Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling

by R. S. Merritt

  Hearing Gus yelling at him reminded Jim that he was lucky to be alive. He immediately shut up and tried to look as non-threatening as possible. He wanted nothing to do with pissing off the Marine in the front seat again.

  Yue carefully removed the iPad from the bag letting LeBron see it. She wiggled it around to show him that he was a dumbass. Why did he think she’d be looking for a pair of Jeff sized underwear? He grinned back at her to show he’d been kidding. Once her concussion induced befuddlement wore off, she’d be able to keep up with everything better. For right now she just wanted to figure out what kind of secrets Jeff was trying to relay to them. Hopefully he hadn’t been overly obtuse, or she’d have to wait until her hangover like headache went away. Either that or hand the assignment over to LeBron to complete for her. It’d be like high school calculus all over again.

  She had to try twice but her birthdate did indeed turn out to be Jeff’s password. She wasn’t sure if she’d fat fingered it the first time or just flipped the month and day. She wondered why he’d chosen her birthday for his pin. It dawned on her that with his bad memory he might’ve wanted to make sure he could remember her birthday. Having it as a passcode would help it stick in his head. That thought earned another harsh sob from her. She took a deep breath, exhaled and composed herself to scan through the different apps on the device.

  The one that immediately popped out at her was the notes app. It wasn’t like Jeff would’ve been able to connect to the iCloud and pull down his old notes or anything. He would’ve just been using the iPad to take notes on. Now that she thought about it, she remembered him being all secretive about what he was doing on the table when he was standing watch. Not that she’d really cared if he wanted to play Angry Birds while the crawlerz were trying to get in and kill them. There wasn’t too much any of them could do to stop the infected if they did happen to figure out how to bash their way into the trailers.

  Opening up the notes app she saw that Jeff had created individual note files for every state. She started clicking through them. Most of them contained organized lists about supply depots and bases by state. He also had notes for the Atlantic and the Pacific that were filled up with the names of ships she assumed were out at sea still. There were also random ideas scattered throughout the note files.

  In the Virginia entry he’d noted the idea of driving the infected down into the caverns. Then immediately following that he’d written down his idea around the survivors moving into the caverns instead. Finally, he’d circled the fact that they’d shipped tons of MREs to be stored in the naturally cool environment of those caverns. What he’d failed to note was the exact location of the caverns he was talking about. One of the bullet points said ‘Luray’ with a question mark to indicate he wasn’t sure how to spell it.

  Yue was amused at the fact the Jeff used bullet points in his own private notes. She saved that tidbit up to tease him about when she saw him again. She fought back tears as she closed down the Virginia file and began looking at the Wyoming entry. Jeff hadn’t written much in the Wyoming one, so she went back to the South Carolina entry. Most of that file was around the warehouse they’d just been chased out of. There was a street address in the entry with the words ‘ammo dump’ typed in underneath the address. That sounded promising.

  “Anything good?” The question jolted Yue out of the little focus bubble she’d been in. For a minute there she’d been able to lose herself in his notes and almost forget that Jeff wasn’t in the car with them. He was sitting helplessly in the back of a Humvee with a black bag over his head. The killers surrounding him in the car dispassionately transporting him back to their secret lair to torture and kill.

  “Yeah. A lot actually.” Yue answered LeBron. She handed him the iPad with the notes application open so he could see all the different files in there. LeBron lost himself in studying the notes Jeff had created. Occasionally he’d ask a question out loud and either Yue or Gus would try to answer it. One of the times he asked neither of them knew the answer and Jim was able to supply it. To his credit he supplied the answer and then then shut right back up.

  “It looks like there’s places in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida we could try hitting up.” LeBron said after he’d sorted through all of Jeff’s notes. Yue had been mildly annoyed that LeBron had started his own set of notes to capture the information from Jeff’s notes. Mostly because she felt like the iPad was her link to Jeff. She had no doubt LeBron was the best one of them to sort through the data Jeff had left and come up with a plan.

  “Where are we headed anyway?” Yue asked Gus.

  “We’re going back to that truck stop we spent the night at before on the way to the dam. We didn’t get a chance to fill up our tanks back at the warehouse. Mikey is hoping we can siphon some diesel out of the trucks we saw parked down in the lot last time.” Gus answered.

  Yue nodded. That made sense. Once they got the tanks filled up, they could figure out their next steps. Worse case if the place was a bust, they still had plenty of diesel in the red gas containers in the back. Now that they had Jeff’s notes they might even have someplace to go after they filled up. She decided to leave all that up to Gus and LeBron for now. Her head was pounding, and she was emotionally drained. She lay back in the sleeper and put her head down on the one clean pillow she could find. The fluffy little miracle had avoided most of the puke and blood that’d hosed down the back of the cab recently.

  Chapter 16: Riding the Avalanche

  “Take his hood off for a second.” O’Donnell ordered. The soldier sitting next to Jeff in the back seat reached over and tugged on the rope holding the black bag around Jeff’s neck. He pulled the bag over Jeff’s head. A rattled looking Jeff looked around wildly. His eyes wide with fear. He wasn’t sure if they were pulling the bag off to kill or torture him or what. He hoped it was just time to eat.

