Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  Yue sat up in the dim red light of the train car. They’d dimmed it down so everyone could try to get some sleep. A skinny man in camouflage was walking down the aisle waking people up. There was probably a lot of people he’d helped by yanking them out of nightmares. It was a lot more likely he’d get punched than thanked though. A lot of people woke up scared and fighting these days. Yue herself had been punched hard by Jeff when she woke him up in the middle of a nightmare one time. Yue watched the skinny soldier as he completed his rounds. She was amused to see the way the man reached in to shake people awake then quickly snatched his arm out and stood back. He must’ve learned the hard way about waking people up as well.

  Yue yawned and climbed out of her bunk. Walking down the aisle she saw Lisa trying to wake Drew up. Leaving her to that ridiculously difficult chore Yue went and got herself a glass of lemonade out of the fridge they’d setup by the couches. They’d really turned this train into the lap of luxury she mused as she sipped at the crystal light infused water. Water that’d been pumped out of a stream and boiled before being stored in a ten gallon jug with a couple of purification tablets thrown in. There was a good chance it wouldn’t kill them all. They’d be back to using tasters to make sure none of them were going to die from cholera before too long. There was a job the infected could do for them.

  “Get some sleep?” Lindsey asked walking over to talk to her.

  “A little bit. I don’t know that I’ve had an entirely restful night anywhere outside of Weathertop.” Yue said thinking longingly of the large fluffy mattresses in the air conditioned base. Not that they were necessarily roughing it on the train, but it was definitely a crowded space. Even with the squad scattered out over three cars it was crowded. It wasn’t even the whole squad. Some of their men were still back at Weathertop, others were in Fayetteville and a handful were scattered out on the road bringing them supplies as needed.

  “It’s just going to get worse. North Carolina and Virginia are kind of the civilized parts of the world now. Think about that for a minute.” Lindsey said pouring herself some of the lemonade.

  There was actually a lot to unpack in that short declaration. The seat of government for what was left of the USA was in Northern Virginia now. Fayetteville was evolving into one of the most secure cities on the East Coast. There were more outposts and bases along the coast. Especially in places where the water served as a wall to keep the infected out like up in Cape May, NJ. A lot of islands off the coast had been setup as refugee centers as well. From everything she’d heard the Caribbean had gone back to its cutthroat pirate days with the massive influx of refugees from different nations trying to take over the place.

  “You don’t think it’s better out on the West Coast or up in the mountains?” Yue asked.

  Lindsey shrugged. “Could be. If there’s a great place with plenty of resources and no infected, then they’re keeping their mouths shut. The last thing you’d want to do would be to advertise a place like that.”

  “I heard Australia was infection free.” Yue said.

  “Might be. I guess you also heard the way they keep it that way is by sinking any ship that gets close to their coast.” Lindsey said leaning back against the wall of the train. The car had stopped moving now. Lindsey signaled to one of her men to go ahead and pop the front door and make sure it looked safe outside. Everyone had already been studying the camera feeds. A map of the city of Charlottesville had been passed around so the troops could start getting a feel for the city.

  They were stopped on the tracks right across from the University of Virginia Medical Center. A sprawling medical complex that was most likely full of the infected. Lindsey and a couple of her patrol leaders had started circling areas on the map. Charlottesville was a nice sized little city with lots of juicy target areas. Even though they only had a few hours until it’d get dark Lindsey was determined to make the most of it. She quickly worked to identify areas that should have a high density of crawlerz come nightfall. When she was done, she started talking to her bomb and tech guys. She was making sure the areas she’d circled would be able to be seen on camera. It was also kind of important that the bombs go off when they pressed the buttons.

  Given only a few hours Lindsey would’ve been worried that they needed more time when they’d first started doing this. The patrols she sent out now had this down to a science. One big advantage to setting up booby traps for the infected was that they didn’t have to be in the least bit subtle. It wasn’t like a Road Runner and Wily Coyote scenario. They could string wire on spray paint blast zones and put the claymores in plain sight. By this point they also knew the best places to rig the mines. Despite all that something was bugging Lindsey. She felt like they were forgetting something obvious in their haste. Yue got it first.

  “Where’s the bait for those traps?” Yue asked looking down at the circles Lindsey and her crew had drawn on the map. Lindsey didn’t waste time slapping herself in the face. Of course they couldn’t just setup bombs everywhere and expect the infected to hang out in those locations to get blown up. After thirty days of doing this, she’d forgotten the reason the infected showed up to be blown up in the first place.

  Lindsey hopped on the radio with the engineer. A quick discussion later she was dispatching a small group of men to help the engineer decouple the last car on the trains. She was spitting out commands and marking new places on the map. All the new locations were along the tracks. She wanted to leave the individual cars in the places she planned on setting the traps up along the tracks. Each car would have its complement of men sitting in it to be the needed bait for the traps. The techs were frantically slinging wire and repeaters to build out what would be needed for the night.

