The Humvee drove up to park beside them. Gus gulped as the driver’s side door opened and Harley got out. Harley hitched up his pants and walked towards them. The big man looked like an extra from a Mad Max movie. Weapons hung off him in every direction. A giant fur lined coat flapped around him like a cape. He stopped to stand in the snow a few feet back from the cage. He stood there waiting until Gus opened his door and climbed down to stand in front of him. Harley looked Gus in the eyes and started talking. He talked loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I know that what happened back at the dam can’t be undone. I know how she ended up dead. I take some of that blame myself. I didn’t pull the trigger though. I know Mikey’s dead. We saw where you guys lost a truck on the road from the dam. I don’t see them here, so I assume those other jarheads are all dead now, right?” Harley asked.
“Yeah. Crawlerz got them.” Gus answered. He looked like a high school kid asking a WrestleMania star for an autograph. The size difference was ridiculous. Gus wasn’t backing down though. He stood his ground without trembling. His fear had evaporated the second the fight was in front of him.
“They didn’t tell me anything. They were going to leave without me actually. I kind of forced my way into the patrol going out looking for you guys. I reminded them I was the only one with experience fighting crawlerz. If there’s one thing all you Gi Joes eat up its leveraging people with field experience. I wanted to kill you all for what happened. Or at least I did until I recognized Tom wandering around. That’s when I realized you must have actually gone back to the cemetery to rescue them.” Harley said. He paused there to make sure Gus was following along. He didn’t bother looking up in the truck where they were all listening intently. Everyone except for Lisa at least. She was still sound asleep.
“I’m not sure I’d call what’s happened to them being rescued. We went and picked them up though.” Gus said.
“Yeah. She shot you right?” Harley asked. Gus looked confused for a second by the question. Once he realized Harley was talking about Marguerite, he nodded his head in the affirmative.
“Yeah, she shot me.” Gus answered finally. He wondered where Harley was going with all of this. For his part Harley was staring hard at Gus. A mixture of grief and anger played over Harley’s normally stoic features. A tear rolled out of one eye carving a path down through the road grime covering his face.
“Good for her. We’re good man.” Harley said. He patted Gus on the back and walked past him to go talk to the rest of the people in the truck. Gus now found himself emotional. He’d been so keyed up to fight that the sudden forgiveness by the big man rocked his world. Worried he’d start blubbering like an idiot he turned to go inspect the damage to the trailer. Between the crawler assault and the ambush that they’d driven through he was surprised the trailer was still upright. If nothing else, it was a good excuse to hide from everyone until he got the sobs that’d snuck up on him under control.
He hoped the people stacked up in the Humvee like cordwood couldn’t get a clear look at his face. He waved to them with his head down as he walked past. He blew off the emotional garbage and focused on checking out the damage to the trailer on the driver’s side. It didn’t look any different than it did every other morning the crawlerz threw one of their ragers outside. A few new blood-stained divots and the snow was all messed up. Par for the course. He saw the bodies of some of the crawlerz they’d put down the night before. The pathetic piles of frozen flesh were hard to reconcile with the screaming demons that’d bore down on them out of the darkness.
Turning the corner Gus forgot all about the handful of bodies he’d just been checking out. He stopped and stared into a scene that would’ve been considered too bloody to put into a hardcore slasher film. If Gus had seen it in a movie, he would’ve thought it was too over the top. It wasn’t even believable. It looked like someone had dropped a hundred fresh corpses into a blender then sprinkled in some macaroni noodles. If they ran the blender on the lowest setting for a few seconds before slinging the resulting mess into the back of the trailer they’d have nailed what it looked like.
There was also a very impressive number of spent cartridges mired in the nasty mixture of guts and blood that coated pretty much every surface. If he decided to take a stroll inside the trailer for some reason, he was going to have to make sure his boots were laced up tight. The congealed muck on the floor looked deep enough to suck them right off his feet. Not that he had any intention whatsoever of playing around inside that biohazard laden seven-layer dip of disgusting.
“Woah.” An awestruck LeBron had turned the corner and was staring at the carnage inside the trailer. Drew, Harley, Tom and Yue joined them a second later. Lisa was still sound asleep in the sleeper section.
“That’s…” Drew had no words for it. He stood there with his mouth open trying to figure out how they’d come out of that hell hole alive. Not only had they survived they’d saved the equivalent of a small table full of Chuckee Cheese birthday party goers in the process.
A man with a missing arm and ear appeared from behind a messy pile of shredded carboard. He crawled through the muck at an unholy speed boosted by the psychotic control of his adrenal gland. Like something out of a horror movie, he came at them in fast forward working his twisted body unnaturally fast. Three rifles, a tactical shotgun and a nine-millimeter came up and spit their little lead missiles. The surger collapsed on its face adding its blood to the general nastiness.
“We need to do some more cleanup around on the side too. There were some crawlerz still kicking around here last night. They’re either still in the pile or crawled under the trailer.” Yue said.