  “When’s that girl’s birthday?” O’Donnell asked. He was closely studying Jeff’s face. Jeff registered confusion then surprise. Then he glanced to the side and O’Donnell could see he was trying to think up the best way to answer the question. In other words, he’d been lying earlier.

  “It’s sometime this week. She’s just one of the girls we picked up. We were trying to figure out how to make her a cake when we saw you guys in the parking lot.” Jeff finally answered. He seriously needed to work on his poker face.

  “Put the bag back on him.” O’Donnell said. He knew now what’d been bothering him now. The one thing he couldn’t let the refugees ride away with was any sort of data around where all of the depots were. Jeff would’ve known not to fill up a spiral notebook with all of his secrets. An iPad or a laptop or something was a different story though.

  O’Donnell checked his watch. He’d noted when the trucks had rolled out. He’d really hoped to avoid having to do this, but he didn’t see any way around it. If those yahoos started showing up at all the hidden supply caches it wouldn’t take a genius to trace it back to him letting them go. He wasn’t going to let his family suffer for his mistake. He gave the order to his men to mount up. A few minutes later they fishtailed the Humvees out of the field in hot pursuit of the big rigs.

  A hundred miles away in a massive truck stop parking lot Drew and Mikey were working on the best way to siphon diesel out of the trucks parked there. They’d found a handful that still had plenty of fuel in their tanks. A lot of them were down to fumes where they’d either already been siphoned or the driver had burned up all the fuel by leaving the engine running. The broken glass and blood-stained concrete telling the story of what’d played out in more than a few of the trucks. The truckers being some of the last people in the country still working when the infected swept in. They’d been getting paid the big bucks to move supplies around right up until the end.

  Determined to get every drop of diesel possible Mikey topped off their own tanks with the canisters they had in the back. Once their tanks were full then they filled those cannisters back up again. Using a hose and t
he power of their lungs they were soon down to just three trucks left with full tanks. They were completely out of cannisters to fill up though. They didn’t want to go in the store and risk being attacked by whatever may have taken up residence. They’d already heard something moving in the sleeper section of one of the trucks they’d investigated. They were giving that one a very wide berth for now.

  “What about checking the trailers?” Drew asked. Mikey wanted to smack himself in the head. Why the hell were they not checking the trailers?

  “I’ll grab the loppers. These things could be filled with all kinds of goodies.” Mikey said in an excited voice. He was envisioning a trailer filled with MREs or bottled water or maybe even toilet paper!

  The backs of their trailers were opened to let in some fresh air. All of the occupants knew they needed to stay quiet so as not to attract any unwanted attention. To check all of the trailers and then quickly transport anything they found they were going to need all hands-on deck.

  Mikey recruited a couple of teenage girls to climb up the sides of their trailer and sit on top as lookouts. One of them was Lisa. She smiled down at Drew and gave him a quick wave from the top of the trailer.

  “I don’t understand how everybody is hooking up around here except me.” Mikey said poking Drew in the side as he walked by. Drew started to joke back with Mikey then realized Lisa’s dad had heard the hooking up comment. The father of his love interest was once again staring daggers at him.

  “I’m not getting any love either if it makes you feel any better.” Gus said. He had disappeared into the truck and reappeared with three sets of the big loppers. They were useful for getting through locked gates, into locked sheds and breaking into the backs of trucks. They were an apocalyptic necessity item.

  “Yeah, but you’re ugly. You probably weren’t getting any before the crawlerz showed up.” Mikey responded grabbing a set of the cutters from Gus.

  The first truck took two of them pressing on either side of the lopper to severe the heavy-duty padlock holding it closed. Once they’d finally managed to get the doors opened, they were less than impressed to find the thing was loaded down with pallets of building material and blankets. Once Mikey was done tossing out screw jokes, they loaded some of the blankets onto their truck and moved on.

  Gus and LeBron had opened up the trailer next to them. It was filled with boxes of dry goods. They quickly put together a line to move the boxes over to their own truck. LeBron was hoping everyone on board really liked macaroni and cheese. If so, they were in for a delightful few months. The crew with the third set of loppers had opened up a trailer that was filled with items that turned out to belong in the freezer section. Without power the meat had all rotted. An invisible wall of stench hit them hard enough to drive one woman to her knees dry heaving. They quickly shut that door and moved on to the next truck.

  “There are cars coming!” Lisa yelled down. All work immediately stopped.

  “How many?” Drew yelled up to her. She squinted for a second before replying there were two.

  “Can we fight them?” LeBron asked Mikey. It had to be the Delta guys coming after them. They’d all hoped the men had been honest when they’d said they’d let them go. They’d hoped that while at the same time pushing the big trucks as fast as they’d go. They‘d wanted to load up on supplies and gas and get down the road as far away from those deadly men as possible.

  “We can try.” Mikey answered doubtfully.

  “Everybody in the trucks! Leave the back doors open! Best shooters near the back of the trailer. Hide the kids towards the front. Move now!” Gus yelled. He turned and ran towards the front of the truck while everyone else dropped what they were doing to jump in the back. Lisa and the other lookout scrambled down from the tops of the trailers.