  They had two cars decoupled and were planning on calling it a day when reports came in over the radio that one of the patrols had taken fire. At least one man on their side had been hit. It was a minor wound that wasn’t expected to do him any serious harm. They’d all forgotten that men with guns might also be out there. Like worrying about the godless infected wasn’t enough to keep them stressed out in the field. Lindsey ordered the other patrols to stay frosty and hurry up with the deployment. It was beginning to get a little too close to dusk for comfort.

  A pickup truck was spotted driving away through the trash covered streets. Lindsey told the squad men to hold their fire and let whoever it was leave. Most likely the men driving away in the pickup had been the ones who shot at them earlier. It’d probably been a case of mistaken identity. A couple of looters who’d seen the soldier stumbling around in the garbage covered courtyard trying to rig up explosives. They might have panicked thinking he was a surger. Her guys had immediately returned fire so there was a good chance someone in that pickup was wounded already anyway. At the very least they’d need a change of underwear from the shock of having a ‘surger’ shoot back at them!

  Gathered together on the train Yue, Drew, Harley and Lisa reclaimed their seats on the expensive Italian leather once more. Yue had never actually left the train. She was feeling the massive psychic hum of the infected lurking in the large buildings surrounding the tracks. She had very little desire to walk out in the open where it’d be even worse. Especially if any of the infected caught sight of her. She’d been content to watch the monitors from the comfort of the couch. Most of her time had been spent munching on the barely ripe apples they’d harvested off a tree in an orchard the train had stopped by earlier.

  They were taking a much less traveled route than the train tracks to Fayetteville. That was another reason why they were moving so slowly. It didn’t seem like they were able to keep going for more than fifteen minutes before they had to stop and send men to clear something off the tracks. Not to mention the periodic stops to inspect bridges or other infrastructure and make sure it was safe to use. Not that speed had really mattered. No matter where they’d set up for the night, they’d always managed to attract a decent sized crowd of crawlerz.

  Tonight should be a s
olid win. They’d never tried splitting the cars up like this before. It seemed like a no brainer now that they’d done it though. They were hopefully going to get three nights worth of crawlerz in a single evening. They’d run cables to the other trains to provide network connectivity for the cameras and to make sure they could set off the explosives. The cameras were powered by the network, so they were fine. The people in the actual train cars were going to spend the night with minimal creature comforts. Not being connected to the diesel engine power plant had serious drawbacks from a comfort perspective. Yue for one was happy she didn’t have to be subjected to those drawbacks. She liked having her own little fan blowing cold air on her face all night long in the air conditioned cabin.

  As dusk fell the patrols all wrapped up their tasks and returned to their assigned cars. Thanks to the late start, getting shot at, and splitting up the train cars they were cutting it a lot closer than normal. They spotted the first crawlerz nosing around less than ten minutes after the last patrol had boarded a train for the night. Other than being spread apart and having to watch more cameras the night looked like it was going to be a repeat of every night they’d spent hunting the infected this month. They’d watch until the target areas were full of the infected then set off the corresponding explosives for that zone. An hour or so later the area was typically just as full, so they’d trip the second set and so on.

  Experience had shown you normally only got off about three good rounds with the mines before the crawlerz stopped standing in those specific areas. That wasn’t an absolute though. They’d had some nights were they only set off one round before the crawlerz thinned out so much it wasn’t worth wasting claymores on them. Other nights they’d set them off every thirty minutes and wished they’d set up more of them. In anticipation of this being one of those maximum kill nights they’d set explosives six deep in each main kill zone. They were hoping to post their biggest numbers yet.

  At eleven Lindsey ordered the first round of explosives to be detonated. They ended up rolling through all six sets of mines at each of the three train cars that night. Lindsey giving the orders to set them off every twenty to thirty minutes. If they’d had more mines deployed, they would’ve set those off as well. The cars had been swarmed by the crawlerz. Just based on what they saw on the screens Lindsey was estimating the body count was going to be in the thousands once they were able to get a good look at the murder scenes in the morning.

  The ferocity of the psychic waves washing over the trains had everybody getting high on some sort of pill. It was the only way to stay functional. You could tell the people who’d tried to stick it out without taking anything. They were the ones in the corners with their entire bodies shaking in fear. They were few and far between in this group of people though. Given the overindulgence in pharmaceuticals Lindsey opted to announce they were all going to be able to sleep in a little bit the next day. That announcement cemented her as the best leader ever in the opinions of the majority of people on board.

  Chapter 4: Fight Fire with Fire

  “Smallpox!” LeBron said excitedly.

  “It’s like four in the morning.” Jeff said in a tone of voice utterly devoid of excitement.

  “Instead of anthrax why don’t we use smallpox or something like that?” LeBron said again. He was almost bouncing with excitement.

  “Because smallpox doesn’t exist and if it did it’d kill all of us to.” Jeff answered.

  “We have the vaccine for it in Atlanta. If we have the vaccine, then don’t we need to have the virus too?” LeBron’s excitement had faded a tad bit. Going on almost no sleep the smallpox idea had seemed like a stroke of genius. Standing in Jeff’s doorway being hammered with cold hard facts it was losing its luster.

