Crawlerz | Book 2 | Batten Down The Hatches

by Merritt, R. S.

  “You’re the right resource for the job. Stay frosty out there. I have a feeling option ‘B’ is going to be the way we end up going. Nothing’s easy anymore.” Leander said as way of dismissal.

  LeBron left thinking by the time he got down the stairs the plan may have changed again. That’s the way plans went now a days. When you’re skiing down a mountain in the middle of an avalanche you have to go with the flow. That’s what this felt like. There was probably a million better ways to do what they were trying to do. At some point you just had to pick a plan and run with it. Of course, if a better option popped up you had to be flexible enough to jump that way.

  If they had more intel on the state of the Ford they could come up with a better plan. LeBron assumed Leander was thinking the same thing. He was pushing to get LeBron and some others out in the field just to have some assets he could use if needed. They were going to provide that flexibility to accommodate for whatever ended up happening. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least bit for the plans to change again before they even left the base.

  If everyone from the Ford was coming to the base, then Leander was going to be knocked down a few rungs as far as his position went. That’d be interesting to watch play out. As far as LeBron was concerned the leadership of the carrier had already shown themselves to be a bunch of idiots by sending for the infected guinea pigs anyways. Shaking his head at the lunacy of everyone’s actions LeBron walked out on the floor where the Seabees and Marines were now working in fast motion.

  He’d been hit by a wall of sound as soon as he opened the door. Drills, hammers and anything else that could be used to bash metal into place were being played together in a symphony of loudness. The composer of all this chaos stood in front of a truck that they’d just finished attaching a cage too. Looking at the strong steel cage bolted on over the doors and windows LeBron could tell it’d be a pretty solid shield against the infected. It was like they’d built out gigantic custom metallic lobster traps and fitted them over the cabs. You had to go through a locked section of the lobster trap to even get access to the doors for the cab. Those had been covered with a second layer of bars as well.

  “Looks good master chief. How much longer until this one’s ready to roll?” LeBron asked. He had to repeat himself so that Victor could actually hear him in order to get his question answered.

  “A few hours. Need to reinforce the bars and put something across the front to shunt the infected to the side. The trailers should be fine. We added a layer of sheet metal inside them anywhere they looked a little thin. We have the Marines stocking them up with first aid, water, food and extra ammunition. What’d our fearless leader have to say?” Victor asked.

  “I get to head out in the first truck you finish to help get the survivors from the ship back here.” LeBron said simply.

  “Do you even have your driver’s license? Hopefully someone has put some thought into who’s going to be driving these things. Any news yet on how bad the Ford got hit? How many are going to make it off?” Victor asked. LeBron was still processing the fact that they needed to find people who could drive trucks. He shook his head at Victor’s question.

  “If Leander has details, he’s not sharing. If it’s bad enough that they have to abandon the ship, then it must be really bad. Otherwise they could’ve just flown the crew here. Or at least as many as they could before they ran out of gas. It sounded like everything’s just all screwed up. It must be really bad.” LeBron said. He started to choke up thinking of his brother and sister stuck in the middle of what must be all kinds of carnage.

  “Yeah. Well one step at a time. Go see if any of those jarheads know how to drive a truck. If not, I have a guy who can show them. I guess I can spare him to train your guys. If no one can drive the damned things, it’s pretty pointless building them.” That sounded like a good action plan to LeBron. He immediately left to figure out which Marines were being assigned to roll out with him.

  Multiple phone calls later there was a group of ten Marines plus LeBron getting a quick tutorial on how to drive one of the big rigs. On top of learning how to change gears and what all the other nerd knobs and doo hickeys did they also had to figure out how to drive with the giant metal lobster trap hanging around them. Typically, they’d have liked some time to drive these around outside and iron out the bugs. Unfortunately, any bug ironing was going to need to happen out in the field. Out in the field where they’d be surrounded by millions of the infected.

  Most of those millions were petrified of the sun though. As long as it was a nice bright day, they should be able to cruise over to Charleston easily enough. They’d hoped to ride out at dawn, but it didn’t look like they were hitting that timeline at this point. There were still people tweaking the cage and LeBron saw sparks flying off the far side of the first vehicle from where someone was still welding. They’d just brought the massive elevator down to roll the truck out onto.

  “Where are we at master chief?” LeBron asked the remarkably calm looking man busy doing a dozen things at the same time. He must have a doctorate in multitasking.

  “I think we’re about ready. You think you and your team are good for driving it? You put any thought into any other gear you might need?” Victor asked.

  “Tons of ammo, extra weapons, food and water, first aid supplies…” LeBron wandered off. He felt like he was missing something.

  “We threw some rope and a couple of outboard motors and an inflatable attack raft in the back too in case you need it. A stack of sleeping bags and some other junk. If you need to make room just ditch the crap. This place has plenty. If you’re ready to roll let’s do this.” The master chief walked over to the phone and called upstairs. LeBron turned around and went to grab the two Marines going with him.

