Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

Chapter 23: The Only Easy Day was Yesterday

  The trailer they’d chosen kept the monsters at bay while they fitfully slept for varying periods of time. It was dented to hell and some of the supports had broken but it’d served it’s purpose. They stood outside near the body of a young crawler who’d snapped her neck on the trailer. She lay paralyzed on the dirty asphalt. Her eyes glazed over in a very unwholesome ecstasy as she focused with unblinking intensity on the cloudless blue sky.

  Harley ended her with his patented neck hack. Yue had been standing close by staring at the poor girl. She hopped backwards to avoid the blood splattering everywhere courtesy of Harley’s butchery. They performed a halfhearted search for the keys to the trucks. Haywood told them for the tenth time that he doubted he could hotwire one of the big rigs. They did happen to notice something across the lot that made them all much happier.

  By the loading dock there was a small section carved off for a fleet of gas powered golf carts. They were the tough looking off road ones. They were meant to be used to drive over the tracks between all the different warehouses. All they needed now were the keys to the carts. There was a door at the top of the loading dock. Most likely the keys were right inside that door. Harley could almost picture the lockbox on the wall above a little logbook where you were supposed to sign out whichever cart you took. It was just a regular door, but it took on the aspects of the entrance to a dragons cave in their collective minds.

  “There’s a few of them in there. They can sense we’re out here. They’re salivating for us. Pitiful how they cry.” Yue said with her eyes half closed in that meditative state she went in to try and do her psychic scouting thing. No one could pinpoint exactly when she’d started talking like Yoda and a Gypsy Fortune Teller had a baby.

  “I’d rather fight than walk beside that river another day. Aren’t we supposed to be killing as many of them as we can anyway?” Lisa asked fiercely. Drew smiled at her. That was his girl.

  “Works for me. Maybe if we pop the door open, they’ll all wander out into the sun.” Haywood said walking towards the door. Harley joined him. Everyone else hung back ready to back them up if needed. They hung back to avoid creating a big clump of people right by the door that the infected could come boiling out of at any second. Harley and Haywood probably wouldn’t want to hang out for very long if that happened. The more people up on the loading dock the harder it’d be to scatter.

  Haywood tried opening the door the easy way first. Once he’d verified it really was locked, he sighed and worked on getting the small crowbar out of his pack. Drew was carrying one as well. He stepped forward and handed it up to Harley. Together Harley and Haywood worked on the door with the short metal rods until it started making cracking sounds. It was then that the first crawler slammed into it from inside the building.

  The door was bashed off its hinges by an old lady in a seriously stained yellow dress. The woman’s white hair floated around her skeletal face as she rode the door like a sled off the edge of the loading dock. Her eyes had gone from rabid to empty as she transitioned from the inside to the outside. She slid down off the door and lay on the ground at their feet in a pathetic pile of skin, hair and faded yellow fabric. Drew gave everyone a courtesy warning to step back before he slashed the grandma’s throat. Her eyes never lost that empty look as she died. Her lifeblood forming a steamy little stream that trickled down a drain close to her corpse.

  Drew tore his eyes away from that whole scene to see what was going on at the top of the dock. He hated looking at the infected after they were killed. When that mad look left their eyes, it was easy to mistake them for regular people. Assuming you ignored the effects on their bodies of running around mostly naked as an insane cannibal for a year or so. That tended to give them a malnourished glow that was the exact opposite of healthy.

  At the top of the dock there wasn’t much going on. Light filtered into the first few feet of the large open warehouse environment. Yue was staring at the open doorway and shaking her head from side to side indicating walking in would be a bad idea. Drew poked Yue in the back and pantomimed tossing a grenade into the room. Everyone in the small group watched as Yue considered the idea. She finally shrugged with a small smile playing at her lips that this was the plan Drew had immediately come up with.

  At the top of the ramp Haywood waved everyone back and pulled out a grenade. He pulled the pin and rolled it in hoping there weren’t any super genius infected inside who might figure out how to toss it back out. Or just a really lucky crawler who happened to step forward at the exact right time to kick the explosive little bundle of destruction back out on the loading dock. Luckily neither proved to be the case. Haywood easily made it around the corner before the muffled whoomph noise of the grenade going off in the warehouse.

  Once the noise had died down the small group reformed at the base of the loading dock. They all looked to Yue for a quick damage report on the infected inside. She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face for a minute before shrugging again. She sensed a couple of them still inside, but these things didn’t really register pain. They might be sitting inside waiting to pounce or laying on the floor bleeding out. All she could really tell was that there were a couple in their still strong enough to be broadcasting their thoughts.

  “I’m tired of carrying all this ammo anyway.” Haywood said walking aggressively towards the entrance.

  “If we can find the keys to these golf carts, we won’t be carrying around anything much longer.” Drew said falling in behind Haywood. Harley lined up on him and the whole team stacked up behind them. Flashlights and pistols were pulled out and positioned while Haywood waited for the signal to move forward. Once everyone was set Jeff gave the order and they moved in.