The small group let out a collective sigh then began the grisly task. Digging through the bloody broken bodies to see if any crawlerz were lurking in them wasn’t pleasant by any measure. Kind of like sticking your arm into a bucket filled with cow snot to fish around for a venomous snake. The disgusting and boring job of picking through the drift of the dead was sporadically interpreted by short bursts of sheer terror. They found and killed two crawlerz after an hour’s worth of hard manual labor.
Panting and sweaty in the chill air they stood in a circle facing one another afterwards. Speaking in low voices so as not to attract any random surgers the conversation centered around what to do next. All of them were getting pretty sick of having these conversations. They kept finding themselves circled up in smaller and smaller groups trying to figure out what to do next after losing people they cared about. Without Jeff they were rudderless. They’d gone from fighting to save the country back to fighting to save themselves.
They’d found out early in the conversation that to mention Jeff’s name was to earn a hard look from Harley. Harley may have forgiven Gus for his part in the death of Marguerite, but he most definitely hadn’t let Jeff off the hook yet. This was an issue since the only thing that they could come up with as far as a long-term plan was finding Jeff and getting back to saving the world. Every other plan they came up with revolved around finding a secure house close to a town they could visit to forage for snacks
For his part Harley was focused on getting the Humvee full of tweens, their moms and the wounded into the care of someone else as quickly as possible. His big contribution to the apocalypse planning committee was that they should drop off the Humvee and its occupants back at the dam before setting out. The people back at the dam would already be reeling from losing their husbands and fathers in a failed ambush. Even Harley wasn’t sure about how they’d like it if an armored gift basket full of more mouths to feed got left on their doorstep.
That topic got more than its fair share of consideration since it was the only thing brought up so far that actually had a tangible action associated with it. None of them wanted to drag the Humvee full of future collateral damage along with them into the freaky wild. Not when there was a place less than a day away that could take them in. A place about a million times safer than wherever they were headed. It also felt
like some pretty good revenge for the dam sending out a bunch of SEALs to try and kill them. It reminded Yue of the signs she’d seen in stores back before the world went to hell. The ones that said unattended children would be given a gigantic stick of cotton candy and a free puppy.
Harley was pushing them escorting the Humvee back to the dam until Drew asked him point blank if he was still trying to get them all killed. A red-faced Harley then had to spend the next few minutes convincing them all he hadn’t meant they should go back to the dam full of people who’d just sent out an ambush party to kill them. At some point during that conversation Harley even admitted he’d been ordered by the SEAL survivor of the ambush to find them and report back on their position.
“Wouldn’t sending back a Humvee full of people who know everything about us qualify as reporting in?” Drew asked. He was staring at the massive man across from him. Harley was shifting around uncomfortably. Harley was pissed and it irritated him that he could totally understand where they were coming from. He was about ready to smack Drew. He’d always thought it was refreshing how Drew didn’t seem intimidated by anyone and always spoke his mind. It was turning out to only be a refreshing trait when he wasn’t the one it was being applied to.
“Good point. I’m totally covered if they catch us. I’ll just flash the secret hand signal and the attack helicopter or whatever will kill everybody but me.” Harley said with an exasperated sigh. He liked it much better when he could just scowl to get everyone to leave him alone. You strap a couple of guns on people and all of a sudden, they think they’re badasses. They didn’t get their feathers ruffled by a man sporting a few hundred pounds of solid muscle. It wasn’t like he could bench press a bullet after all.
“What attack helicopter?” Drew asked. He realized Harley was probably just throwing something out there but maybe it’d been one of those Freudian slips.
“The one leaving your mom’s house.” Harley answered. That shut Drew up but pissed LeBron off.
“He’s just checking. You were on the side that shot at us you know. For all we know you killed Mikey.” LeBron said coming to Drew’s defense.
“I was climbing up that damned mountain to be the lookout when you morons pulled up. Who the hell drives back to where the guys trying to kill them are? I was expendable. I wasn’t one of the dudes sitting in the Humvee with the heater on. We rode freakin snowmobiles all the way from the dam to there and then they sent me straight up that mountain while they relaxed in the car. None of us thought you’d be dumb enough to actually come back. Way to prove us wrong.” Harley turned and walked back towards the Humvee filled with kids. He stuck both of his middle fingers up in the air over his head as he walked.
“Is that the secret hand signal?” Drew called out after him. He thought that was pretty funny but no one else was amused.
Where are you going?” LeBron called out the question to Harley before he disappeared around the side of the truck.
“I’m letting the nice ladies in the Humvee up here know they’ll be driving back to the dam by themselves. Since Siri went on vacation, I’m going to draw them a map.” Harley tossed his final comments over his shoulder as he disappeared from view around the front bumper.
“Does that mean he’s coming with us?” LeBron asked.
“Coming with us where exactly?” Gus asked.
“To find the man he thinks is responsible for his girl getting killed I’m guessing.” Yue answered their question. She didn’t seem too worried that they were bringing a man who may kill her boyfriend on a hunt for her boyfriend.
