Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling

by R. S. Merritt

  A crawler ripped a chunk of the wall out near the front of the trailer and forced its way through. Gus and Tom were near that section. They rushed over and emptied their magazines into the crawlerz fighting each other to squirm through the jagged hole. One of the pistol wielding mothers stepped in when Gus yelled that he needed to reload. Tom kept slamming slugs into the skulls of the crawlerz coming through the rapidly expanding hole in the wall.

  Yue lost track of what was going on at that end of the trailer when a four-by-four plate of buckling sheet metal fell off the wall directly in front of her and LeBron. They stepped forward sending a steady stream of lead into the faces of the crawlerz trying to get in through the gaping hole. The silent crawlerz were the stuff of nightmares. They had no fear of dying. No sense of pain and absolutely no mercy for the normal humans they were intent on devouring. Their hallucinogen controlled brains sending constant spurts of adrenaline into their systems to drive them forward.

  One of the crawlerz got a grip on LeBron’s leg and yanked him off balance. Yue flipped her rifle around to aim it at the monster attacking her little brother. She pulled the trigger with the barrel an inch from its forehead. It was like somebody put a firecracker inside a watermelon that also had a bunch of gray stuff in it. She stopped pulling the trigger when Lebron regained his balance and jerked his foot back. The neck of the crawler that’d grabbed him now ended in a bloody stump. She’d completely obliterated its head.

  Sliding in a fresh magazine she turned to continue battling the infected mob. They kept surging forward shoving the ones in front through holes in the side of the truck that were too small for them to fit through. When Yue was little her mom had bought her some of those playdough toy sets where you put in the playdough and squeeze it through different sized holes to make different shapes. The crawlers being forced through some of these gaps were starting to look like that. She watched one who trying to slide through get forced into the hole at an awkward angle causing both of its eyes to pop out. On another one the nose and ears were ripped off in a translucent sheet of bloody skin.

  Even with parts of their bodies being shaved off the crawlerz kept coming. They were bleeding from a dozen bullet wounds on top of whatever damage they’d sustained squeezing in. They kept coming. Nothing was stopping them. The holes in the wall of the truck kept getting bigger from the immense pressure of the crawlerz fighting their way in. Two by fours were cracking and sheet metal was bending. Brackets and bolts were popping out of the walls left and right.

  A low roar started to come from the crawlerz. It was a rumble as of distant thunder. Yue wasn’t sure at first if she was hearing it or if it was all in her head. She didn’t let it stop her from shooting anything that moved along the wall in front of her. The floor was two inches deep in blood already. She knew some of it had to be sloshing behind them onto the helpless wounded laid out on the floor. If a single crawler got past them it’d be all over. The wounded would be attacked and turned. The bite would put them into a state where they no longer cared about the pain from their wounds. Crawler saliva was the key to a lifelong high. Not that they’d get to enjoy it with all of the insanity and cannibalism and everything.

  Yue’s rifle jammed. Dancing back a few steps she grabbed a spare off a box. They’d laid out extra weapons every few feet for just this eventuality. There was plenty of spares since everyone kept dying. The building supplies had mostly been in the truck they’d lost that morning. Extra wood and a few bags of screws would’ve been a nice thing to have when they noticed the walls were full of holes. Yue picked up the shot gun and raised it to her shoulder. She was just in time to see a crawler gobbling on the neck of one of the defenders. They were losing.

  The wounded had all been moved to the back of the trailer. If they had to fall back at least they’d have their backs to a set of doors instead of being cornered. It gave them options. That loss of ground was happening now. The holes up front had allowed the crawlerz to rip off almost the entire front section of the wall on the right side of the trailer. The only other big hole was the one Yue and LeBron were constantly banging bullets through. There might as well be a flashing neon sign telling them they were all going to die.

  A crawler came out of nowhere and knocked Yue to the ground. She dropped her shotgun and wrapped her hands around its neck. She was pushing like crazy to keep the snapping teeth away from her. A shaky hand with a pistol in it appeared out of nowhere. The hand positioned the gun at an angle such that the bullet wouldn’t hit Yue. The gun coughed a couple of times and the crawler collapsed to the blood soaked floor.

  Yue scrambled to the side to collect her shotgun out of the blood puddle. While she did that, she was glancing around to see who’d saved her. A very groggy looking Drew smiled at her then fell backwards into the lap of a man sitting up with a pistol in each hand. Yue recognized the man sitting down as the one she’d been helping with the broken leg earlier. She hoped Drew hadn’t landed on the bone that was still sticking out of the man’s leg.

  “We’re losing!” Gus shouted into her face. He’d been walking steadily backwards blasting away at the monsters. He was shooting as fast as he could aim and pull the trigger. It was pretty much impossible to miss at this point.

  Yue didn’t know how to answer that. All they could do now was shoot every bullet they had then switch to knives. She already knew they were losing. They’d known if this happened that they were screwed. As long as she was alive those things weren’t going to be gnawing on the children behind her though. She screamed out a challenge and jumped back into the fray. On either side of her Gus and LeBron fought like madmen to stay abreast of her.