  “We have a tiny bit of it in Atlanta. It’d take a long time to ramp it up. A long time and a lot of resources we don’t have. All to release another virus on the world?” Jeff was looking at LeBron in a disappointed way. He honestly expected better from the kid.

  “It’d be a virus that we’d be vaccinated against ahead of time. One that wouldn’t linger around like the anthrax spores. Is there something else out there we could use? Maybe they have stockpiles of it in another country like Russia?” LeBron was grasping at straws now. He yawned as his eyelids got inexplicably heavy.

  “I’ll put some thought into it but for now you should go back to bed. We’re not shooting anthrax cannons in the sky anytime soon if I can help it. I need you clearheaded and rested so we can figure out how we’re going to wipe out the infected without wiping out the living along with them.” Jeff said goodnight to an embarrassed looking LeBron. LeBron turned and tiredly trudged back down the corridor towards his own room.

  Now that he’d been woken up Jeff found he couldn’t fall back asleep. After tossing and turning for a couple of hours he gave up and headed for the galley to grab some coffee. In his mind he was comparing the smallpox idea LeBron had conjured up against the anthrax idea that SECDEF wanted to pull the trigger on. Both options had serious drawbacks. The main one being how easily either one of the bioweapons could end up backfiring on them. On top of backfiring on them no one seemed to be concerned about the survivors out there. The people who’d managed to survive the crawlerz would be impacted if different regions started being sprinkled with some form of deadly pixie dust.

  It was a game no one seemed able to win. If they kept up the train rides and explosives, then everyone currently fighting would be dead of old age before they’d reached a tipping point in the war against the crawlerz. Especially if the infected started avoiding the trains thanks to this groupthink theory Yue had cooked up. LeBron’s point about the Russians or some other foreign government having stockpiles of a bioweapon had Jeff thinking as well. If another country had the means to hose them down with some sort of virus, then what was stopping them from doing it? Jeff had lost track of the rest of the world in his focus on rebuilding the United States. Now he was thinking that might have been a critical error. He finished his coffee and started making his way towards Shaun’s office.

  Jeff was informed the President had not made it into the office yet. He ended up waiting in a room right outside the space Shaun had taken to working out of. It was another mahogany covered section of the base. Taxpayer money poured into a sanctimonious offering to the gods of bureaucracy. As much as Jeff disdained the trappings of power, he still appreciated some of the perks. A major one being that the coffee in this section of the base was markedly better than the black muck he’d just swilled down in the galley.

  Jeff was in a very caffeinated state by the time Shaun showed up. Seeing the President stomping in with a water bottle in one hand and his head in his other Jeff was worried that an in depth conversation may be an issue. He didn’t even try talking beyond random pleasantries as he watched an obviously very hung over Shaun forcing himself to eat toast and drink coffee. They were in Shaun’s office with Jeff on a couch and Shaun still nursing a cup of coffee when SECDEF walked in.

  Jeff looked like he’d just rolled out of bed and Shaun looked like he’d just stumbled in from a long night on M street. Both men were unshaven with hair that would’ve looked a lot better covered by a hat. To top it off Shaun had a serious case of the whiskey sweats. His office was starting to smell like the floor in the back of a dive bar where they serve a lot of the cheap stuff. Not that Shaun had been drinking the cheap stuff. Whatever he’d had he’d definitely drank a lot of it based on the red eyes and general miserableness of his features.

  SECDEF on the other hand looked like the guy on a recruiting poster asking people to sign up and make America safe. He could’ve been the general officer in pretty much any military movie. The guy with the sharply creased khakis and hard ass attitude. He reminded Jeff of Jack Nicolaus in a ‘Few Good Men’. It was way too early to be dealing with him. He’d probably been up for three hours already shining his shoes and polishing his buttons. Whatever it was people like him did in the hours before normal people started
banging on the snooze button. Judging by the expression on his face the President wasn’t super thrilled to see his SECDEF this early either.

  “Good morning Mr. President.” SECDEF said coming to attention and sharply saluting. Shaun waved his hand in the air near his head and continued trying not to puke.

  “You want some more toast?” Jeff asked getting up. He’d be happy to go on a toast run. He didn’t feel like he was ready for a verbal sparring session with SECDEF this early. Hopefully Shaun wouldn’t agree to launch a bioweapons attack on the entire West Coast just to get SECDEF to leave him alone so he could rest his head.

  “You should stay here. This concerns you.” SECDEF said.

  “It’s way too early to listen to you two get in another argument around the morality of mass murder.” Shaun said cradling his head in his hands and giving SECDEF an accusatory look.

  “No sir. We can table that discussion until later. Although I do feel it needs to be addressed soon. This is related to another matter. We received a request for assistance from Captain Lindsey’s team about ten minutes ago. They were attacked sir. Attacked by men with guns. The captain indicated the men who were attacking were military trained.” SECDEF reported.