Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling

by R. S. Merritt

  Lisa moved so fast that Drew barley caught her before she’d made it to the woman. The woman who was now standing behind an embarrassed looking Shaun. Drew wrapped his arms tightly around Lisa and picked her up to carry her back to their side of the roof. The woman stepped out from behind Shaun and flipped Lisa off. Lisa leaned back and kicked as hard as she could. Her booted foot connected solidly with the surprised looking face behind the extended middle finger.

  Drew hit the gas and ran backwards to the other side of the roof. He had to fight to keep his balance against an enraged Lisa. She really wanted down. That would not be a wise move. On the other side of the roof the woman was whimpering around the blood pouring out of her broken nose. She was avoiding eye contact with Lisa. Yue sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  Lisa calmed herself down without the help of the pill Harley offered up. The sun setting contributed to her ability to settle down. Despite what others on the roof may think they weren’t a tribe of idiots. As soon as dusk hit their mouths shut and their movements ceased. No one got off their sleeping bags expect for the changing of the guard and the occasional bathroom break. For the first time in a long time Drew was relieved when night came. He didn’t know how long he’d have been able to keep Lisa from doing something stupid otherwise. If she did something now it’d go from being stupid to being openly suicidal.

  Harley squatted down by the ledge running around the roof. Gazing down at the moonlit parking lot below he was happy to see it wasn’t as bad as it’d been in Asheville. There were still plenty of shadowy shapes making their way towards the building though. Shaun came and squatted down beside him. Silently they watched as the building was surrounded. Harley began to get a vague sense of seeing themselves from the ground. They were once again seeing what the crawlerz were seeing. The images seeping in and leaving them feeling dirty. The more crawlerz that showed up the harder it was to focus.

  Harley decided this was a great excuse to self-medicate. If he could discover a pill that blocked the freaks down below from mind raping them, he’d be a hero. He grinned thinking that no matter how many drugs he had to take he was willing to make the sacrifice. Even if he had to skip from drugs to drinking to smoking a little something. He was willing to do whatever it took to help his friends. In the spirit of science he actually spent a couple of seconds trying to identify the pill he pulled out of the Ziploc bag before dry-swallowing it.

  Catching Shaun staring at him he pointed at his head like he’d just taken a migraine pill. For all he knew he might’ve actually just taken a migraine pill. He’d been collecting random pills out of medicine cabinets since this whole apocalypse thing started. A lot of them turned out to be bogus. In the event that happened he had no problem slamming another one. His only rule was that he didn’t take any blue pills. Everything else was fair game. Also, sometimes he took the blue pills.

  Shaun caught him digging through the bag of pills a second time less than twenty minutes later. Harley couldn’t stand it. There were ants crawling around in his brain stabbing him with tiny swords. The pain wasn’t unbearable. It was just so annoying that it was right next door to unbearable. He looked back over at Shaun. The disapproving look that‘d been on Shaun’s face had been replaced by one of understanding. Based on that look if Harley wanted a lab partner for his pill-based approach to staying sane he didn’t need to look very far.

  Making a conscious effort to ignore the psychic itching Harley did a slow circuit around the roof. He stayed back from the side as much as he could while still sneaking some quick peeks down. The crawlerz knew that there were normal humans here. Harley wasn’t sure how he knew that they knew. He suspected it had a lot to do with the itching in his brain though. This didn’t feel right. It felt like the ones below were a lot stronger than normal. He hoped not all the crawlerz out there were building up this much creepy psychic psycho power. Like the ability to leap two stories in the air and beat their way through concrete block walls with their fists wasn’t enough.

  A couple of the ones on the ground had jumped to see if they could reach the roof of the three-story building. The ones Harley had seen attempt the jump hadn’t made it past the second-floor windows. Even seeing them make that massively unnatural leap had been unnerving as hell. It looked like something out of a movie. It was absolutely supernatural looking.

  The sound of glass breaking drifted up to them from below. The infected were breaking into the building to try and get to them. Anticipating the creatures would attack that way they’d secured the stair doors on all of the floors. It was horrifying being on a building with those things swirling all around the base of it but as long as they couldn’t get up it was all good.

  The sound of glass breaking from the general direction of another building unnerved Harley. For the first time he realized there were at least two buildings with roofs that were probably too close for comfort. Trying to watch the ledge on every side of the building at the same time he made a beeline to talk to Shaun. A brief whispered conversation upgraded the look of concern on Shaun’s face to full-on panic. The sound of more glass breaking from all around was freaking them both out. The infected on the ground were still bouncing up as high as the second-floor windows like the parking lot was a gigantic trampoline park.

  “They wouldn’t go into the buildings they don’t sense humans in, right?” Shaun whispered. He was looking for some kind of reassurance they weren’t all about to die. The crawlerz down below had a pretty amazing vertical leap. Hopping across the fifty-foot gap between the builds was entirely in the realm of the possible for them. Harley just shook his head. How was he supposed to know what kind of tactics a mob of brain-dead killer cannibals might try?