  They pressed forward until the trailer was once again devoid of crawlerz. It was a lull in the battle. The eye in a deadly storm. The trailer was a death trap. They needed to get out. They at least needed to get the children out. Yue spun around to see the blood-spattered refugees from the cemetery staring at the three of them like they were some sort of pagan gods. Yue knew they’d mowed down a ton of the enemy in the heat of battle. She hadn’t realized how truly spectacularly they’d fought until she saw it reflected back at her in the eyes of the survivors. The everlasting thankfulness of the mothers of the children wedged into that tiny corner.

  “We can’t waste this lull. Let’s get the kids and wounded moved up into the front of the truck.” Yue ordered Gus and Tom to take care of that.

  Yue stepped gingerly through the piles of the dead to the large hole in the side of the trailer and looked down. The bright moonlight showed the extent of what they’d done. It wasn’t just the dead in the trailer. The outside of the trailer had a massive drift of the dead wedged up against it. Here and there a crawler was still squirming around trying to get up. She supposed they must’ve paralyzed some of them. The paralyzed ones wouldn’t bleed to death until later that night. Looking up at the full moon she wondered why it didn’t impact the demons the way the sun did.

  “Can we get out that way?” One of the mothers was standing behind her. The woman was holding her little girl by the hand. The father was nowhere to be seen. He was more than likely one of the bodies lying face down on the blood drenched floor.

  “No, we’re going to have to go out the back. There’s a pile of dying crawlerz here. If you try to get out through that mess one of them might bite you or your little girl.” Yue answered urging the pair to hurry back to the doors at the other end of the trailer.

  “Open the doors! We’re going out the back. We’ll fit as many of the kids and the wounded in the cab as we can.” Yue said loudly. She‘d raised her voice to be heard over the desperate chatter of the survivors.

  “What about the rest of us?” A short man with long hair asked.

  “How about we save the little kids then we worry about you?” Yue shouted at the man. Covered in blood with weapons dangling off her in every direction she wasn’t to be trifled with. The man stepped back and shut his mouth before the Valkyrie he’d upset decided to strike out at him.
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  “Got the poles out! We doing this?” Gus was breathing raggedly as he stared over at her. Tom was standing beside him ready to throw the doors open when told. Yue nodded for them to open it up. Considering the trailer was missing big sections of the wall already it didn’t matter much at this point.

  The swinging door tagged a crawler in the head. It’d been standing behind the truck down the road at something. The crawler stumbled then spun around to attack them. It was shot very dead by multiple weapons. The body of the crawler lying in the snow a stark reminder to them all that the danger wasn’t over just because they’d fought their way to a reprieve. They needed to get those kids up front as soon as possible.

  Yue and the others all blinked as they were suddenly bathed in the bright glow of industrial strength high beams. A vehicle slowly rolled towards them through the snow. It must have been parked down the road. Yue and the others immediately shifted their weapons to point at the source of the blinding white light. The vehicle stopped.

  “Is that you Tom?” A familiar voice yelled out from the vehicle.

  “Harley?” Tom yelled back hopefully.

  “Yep, it’s me. I didn’t know you guys were in the trailer. How’s everybody doing?” Harley yelled back.

  “Turn off those brights man you’re blinding us! We can all catch up later. We need to get these kids somewhere safe. How much room you got in that thing?” Yue asked. The bright lights clicked off to everyone’s relief. Harley climbed out and walked towards them. He was so big he made the massive Humvee seem like a regular sized car.

  “I’m good. This everybody?” Harley asked looking into the trailer.

  Yue was looking past Harley at the Humvee. She wanted to make sure she didn’t see anybody moving around in it. With no warning given Gus jerked his rifle around and started shooting in Harley’s direction. Harley swung his pistol up to shoot back. He stopped when he realized there was probably a reason the Marine standing twenty feet away had missed him multiple times. That reason was the crawlerz streaking out of the darkness behind him. It looked like whatever reprieve they’d gotten was over.

  A quick line was formed to transfer the kids from the trailer to the Humvee. The IED resistant behemoth of an SUV easily held them all. The surviving moms piled in along with the seriously wounded. Harley squeezed himself back into the driver’s seat. He slammed his door shut right as a couple of crawlerz came out of the darkness and flung themselves at the bulletproof windows. Harley worked on making the kids less horrified by making funny faces at the crawlerz. Yue was so distracted watching the ridiculous circus over in the roided up jeep that she almost forgot they still needed to get somewhere safe.

  There wasn’t really a super safe space for them to go. The only option was to see how many of them would fit in the cab up front. Anyone who wouldn’t fit would have to fend for themselves. It finally dawned on Yue that the reason Harley was making funny faces at the crawlerz with his dome lights on was to try and distract them. He was buying them precious seconds to make a run for the cab. They were currently wasting those seconds in indecision. It’s not like they had so many options that paralysis by analysis should even be an issue.

