove every time he turned it on.
Other than a few startled screams when the first crawlerz rammed the sides of the trailer the refugees were all good about keeping quiet. From what Harley had told them this group was all that was left of a group that’d originally numbered over a hundred. It spoke well to their ability to do what it took to survive. Darwinism was alive and well in the apocalypse.
The wave of fear hit LeBron harder than it had up in the mountains. He didn’t know if it was because there were more crawlerz or if they were stronger. He could tell by looking around that the others were feeling it as well. Gus had his head buried inside his sleeping bag pretending to sleep. The looks on the faces of most the people were similar to the look of a death row inmate seconds before being injected. The resigned look of the hopeless.
LeBron knew how they felt. Those psychic tendrils slipping into his mind were whispering that his death was coming soon. He may be able to outlast some of the others wandering around, but his time would come soon enough. There was no escape. He’d eventually be ripped apart and infected like the rest. Trying to ignore the murderous mantra of madness he was being force fed he joined Gus in burying his head and pretending to sleep. Pretty soon there was only the two sentries standing a hushed watch over the sleeping bodies scattered around on the dirty floor.
There were two sentries because neither group trusted the other. Jeff had taken the first watch since he wanted to keep an eye on Yue. Tom was sitting on a folding chair on the other side of the truck with a shotgun in his lap staring down the length of the trailer at Jeff. Every time one of the crawlerz slammed into the trailer close to Tom he flinched. Jeff didn’t think any less of the pharmacist for showing the exact right amount of fear when bloodthirsty monsters from the deepest parts of hell are slamming into a paper-thin layer of steel right by your head. Especially when every blow seemed to warp the trailer wall a little bit more. As impossible as it seemed the demons may actually make it inside.
The crawlerz didn’t make it in that night. The next morning Jeff was lying on the floor of the trailer staring out at the muddy snow outside. Like every other morning he was looking through the small opening where the doors met the trailer. LeBron and Gus were standing behind him drinking coffee and yawning. Tom walked over to see what they were up to.
“You guys should think about drilling peepholes.” Tom said after figuring out what they were doing.
“Boom! Thank you!” Gus said with a big grin.
“We’ve talked about the issues with that idea.” A grumpy sounding Jeff said from the floor.
“I still say the reward outweighs the risk.” LeBron said thinking of the heart stopping moment that was mere minutes away. It was what happened every morning. At some point you had to open the doors and hope nothing was standing out there waiting to kill you. There was also the Hungry Hippo action like Yue had been a victim of the day before. She was incalculably lucky to have only ended up with a concussion after being dragged under a trailer by that brute.
“It’s the worst possible way to start the day.” Gus echoed LeBron’s sentiment. He was helping Jeff lever out the first couple of poles they used to secure the doors.
“You don’t like a little sheer terror mixed in with your corn flakes?” Yue asked. She’d wandered over to watch the festivities. More than likely the smell of coffee had lured her out of her sleeping bag. Jeff, Gus and LeBron all told her to get back in bed at the same time. She laughed which made her snort out some of her coffee.
“If she can stand up without being too dizzy that’s a pretty good sign. You want us to get the kids in the back before you open that up? We can get our guys down here to help out. I mean unless you feel comfortable just flinging the doors open and hoping for the best?” Tom asked. Jeff gritted his teeth together. The diminutive pharmacist was starting to get on his nerves. A lot. He had to remind himself the man was medically trained and could be a huge asset moving forward. No matter how nice it might feel to smack him around some he had to be political about it.
Five minutes later they had a couple of extra guys waiting on Gus and Jeff to fling the doors open. It was just as anticlimactic as they’d all been hoping for. The open doors revealing the graveyard covered in well trampled snow. The crawlerz had dug up the ground so much around the truck that it was mostly mud now. Gus and Jeff took running leaps off the back of the truck. They hit the ground and ran a few more steps before spinning around to kill anything that came out from under the truck.
LeBron was standing on the edge of the trailer with his rifle pointed straight down. He was in charge of killing anything that came darting out from beneath the trailer. None of them wanted to relive the events of the day before. Fighting crawlerz in the shadows underneath a trailer was something you really only needed to experience once. There was no way they’d get lucky enough to live through something like that again. There must’ve been a patch of four-leaf clovers under all that snow.
Tom and the rest of his crew carefully followed the process Jeff had provided to exit the trailer. A few of the refugees nodded approvingly at the overabundance of caution being displayed. Taking chances got people killed. Tom’s crew were alive in part because they tried hard to learn everything they could. Learning from other's mistakes was a lot less painful than making them yourself.
LeBron joined Drew and Jeff down on the ground. They motioned for the refugees to stay where they were and cover the back of the trailer. Jeff poked LeBron in the shoulder to get his attention. He pointed to a crumpled body on the side of the trailer. A middle-aged woman lay frozen in the snow with her spine poking out the side of her bloody neck. She was part of the overnight crew responsible for the fresh, bloody dents on the side of the trailer. Smashing your body at full speed repetitively into a tractor trailer all night long wasn’t healthy. Hopefully no one did a PSA encouraging the crawlerz to s
tart wearing helmets. The more of them that killed themselves the better.
The three of them squelched through the muddy remains of the snow working their way towards the front of the truck. They were careful to keep plenty of open space between themselves and the underbelly of the trailer. Weapons trained on the shadowy gap under the trailer they almost missed a suspicious mound of snow up against a large oak tree directly in their path. Gus happened to notice it before LeBron could get close to it. He quietly pointed it out. LeBron let out a deep breath and gave the mound a wide berth. They were all justifiably paranoid about anything out of the norm.
Circling around to the front of the truck they spotted Drew and Mikey standing in the open trailer with their backs against opposite walls. They’d been in radio contact with Jeff the entire time. They’d waited to open the doors until Jeff had sent them the ‘all clear’. Drew had a big grin on his face. He hadn’t had to patrol the outside of the trailers first thing in the morning for once. LeBron suspected the grin was more likely due to the pretty girl in camo holding an AK-47 who was leaning against the wall next to Drew.
Drew and Mikey joined them, and they cleared the entire area. They made sure to tell the people in Tom’s group all of the places they should avoid. Leaving the children in the trailers with a few armed refugees to protect them they loaded up all the supplies still remaining in the crypt. That chore didn’t take long at all. The group had been on the verge of running out of food when Jeff and crew returned for them.
Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling Page 11