  Thirty minutes later they were at ground level parked in front of the hangar door ready to get going. The Marine driving the truck was one of the few with actual experience driving a big rig. His grandfather and father had both been independent truck drivers. He’d been headed down that path himself right out of high school before getting the urge to sign up for the Marines. LeBron was riding shotgun while the other Marine coming with them was tucked away in the back with a radio.

  One thing LeBron had thought of that they didn’t have were the cameras like Blaze had placed on his trucks. Those had made it a lot safer to open the doors. It was nice to know ahead of time if there was something hiding under the trailer ready to jump out and bite your leg. Victor had scrounged around but webcams had been one thing they weren’t able to find. They added the stuff they’d need to build that out to their wish list. They needed to send someone to loot a Best Buy.

  The final challenge they faced was leaving the hangar. Once again, all the CCTV equipment being located up in the barracks didn’t help them out. That Best Buy trip kept moving higher up the priority list. They had to open the hangar doors all the way to drive out. Holding those doors open long enough for them to leave wasn’t a duty anybody wanted. Carrying around metal rods for the dudes downstairs was going to become a real popular option soon.

  End of the day it was pretty anticlimactic. Every Marine on the base got called up to guard the area when the doors were finally opened. The one surger who’d been hanging out by the doors got shot so many times that if the impact from the bullets hadn’t killed him, he’d have probably died of lead poisoning. LeBron felt like the crawlerz were staring at them from the forest and the empty barracks space. The final little screw you from losing the barracks came when they figured out that they’d have to drive through the closed gate to get out.

  The cage around the cab held up well bashing them out. LeBron was wondering why a military typically so preoccupied with building redundancy into everything had only wired up one button to open and close the gate remotely. No one knew of a way to do it on the gate itself. It wasn’t like the fence was doing much to discourage the surgers and crawlerz from coming on the base anyway. LeBron didn’t see it as any kind of major loss wh
en they smashed it open.

  Out on the open road again sitting high in the cab of the truck LeBron was sure he’d have another attack of agoraphobia. Instead he found himself feeling strangely comfortable. It felt good to be setting out on an operation he had such a personal connection to. He’d felt lonely when Yue was sent away to the carrier then felt deathly alone once Drew boarded the plane to leave as well. His newly found sense of calm was coming from the fact that he was going to have them with him again soon. He just had to drive back and forth across a state that was going to come alive with the supernaturally strong living dead once the sun went down. He really hoped the master chief hadn’t taken any shortcuts when he welded the truck together.

  Chapter 25: Abandon Ship

  “All hands prepare to abandon ship. Instructions will be piped to all hands over the speakers. All hands hold steady and await further instruction. Once called proceed to the nearest hatch to get on deck. Be advised you may have to fight your way out. Once on deck the sun is out but keep your guard up. Place both hands in the air once on deck to identify as an uninfected. Failure to do so could result in being shot. Follow orders immediately to be quarantined. This is not a drill. That is all.”

  The orders boomed out over the overhead speakers on every level of the ship. The already frantic infected began rushing around even more at the sound of the human voice echoing around the passageways. Up on the bridge they were watching the insanity belowdecks in all its 4K glory. One glance up at the monitors and Yue was longing for a nice black and white old-fashioned CRT tube instead.

  “So, do we like jump off the boat now or how does this work?” Drew asked sitting up and trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

  “About time you woke up. You know you slept through a couple of helicopters attacking the ship with gigantic machine guns, right?” Yue said looking lovingly down at the sleep rumpled hair of her brother. He had a huge red mark across the side of his face where he’d been using his arm as a pillow. His neck was glistening from the drool that’d dripped down his chin.

  “Holy crap.” Drew said in shock looking down at the massive drifts of the dead on the flight deck below.

  “Yeah it’s been pretty bad. They sent out a team to try and seal off that open hatch and they had to give up and run back. There’s still a zillion of those things inside the ship. You can see them on the monitors.” Yue motioned to the monitors scattered around that were showing scenes from different sections of the ship. Drew stared in awe at the gruesome scenes before slowly turning his attention back to Yue.

  “What now?” He asked simply. He wanted nothing more than to be off this ship. With his feet on dry land he had a million options. Here he felt like he had one. A long drop followed by a lot of swimming.

  “We’re going to start calling up sections and see how it goes. We’ll call up enough to fit in here with us then when the helicopters get here, they can take them to the island. Depending on how many people make it up here alive we may have to get the healthy people to actually go over the side with rafts. We’re close enough to the island that they can pretty much float over and make it. The sub is going to help anyone out that can’t. They won’t let them in the sub, but they’ll let them ride on top of it.” Yue said.

  “I get all of that but what about us? We swimming or flying?” Drew asked. He was at the coffee station putting a filter into the basket and dumping in a pack of the grounds to make a fresh pot. He’d studied the little bag of coffee grounds carefully to make sure he wasn’t making decaf by accident. There really should be some sort of standard universal color code for that. Once certain he’d dumped in the good stuff, he pressed the button to get the coffee started.