  “I’m making sure everybody’s awake.” Harley finally whispered back. He patted Shaun on the back and jogged over to where his group was pretending to sleep. Everyone except Drew anyway. He was fast asleep with his arm thrown over Lisa. Lisa looked up at Harley as he jogged over. She was pretty sure it wasn’t her turn to stand watch yet. She’d given up on falling asleep anytime soon with all the bad vibes being thrown off by the demons down below. It was both amusing and annoying to her that Drew could sleep through practically anything.

  “I need everybody to be on their toes. We’re worried the infected may crawl up the other buildings around us that aren’t locked down. If they make it to those roofs, they might be able to jump over here.” Harley whispered to Lisa. Her eyes grew comically large as Harley smiled reassuringly and began to move on to the next sleeping bag. She grabbed him by the arm before he could leave.

  “How likely are you thinking?” She whispered. She was thinking that she might as well get up and get ready to guard the roof. No way was she falling asleep anytime soon now.

  “It’s probably nothing. I just heard some glass breaking and thought it might be something for us to look out for. On a just in case kind of basis.” Harley whispered back. He was wondering why they were whispering. He’d just seen them through the mind’s eyes of their besiegers. He could whip out a bullhorn and get everyone to do the hokey pokey and it wouldn’t make much difference.

  A barrage of shotgun blasts and the crack of a hunting rifle shattered the ominous silence. The sound of the weapons discharging came from where Shaun’s group had setup their tarp covered penthouse.

  “Let’s go!” Harley shouted. At least he didn’t have to worry about whispering anymore. The whole idea behind keeping quiet was so they wouldn’t attract more than the local crawlerz who sensed them. After the twenty-one-gun salute that’d just gone off they’d have every night walker in town headed their direction. As dermatologists like to say when handing out the latest acne body wash at thirty bucks an ounce it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

  Under the tarp a crying woman was cradling the body of the other woman from Shaun’s former foursome. Based on the limp way the woman’s head was hanging the foursome was now a threesome. Shaun was standing over the group with his shotgun. There w
as a dead woman lying on the roof next to the tarp. The parts of her body not covered in blood and bullet holes revealed the skeleton like appearance of a crawler.

  “What happened?” Harley asked Shaun.

  “I heard Sam scream. I was too late. It was already on her. I shot them both. I don’t know where it came from. I’m guessing from the roof of another building maybe? Maybe it climbed straight up the wall? If they broke a window on the floor below and stood on the ledge they could jump and catch the edge maybe?” Shaun rattled off all the thoughts bouncing around in his head. They should’ve sounded crazy. Unfortunately, they were right in line with what everyone else was thinking.

  “Watch out!” Yue yelled and started blasting away at the sky. A second later a crawler hit the roof and rolled right through the middle of all of them. They all spun to see where it’d gone. Before they could even find it the other man from Shaun’s group went flying off the roof with a long-haired old woman holding onto him. Even as they fell, she was single mindedly tearing away at any exposed skin she could find.

  “Backs to the wall!” Harley yelled before turning and sprinting for the short wall with the roof access door in it. He seemed like he was pretty sure it was a good idea, so they all followed him at full speed except for Shaun and the woman crying over her dead friend.

  Scrambling to fling the boxes of extra ammunition closer to the wall no one initially noticed Shaun and the woman hadn’t come with them. Slamming himself against the wall so hard it knocked the breath out of him LeBron screamed for Shaun to hurry up. There was nothing attacking them right now. He hoped it’d just be the occasional lucky long jumping champion type crawlerz who made it on the roof. They could deal with that maybe.

  “All I want is one night where nothing wakes me up trying to kill me!” Lisa proclaimed fervently. Her voice was trembling with raw emotion. Like everyone else she was exhausted. They were staring down a long night of watching out for flying monsters landing on the roof with them.

  Harley pulled two road flares out of his pack. He continued to dig around until he found a bag full of those dollar store glow sticks. He tossed the glowsticks to Drew and lit up the road flares himself. He tossed the first flare into the air towards the other side of the building. The second one he tossed in a long arc towards the patch of darkness not lit up by the first one. The flare bounced off a crawler in mid-air.

  “Kill it!” Yue yelled opening fire. She was being careful to not shoot Shaun. Shaun had dropped to his knee and was fumbling around with his own pistol. The terrified woman Shaun was protecting saw what was going on. She left Shaun squatting in the middle of the roof to make a run for it. There was nowhere for her to run but her fear-soaked brain couldn’t seem to recognize that.

  The acrid odor of gun powder smothered the fresh air they’d been bathing in before the attack. The lingering smoke from their weapons refracted the green light from the glowsticks and the red light from the flares to create an otherworldly ambiance. Dead bodies lay scattered in pathetic little heaps at random places around the roof. On the periphery of all this oddness Shaun was chasing the crazy woman in big circles around the perimeter of the roof.

  Chapter 31: The Never-Ending Night

  “If I ever hear you say anything about a roof being the best place to spend the night again, I’ll smack you.” Yue hissed tiredly at LeBron.

  “Please do.” LeBron said.