  “Plan?” Mikey asked Gus before he’d climbed up into his seat.

  “More of an idea really. We drive kind of slow down the road right next to one another so the Humvees can’t get past us. We leave the back doors open. The guys in the back are pelting the windows of the Humvees with rounds. Hopefully it makes them back off. If not, then maybe we get lucky and kill them. Just don’t let them get around us cause then we’re seriously screwed.” Gus answered.

  “We’re all going to die.” Mikey told Drew when he got into the cab with him. On the little walkie he heard Gus telling the people in the trailers what to do.

  “It’s all good. We’ve got a pharmacist leading a bunch of white collars against a group of pissed off elite Delta soldiers. We’ve also only got another hour or two of daylight left.” Drew drawled out.

  With a lurching jerk Mikey pulled them out of the parking lot. Gus followed him out then instead of getting behind him like normal he pulled up right beside him. Riding side by side like that they blocked off pretty much the entire road. There was room to get by them on the shoulders but with the snow it’d be pretty risky. You never knew what the snow was hiding.

  Drew was leaning out his window with his rifle ready to go. That wasn’t going to be super useful unless the Delta team tried to drive in between the two trucks. That didn’t seem likely, but you never knew. Drew was hoping he’d be able to take some shots once they got moving. He knew that himself, LeBron, Yue and the two Marines were probably the best shooters in the whole group. Somehow their best shooters had all ended up in places they wouldn’t be able to shoot from. Drew was kicking himself for not hopping in the back of the trailer with the others. They could’ve sent some of the little kids up to shelter in the cab.

  Drew relayed his concerns to Mikey. They talked about it while Mikey stared in the side mirror waiting for his first glimpse of the enemy. The men in the back had reported they were in position. If the Delta didn’t show up pretty soon, they were thinking about stopping so Drew could swap positions with some of the kids. Assuming nothing happened to screw up their visibility they should be able to see the Humvees coming at a reasonable distance. It was a cold, dreary dark day. The big grey clouds overhead making it seem later than it really was.

  “They’re coming.” The simple announcement sent chills up Drew’s spine. In the truck next to them LeBron looked over to signal they’d received the message as well. His face was somber and serious. He hoped he was doing a good job of hiding the fear running rampant through him.

  “Do we just have them shoot the windows out?” Drew asked Mikey. He was looking between the two trucks to try and catch a glimpse of the enemy.

  “That’s the idea. On those up armored Humvees the glass is the only real weak spot. We don’t have rockets or anything. Those would be a really nice to have right now. If those are the expensive up armored ones we’re screwed. Those things can keep right on going after you hit them with an RPG. If they’re the cheaper ones we might survive. Tell them to toss some grenades and see if that slows the bastards down.” Mikey said. He quickly added that Drew may have to walk them through the process of how to toss the grenades. Otherwise, the Delta guys would pull the pins out and throw them back at them.

  “The windows on them are bullet proof then? How about the tires?” Drew asked trying to think of someway they could win this fight.

  “Nothing is bullet proof. They’re just very bullet resistant. The really nice up armored ones might as well be bullet proof though. It’s like the difference between a twenty-dollar Timex being water resistant or a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex Submariner being waterproof. The tires are made out of Kevlar and ride like they have fix a flat permanently being injected into them.” Mikey answered.

  Drew forgot to ask Mikey how he knew about ten-thousand-dollar Rolexes when the first grenade went off behind them. The walkie immediately squawking to life to let them know the man who’d thrown it had waited too long. It’d blown up in the air about twenty feet behind the truck and peppered half their own people with shrapnel. The panic and fear in the voice of the man transmitting was unmistakable. Against the unflappable half dozen professional killers chasing them they were doomed.


  The snow started coming down harder. Looking out the open trailer doors Tom noted it was covering up the Humvees windshield making it harder for them to drive. With a hole in his hand from a flying piece of red-hot shrapnel Tom grabbed a box of macaroni and cheese and tossed it at the Humvee. It smashed into the windshield and flew off. Undeterred Tom kept slinging stuff out until a blanket actually covered the whole windshield. The Humvee slowed and pulled off to the side. The SUV on steroids quickly disappearing in the swirling snowstorm that’d crept up on them.

  In the Humvee the driver told the passenger to jump out and pull the blanket off. The special forces operator hastened to comply. O’Donnell pulled over as well. His passenger hopped out quickly to put some bullets downrange. The expert sniper stood tall with a heavy barreled AR-15 snapping off shot after shot. He put rounds into the center of the red brake lights until the trucks disappeared into the blizzard. He might not hit anybody but hopefully it’d discourage the blanket throwing party.

  Two bullets slamming into the window right beside his head surprised O’Donnell enough for him to jump halfway into the passenger seat. The heavy-duty bullet proof glass was pretty solid but when struck at the right angle it’d shatter. Having two bullets hit right there was enough to make most men’s knees turn to water. The captain looked over and saw that it was his own man who’d fired the shots.