  Flashlight beams illuminated the damage done by the grenade Haywood had tossed in. A pile of bodies was laid out around the perimeter of where the sunlight filtered into the room. They’d gathered there to wait for the group of uninfected outside to come in. A couple of the crawlerz were still breathing. One was able to lunge towards Haywood and grab his boot. Haywood kicked the beast in the face then put a round through it’s head. Haywood, Harley, and Drew quickly double tapped all the other crawlerz lying on the ground. Better to waste some ammunition then get bit by one you thought was dead already.

  Jeff stood in the back covering those three while Lisa and LeBron were in charge of looking for the box with the keys in it. There was no box on the wall but there was a desk inside a cubicle by the door. It looked like where the shift supervisor or foreman for the shop sat at to do paperwork. Lisa tried the drawers but couldn’t get one of them to open. She waved Drew over. He used his miniature crowbar to pry open the stuck drawer. Turned out it was a locked drawer that contained a whole mess of keys with different numbers on them. Drew started to look at the keys more closely when gunshots rang out behind them.

  Haywood and Harley had opened up on a shadow bouncing towards them. It moved with an impossibly fluid grace that marked it as a crawler coming on at full speed. Jeff shouted to watch out and started shooting towards another corner. Drew ripped the whole drawer out and held the loose keys down with his hand. He yelled that he had the keys and ran out the door. As soon as he was outside, he tossed the drawer with the keys down on the ground and turned around to cover the door.

  Yue was already standing outside. She’d shouted the warning into the warehouse that’d alerted Harley to the bouncing crawler in the first place. Lisa and LeBron were hot on Drew’s heels followed closely by Jeff then Harley. Haywood took one step out the door and a pair of hands appeared out of nowhere to grab him by the shoulders. Drew leapt to his feet and shoved his pistol beside Haywood’s face and started pulling the trigger as fast as he could. The monster that had ahold of Haywood slammed him down to the ground and leapt for Drew.

  Drew kept blasting away at the psycho until his pistol went dry. He was laying on the ground pounding the dead man’s head with the butt of his gun when LeBron pulled him away and g
ot him calmed down. Once he was feeling coherent again, he looked over to where Lisa and Harley had hauled Haywood to check him out.

  “How’s he doing?” Drew called out. The time to worry about making too much noise was long past.

  “He may be trying to to pull a Yue.” Lisa said.

  “I’m not unconscious. Just give me a second to lay here. I really want to focus on not moving and especially not puking.” Haywood said.

  “How’d you know that ‘pulling a Yue’ meant getting knocked unconscious?” Yue asked. It wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted to be her legacy. When LeBron and Drew both started giggling like a couple of ten year-olds, she just kept staring straight ahead. To say anything to them about it would only encourage them. She wondered how long they’d been waiting for this to work its way back around to her. She really needed to see if she could find the two of them some sort of a hobby.

  “I’m just going to lay here for a few more minutes if no one minds. You guys can go ahead and try the keys. I’m happy to walk my dizzy ass over there once I hear those bad boys start up.” Haywood said. Then he closed his eyes and lay there quietly. Lisa squatted down to watch over him and signaled for the rest of the group to go try the carts.

  It took about thirty minutes of opening hoods and screwing around with batteries, but they eventually got two of the carts to start up. Walking around the building they were able to find a water hose. They cut off a section of it and used it to siphon gas out of the other carts into the ones they had running. They started poking through garbage cans looking for containers to put more gas in. They stopped when Harley figured out that they probably had enough gas to get to Cape May and back three times over. They settled on taking the hose with them in case they needed to suck any more gas out of cars.

  The golf carts were four seaters with a place on the back to shove their gear. They got everything loaded up then grabbed Haywood to pitch him in as well. When they picked him up off the loading dock, they saw the blood stain where his scalp had gotten cut when the crawler tossed him to the ground. He was going to have a serious headache later. He didn’t say a word about it as they helped him to the car though. He just took a seat and made sure his weapons were within reach should they be needed.

  Once everyone was seated, they took off for Cape May. They passed by a large, deserted shipyard along the way. Most of the docks were empty except for a few derelicts. Jeff was staring out in the direction of the yards hopefully but didn’t see anything exciting. He knew that for salvage operations they’d still moor up here during the day. At night they tended to want to put some distance between themselves and the infested shoreline. Driving past it most of them were wondering how many of the ships out there had gone out to join the fleets slowly circling North America.

  The only one of them who had a good idea how many of those ships might still be haze, grey and underway was Jeff. His guess was they had more people living at sea now than they had scattered across the country. Unless you counted the infected which he most certainly did not. Between the cruise ships and the various navies they’d sent a lot of people out to sea. He’d guess half those people had ended up dead. They’d tried to go ashore at one point or another and been swarmed by the infected.

  Unless they were nuclear or sail powered, they were out of fuel by this point. They’d been forced into whatever port they could find or ended up adrift. That’d been the case with more than a few civilian vessels when told they weren’t allowed to come ashore at whatever island they’d set a course for. A few of the islands that’d managed to avoid the infection had found themselves fighting to hold onto their very scarce resources when mobs of people from the fuel-deprived ships descended on them.