  They went back to watching Shaun continue to run around after the woman from his group who’d obviously lost it. He’d caught up to her once already. She’d bit him based on his cursing. He’d screamed at her that she’d be biting people for real if she didn’t follow him back to the wall. She’d screamed that he killed their neighbors. She followed that revealing comment up by yelling that they were going to all die if they didn’t get off the roof.

  Next thing they knew the crazy lady was trying to unchain the roof top door. Drew was staring at her helplessly when Lisa stepped in and shut the woman up with a well-placed rifle butt to the head. The woman stumbled backwards a few steps glaring hatefully at Lisa.

  “I’m getting off this roof.” The woman yelled. One of her hands snaking its way up to the dainty looking pistol in her shoulder holster.

  “Don’t shoot her!” Shaun huffed finally making it over to them. He obviously wasn’t getting his steps in every day. He needed to do some serious work on his cardio. He ducked down low to the ground to avoid being shot when LeBron and Harley stepped out from the wall with weapons lowered. They proceeded to blast away at a three-foot-tall shadow that’d just pulled itself over the lip of the roof. The adrenaline pumped child hadn’t made it all the way to the roof on its leap over. If it’d made it then it would most likely have taken out one of them before they even saw it. Especially with the crazy lady drama distracting them.

  “We don’t have time for this.” Yue heard Drew mutter before raising his pistol to aim at the woman. Yue put her hand on his pistol to push it down. She wouldn’t have minded seeing the woman lying on the ground. She just didn’t want her big-hearted brother to have to live with the pain of doing something so extreme.

  “What’s your name?” Yue asked.

  “Wendy Thomas.” The woman answered. She was waving the little pistol around at all of them. Yue knew if she didn’t get the woman to calm down soon then one of her companions was going to perforate her.

  “Hey Wendy. Why don’t you turn around and point the gun the other way before someone gets hurt?” Yue asked softly. Well, she thought she asked softly. It was more medium loud than soft. Their ears were battered by all of the recent gunplay at close proximity.

  “Screw you!” Wendy screamed swinging her pistol to point right at Yue’s face. Shaun jumped to tackle Wendy to the ground. He ended up with a bullet to the shoulder for his troubles. Wendy started pulling the trigger as she went down. Yue dancing out of the way as bullets slammed into the roof access wall behind her. On the ground a bloody armed Shaun slammed Wendy’s hand into the ground until the pistol came loose. He grabbed it and shoved it in the back of his pants. Waving off Drew’s apologies he tried sitting up to contain a wildly thrashing Wendy.

  Harley’s shotgun came to life as a monster came cartwheeling towards them from out of nowhere. The lithe creature moving so quickly Harley’s shots missed it entirely. It bounced over the top of them and disappeared on top of the access door structure. Drew and Harley immediately stepping out from the wall to try and get an angle on it. Yue, LeBron and Lisa all trying to cover them and look behind them at the same time. They now had threats coming at them from both sides. Not to mention there was a another building that the creatures could start jumping from at any time. Hopefully that one was locked up better.

  “You see it?” Drew asked. He was staring through his gun sights at the top of the shack. Whatever had jumped up there must be lying on its stomach biding its time. That was another scary part of all this. These creatures absolutely could stalk them. They’d run into plenty that didn’t just rush at them in a straight line. As far as tonight went the ones that jumped from the other roof were probably the smarter ones. Otherwise, they’d be down below with the others impotently raging at the concrete ceiling above them. That meant every one of the monsters that landed on the roof was even more dangerous than the average crawler.

  A white hand appeared on the edge of the roof access shack they were focused on. Drew and Harley opened up on the hand and the shadowy blob behind it. For no apparent reason Drew dropped his rifle and fell to this knees. Harley stopped shooting to see what was going on. He thought maybe a crawler had snuck up behind them. The sound of more shots came from over by the wall. Swinging his head wildly Harley saw Yue standing in a classic firing stance with her weapon aimed at a very dead looking Wendy.

  Harley was trying to piece it all together when he was tackled from behind. Falling hard to the ground he felt his assailant groping his way up his back. The crawler ended up hunched over his battle pack. Harley pretty much never took
it off when he was awake and out of the truck. Rolling hard to the right he tried to smash the piggybacking crawler unconscious on the ground. All he accomplished was dumping the crawler on top of Wendy’s corpse. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his companions rushing to help him. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

  He was wearing a pair of tactical gloves he’d found in a military surplus store. That was a good thing. When he grabbed the crawler by the neck it managed to bite down on his fingers before he could get it under control. The bones in his pinky and ring finger snapping loudly as the monster whipped its head around trying to get through the glove to the flesh underneath. In the heat of the moment Harley didn’t even realize the fingers were broken. The Tylenol with Codeine tablet he’d swallowed earlier helped with that too.

  He got his hands around the skinny thing’s neck and held it steady while Lisa put her pistol to its head and killed it. Harley rolled off grimacing in pain. He curled up in a tight fetal position on the ground. While he’d been holding the monster down it’d been kicking the hell out of every part of him its feet could reach. He took an excessive amount of damage to his crotch. He was at a level of pain that was about the closest a man could come to claiming to know what childbirth felt like. He couldn’t bring himself to even think of getting to his feet yet.