“So, we’re going to go find Jeff and we’re bringing Harley and you don’t see anything wrong with this plan?” Gus asked.
“Harley’s got a hot head but he’s a good man. He’s also a great asset to have with us. He’ll do the right thing when it matters.” Yue answered lightly. A second later her brow furrowed slightly. A dangerous glint lit her eyes. “He’ll do the right thing, or I’ll take him out myself.”
Chapter 22: The Trailer Comes Off?
The team said their goodbyes as Tom slipped into the Driver’s seat of the battered Humvee. Everyone wished him and the others luck. Tom was one of the few who’d managed to keep his family alive this long. It still sucked to lose someone who knew so much about medicine. None of them begrudged him the decision to take his family and settle at the dam though. On the contrary they were all genuinely happy for him. His medicinal knowledge would come in handy at the dam. They weren’t sending these refugees there with a ton of supplies like the last time. Tom’s medical training would hopefully tip the scales in their favor as far as them being welcomed at the base.
Once the Humvee disappeared down the road the smiles dissolved. They were out here in the middle of nowhere. There may or may not be paramilitary forces coming for them. That attack helicopter Harley had made up could turn into a reality at any second. They had a tractor with a trashed trailer. None of them had any idea how they were supposed to survive the night. Harley had already mentioned trying to find a graveyard so they could call dibs on a nice warm crypt. None of them trusted the cage to hold if another mob of crawlerz happened to show up.
Lacking an actual plan, they settled on sifting through the supplies in the back to try and see what could be salvaged. Boxes of food not covered in blood were stacked in the back of the trailer. The disgusting ones were thrown out onto the pile of frozen corpses. The ammunition situation was looking pretty bad. They’d burned through a lot of bullets repelling the crawlerz the night before. When they were done, they’d accumulated a decent little pile of things that were worth keeping.
“We should ditch the trailer.” Gus stated the obvious before anyone could beat him to it. He was pretty stoked about the idea of driving the truck without the hassle of dealing with the trailer trying to flip them over every time he went around a sharp curve.
“Yeah. It’s not like we can use it to sleep in anymore. There’s not enough bleach in the world to sterilize that thing now. Can we strap this pile of crap to the back of the truck once we get the trailer unhooked?” Yue asked. She was hoping somebody actually knew how to unhook the trailer. She hadn’t even known the trailers came off the trucks until recently.
“Let’s do that. Then we can get on the road.” Harley said. It kind of annoyed Yue the way he said it. He was acting like they had the slightest clue where they were going. Other than finding a crypt or a secure basement or another trailer to hang out in Yue was at a loss as to what to do next. She wanted to whip out Jeff’s iPad and start scanning through the files. She wasn’t feeling comfortable doing that in front of Harley though. For all she knew he really was there to check to see if they had the notes from Jeff or not.
“Agreed.” LeBron said clapping his hands together lightly. His words visible as little puffs of smoke thanks to the chill in the air. Drew nodded and looked around to see what to do next.
“Gus you want to drop the suspension after we get the kingpin out?” Harley said. Everyone stared at him like he was speaking Klingon.
“You want me to drop the suspension? Is there like a button or something for that?” Gus asked. He’d never implied he felt the slightest bit of confidence in driving the big rigs. Getting called out like that was still a little awkward. Considering he didn’t know what ‘CDL’ stood for he felt like he’d done a damned fine job of driving the massive machine up and down steep icy slopes. He’d even made a lifesaving turn while under fire the day before when they’d fled the ambush site.
“Any of you know how to unhook a truck?” Harley asked.
“Mikey was the only one who actually had experience driving these things. He taught Gus how to drive. Considering Gus just started learning I think he’s doing pretty good.” Yue said defending the red faced Marine.
“The way you whipped this truck around the curves it sure looked like you knew what the hell you were doing. No worries. I’ll show you how it’s done. I’ve driven plenty of trucks with the circus and had to unload
and hook them up. I’ve even got my license and all that happy stuff.” Harley said. Yue wondered if he thought they were worried about getting pulled over or something.
The sign welcoming them to Waynesville was as scary as it was welcoming. By the time they’d unhooked the trailer and decided to set a course for the interstate it was early afternoon. Harley had taken the driver’s seat with Gus riding shotgun. Drew, Lisa, LeBron and Yue had sacked out in the sleeper section. Lisa having passed on going with Tom and the others back to the dam. Yue had some reservations about that but figured she wasn’t really in charge of what Lisa wanted to do. She knew that battle would’ve hurt her relationship with Drew. Especially since she was combing through the iPad files trying to figure out where Jeff may have been taken. She’d told Lisa she was playing Angry Birds.
Waynesville was close to I-40 but based on where the sun was sitting in the sky, they didn’t have time to make it. They needed to find someplace to hide for the night. Some place crawler proof. Yue liked the idea of it being anywhere but in a graveyard. She didn’t get the ghoulish fascination everyone else seemed to have with following Harley’s lead to have a sleepover in a giant coffin. There was no way that was sanitary.
Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling Page 19