  “It depends on what happens in the next few hours.” Jeff appeared out of nowhere. He’d probably smelled the coffee beginning to brew. Yue was beginning to wonder if her new man had any blood at all in his coffee stream.

  “What do you mean?” Drew asked.

  “I’m thinking we’re going to be using the helicopters to ferry a lot of the wounded out of here after we make sure they’re not in the middle of turning into a crawler. If we get a lot of survivors, then we’ll start flinging life rafts into the water. It might not be a bad idea for you two to be ready to make a jump for it. Right now, we’re drifting slightly west, so you’d want to jump off the starboard side for your best chance. When you hit you want to hit feet first and go in as streamlined as you can. A lot of men try and hold their package. From this height that can be painful enough when you hit to make you forget which way to swim. You don’t want to swim under the carrier by accident.” Jeff explained. He was talking to Drew, but his red eyes were focused on the slowly filling coffee pot.

  “How do we request the helicopter option?” Yue asked. She was obviously not excited about jumping off the flight deck.

  “If everything happened to go super smooth, we’d be able to land the helicopters on the deck and spend the day ferrying everyone off. Then it’d basically just be whoever was left when it started getting dark who’d have to jump. Even then we could probably just leave them here overnight and restart operations in the morning. If we have the hatches all secured, then we don’t have to stop once it gets dark either.” Jeff said.

  “When’s the last time anything went smooth?” Drew asked rhetorically.

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m telling you to guard your goods when you jump. I don’t want to hear about it if you forget.” Jeff said smiling.

  “I don’t get it? How many more of them are there down there? The flight deck is covered in bodies.” Yue said.

  “Yeah, a lot of those bodies are the Marines who were already up on deck when this started. The bulk of the crew is still trapped below. The infected and the uninfected. The hangar is literally crawling with them. I don’t know how some of them are ever going to make it out. Especially the guys down in the engine room.” Jeff got that far away look in his eyes again. He gave Yue a quick kiss before heading back to the front of the bridge with his cup of fresh hot brew.

  “Well that wasn’t super reassuring.” Drew commented. He found a slice of window for him and Yue to look out of while they sipped at their coffee. The carnage below was obscene. Drew was happy they were up far enough from the deck that it was difficult to make out any real details. As the sun started beating down it was going to start smelling really bad out there. Assuming it didn’t already. Even on the open deck of a ship at sea that was a lot of rotting meat. Too much for the steady sea breeze to easily wash away.

  Surgers scampered around the drifts of the dead. A few of them tried to scale the superstructure. The Marines stationed on the catwalk patiently waiting to kill any that made it far enough to become an actual threat. There were guards pacing around the bridge catwalk as well as the flight operations catwalk up above. The infected on the flight deck were beginning to congregate around the base of the superstructure. That made sense since that’s where their prey was.

  “Now hear this. Now hear this. All personnel in the forward section prepare to engage and evade to reach the flight deck. Forward hatches to be thrown open on my mark in ten minutes. Once on deck put your hands in the air and follow directions. Please be advised you may be requested to immediately abandon ship. If so head for the starboard side to disembark. That is all. Repeating this message in one mic.”

  The announcement of the first formal attempt for a subsection of the crew to escape sounded throughout the ship. The phones on the bridge had already been ringing non-stop. Now it looked like a telethon was being hosted. The crew below were calling up to report they couldn’t leave the areas they were in because they were surrounded by the infected. Most of the crew trapped below had no weapons that’d be useful against the amped up demons. You couldn’t expect to hit a crawler in the face with a broken pipe and survive. The crawler would just spit out a couple of its teeth then proceed to rip you apart.

  If they couldn’t get out, they were ordered to stand by for now. It was hoped th
ere’d be time to get back to them. They started pumping Metallica into the aft sections of the ship to try and get the infected to all move in that direction. Judging by the monitors it was working pretty well.

  At the five-minute mark one of the helicopters appeared and began blasting away at the surgers out on deck. The other helicopter showed up a minute later. In addition to pulverizing the infected with large amounts of direct fire the two helicopters also kicked out a bunch of large crates. Over the radio they let Jeff know that the boxes were full of ammunition and grenades. Jeff thanked them for the party favors and ordered them to stand by to cover the men coming out of the hatches. They couldn’t have those men go straight to the helicopters since they may be infected. They absolutely couldn’t afford to lose either of those helicopter pilots.

  One of the helicopters hovered while the other turned around and took off to refuel. The pilot had noted the need for ferrying people back to the island. The helicopter he was currently flying was intended for transporting crew, ammunition and the guns to kill the enemy with. The last time they refueled he’d spotted what looked like a couple of Chinooks back on the airbase though. If he could get one of those up and flying, then they’d be in businesses. They could fit around sixty people on one of those bad boys. They were forgiving and rugged enough to easily land on a flight deck covered in piles of bodies. Jeff had approved.