  The golf carts made life a breeze. They talked about going back to where the train had crashed and collecting some more of their supplies. They decided against it since they didn’t know who else might have shown up to sift through the wreckage by now. Instead they put the pedal to the metal on the zippy little golf carts. All of them enjoying the sensation of the sun in their faces and the wind in their hair. They turned on the interstate and started following the signs to get to the Cape May USCG base.

  Chapter 24: One Step Forward

  “Well that sucks.” Drew said looking at the twisted rebar sticking out from the crumbling concrete where the bridge from the mainland to Cape May had once stood.

  “There are some boats over there.” Lisa said pointing at a nearby marina. There were some boats in the direction she pointed. They were upside down and battered but they were boats. From this distance they couldn’t tell if the boats were floating or just sitting on top of other wrecked boats in a big pile.

  “I’ll take my chances with swimming.” LeBron said after a quick glance over at the marina.

  “How about we try to jump the bridge. We could build a ramp.” Drew said with a grin on his face.

  “How about you two dweebs both shut up and let the grownups think.” An irritable Yue said.

  “You’d think somebody sucking down Valium all the time would be more fun to be around.” Drew said.

  “I’m with Yue on both of you guys shutting up. We need to figure out how we get to the other side. The side with the base that has rooms with beds and possibly even working showers.” Jeff said. Yue seemed to cheer up some at the thought of working showers. Drew started to say something that was probably better left unsaid. Before he could provide his latest insight though Haywood interrupted him with a pretty relevant observation.

  “We could just ask these guys coming up the inlet in the boat to give us a ride.” Haywood said dryly. He was staring past the bridge at a boat coming up the inlet towards them. He was absent mindedly rubbing the gigantic goose egg forming on the back of his head. That crawler had really done a number on him. If it hadn’t been for Drew, it would’ve been a lot worse. The kid may be a loudmouth, but he had the heart of a warrior. His sister and brother did to for that matter. They might not be related by blood, but they were family in every way that mattered.

  “You might want to cover up your hands.” Harley said. He was referring to the bandage covered skin that Yue had mauled to get them out of the scrape in the tunnel. Drew, LeBron and Jeff were all taking heavy doses of antibiotics to try and keep from getting infected. Lisa had bandaged them all up pretty well but given the environment they were living in infection was a constant danger. Those bandages had already been through a gunfight. One where every shot he fired had caused Jeff to recoil in pain.

  “Yeah, it might get awkward trying to explain why we have bite marks all over our arms and hands.” Drew said needlessly. He caught a few of the glances he was getting and realized it was a pretty douchebag thing to say. Yue couldn’t be feeling good about it. Considering she’d done it to save their lives Drew knew he should be doing everything he could to support her instead of putting her down. He opened his mouth to apologize but for once no words came out. He decided that was probably ok since he no doubt would’ve just said something stupid anyway.

  Yue hugged him. She knew what it meant when Drew sat there flapping his mouth open and closed like a fish out of water. Drew told her he was sorry and for some reason that tore Yue up. She started crying while he awkwardly held her and patted her on the back.

  “You trying to burp her or make her feel better?” LeBron asked. He was hoping to get a laugh out of Yue, but she just started crying harder.

  “The boats getting pretty close.” Harley said. He was hoping to get Yue to focus on that. He recognized the symptoms of someone coming down. She must’ve skipped her morning dose in the hopes that they’d be on a crawler free island before night fall. She’d been trying to stay clear headed during the day. She wanted to be an early warning system in case something happened. That’d just been too much for her to handle in the city. There were too many of the infected in the buildings and under the bridges.

  Yue got control of herself. She wiped her nose on Drew’s shoulder, dried her eyes and wen
t to stand beside Jeff. The three with bite marks made sure their bandages were covered. They pulled on gloves and worked their shirt and jacket sleeves down as low as they’d go. It shouldn’t be a huge deal if the guys in the boat saw that they had some bloody bandages. You didn’t stroll around a city filled with the infected and not end up with a few scratches. Especially not the way they did it.

  The boat that pulled up was the kind that the Coast Guard would use to perform raids in the harbor on suspected drug traffickers. A .50-caliber machine gun was mounted in the front of the assault style raft. Three men were aboard the small vessel. The one they couldn’t help focusing on was the guy in the bow of the boat with his hands on that big ass machine gun. He had it pointed directly up the bank in their direction.

  “We’ve also got a guy with a sniper rifle. He’s pretty awesome. He sits over on the other end of the bridge at night killing them things. He uses a starlight scope or some shit to bang holes through crawler skulls all night long.” The man speaking hopped off the boat into the knee deep water and waded ashore.

  He was wearing a standard pair of camouflage BDUs. He had a holstered pistol hanging off a webbed belt. Other than a big knife on the other side he didn’t seem to be carrying any other weapons. Not that he really needed to with a machine gun and a sniper backing him up. He was about medium height with salt and pepper hair that was neatly trimmed. He had black anchors pinned on his lapels indicating his rank of senior chief.