  Yue grabbed one of Drew’s arms and took off for the front of the truck. Gus had Drew’s other arm. He was waving for everyone else to join them as they dragged Drew along. Up ahead she saw that Jim was already halfway to the cab. That didn’t surprise her at all. The slimeball had probably taken off for safety before the children had even been shuttled over to the Humvee. She was a little worried Jim might try to lock the rest of them out if he got there first. He’d be rightfully worried that he’d be a prime candidate to be tossed out if there wasn’t enough room for everyone.

  A crawler took care of that concern for her. It darted out from the massive drift of the mostly dead on the side of the trailer and pulled Jim to the ground. LeBron sped past Yue to put a bullet in the crawler munching on Jim. Jim looked up from the ground with his hand and neck bleeding profusely from bites. He crawled desperately away from LeBron. He was yelling that he’d just run into the woods. He didn’t want LeBron to shoot him. What if he was immune? They’d heard it all before. LeBron put one bullet in Jim’s heart and another in his head just to be safe.

  Tom patted LeBron on the back and tugged his shoulder to keep him moving. LeBron had been wasting crawlerz left and right all night but shooting a real person had hit him hard. He wished he’d had the time to wait to make sure Jim turned. They were all living on borrowed time now though. Even once they got in the cab the cage wasn’t exactly a solid concrete wall. They’d be fighting for their lives until the sun came up.

  Running along behind Tom and the others LeBron tried his best to look in every direction at once. The short man with the long hair directly in front of him was the next to get pulled down. This time LeBron didn’t hesitate at all. He ran past the struggling pair pulling the trigger of his rifle multiple times to make sure they were both dead. Ahead of him the small access hatch was causing a major bottleneck. LeBron caught up and put his back to the cage next to Tom. The small group of defenders focused their fire on the crawlerz coming at them out of the darkness. More men went down with crawlerz who appeared out of thin air. The creatures moved with such speed across the moonlit snow that they materialized like ghosts.

  At the rate everyone was dying LeBron was thinking they’d have plenty of room to stretch out in the cab. Yue pushed him to go next. Gus had just dragged Drew up and into the cab. LeBron started to argue for Yue to go first but then just climbed as fast as he could. There was no time for arguing. Yue was immediately after him followed by Lisa then Tom. That was it. No one else was left alive. LeBron was thrilled to see Lisa had made it. He knew that’d make Drew happy.

  Considering the truck was already a wreck they didn’t hesitate to blow the windows out when crawlerz started scrambling across the cage. The rest of the night was spent picking off individual crawlerz as they showed up. The exhausted survivors took turns falling into uneasy naps. There was a half dozen of them shoved into a cab meant to hold four. The Humvee behind them was packed much tighter. What they were supposed to do with all those little kids they had no idea. The couple of wounded they’d gotten into the Humvee were another set of problems none of them wanted to think about.

  For now, it was enough for Yue, Drew and LeBron to be alive and still together after everything that’d happened.

  Chapter 21: For the Children

  “Sun’s coming up.” Gus announced. In case the others in the cab couldn’t figure out why the sky was getting lighter.

  Yue stretched out. She was in the sleeper section with LeBron, Lisa and Drew. Lisa was curled up with one arm thrown over Drew. How she’d survived when men and women twice her age had fallen was a mystery. Yue had watched how the girl darted around taking surgical shots with her pistol when needed. She’d also seen the gallant last act of a man who’d tackled a crawler bearing down on Lisa. It hadn’t ended well for him, but Lisa had made it.

  A thoughtful Yue wondered if the puppy love between her jock brother and this lucky survivor was going to become an issue. Yue didn’t want to see Drew laying down his life for anybody. The man who’d died saving Lisa the night before may have been gallant, but he was also now a corpse. A gallant corpse doesn’t do anybody any good. Wondering if she was judging Lisa too harshly out of concern for Drew, she decided to let it drop for now. It wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other things for her to worry about.

  For instance, why had Harley chased them down in a Humvee and been sitting outside watching them last night? If he was the only one in the truck that lent itself to him having been the one who put a bunch of holes in their trailer. He may have been the one who caused the injuries of the people they’d hurriedly shoved in the back of the Humvee the night before. They’d turned that roomy vehicle into a clown car with all the people they’d piled into it.

  “You think Harley’s going to shoot me?” Gus asked. He was trying to
make it sound casual but there was some worry in his voice.

  “Probably.” Drew answered. Yue kicked him hard enough to make him grunt in pain. It figured he’d woke up just in time to make an ass of himself. Lisa shifted around but didn’t wake up.

  “If he was going to shoot you, he could’ve done it last night when everything was going crazy.” Yue said trying to cheer him up. It’d seemed like a good thing to say in her head. It sounded lame when she said it out loud though.

  “I killed his girl right in front of him.” Gus said.

  “You shot at her from the ground after she shot you first. It’s about a million times more likely someone else shot her. Probably Mikey.” Yue said continuing to make it worse. Drew must be rubbing off on her. She was normally so much better than this. A confused looking Tom was moving his head back and forth like he was watching a ping pong game.

  “You shot Marguerite?” He asked when silence settled over them all a little too long for comfort. Not that hearing him ask about what happened helped at all. Gus nodded miserably. To his credit Tom didn’t say anything else. He just leaned back in the big leather passenger seat and stared out the window.