Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  “Great idea. We should absolutely turn around and drive back to where we just ambushed the hell out of your little train convoy. Or we could just keep going the way we want to and not get killed.” Another of the men answered. Someone further back in the truck told them to both shut their mouths. After that it was impossible to get any of them to say another word for the rest of the drive.

  The truck stopped and the back was opened. The soldiers all jumped out while the prisoners were forcefully dragged out. Lindsey had passed out from the pain in her arm. Which was probably a good thing. The men who unloaded her from the truck didn’t care if they put her in additional pain when they dragged her out or not. Lisa looked up from where she was being dragged to the edge of the truck bed to be taken out and started laughing.

  “You supervillains are using a Super Walmart as your hideout? You morons are so dead.” She cackled. The man who was supposed to help her down to the ground stepped out of the way. The man who’d dragged her to the edge of the truck bed pushed her out face first. She yelped as she tumbled through the air to crash face first into the hard concrete. Her wrists and ankles still firmly clasped behind her back by the large tie wraps they’d been bound with. The tie wraps that were rapidly killing off the circulation to each of their appendages.

  Yue was worried that she couldn’t feel her toes or fingers anymore. She guessed Lisa was going to be a little more concerned with the broken nose she’d just gotten slamming face first into the concrete. Lindsey was completely out of it now. The men who’d been taken had all grumbled and cussed but that’d been the extent of their resistance thus far. They all seemed to accept that they were now officially screwed. Yue wondered how many of them had been smart enough to pop a bunch of Oxy before they’d been taken prisoner. That would explain the weirdly resigned expressions on their faces.

  The prisoners were laid out on the ground in the Walmart parking lot. Yue watched from the highly uncomfortable concrete as someone drove the truck away. They drove it over and into the garden center attached to the end of the building. That would effectively hide the truck from any helicopters or satellites. That wasn’t good for any rescuers who may come looking for them.

  “Excuse me can you take the tie wraps off the woman with the broken arm who’s unconscious?” One of the men lying on the ground asked. He was looking over at Lindsey with concern. Lindsey’s arm was not resting at anything resembling a natural angle. It was pretty disturbing to look at. For something to be disturbing to look at to this group it had to be pretty bad.

  The squad member was kicked in the face for his gallantry. The man who’d kicked him in the face began pulling his leg back for another shot. The second kick was interrupted when someone standing by the store ordered them to hurry up and roll the prisoners inside. Each of them was picked up and crammed uncomfortably into a shopping cart. Lindsey was still out cold. Yue hoped the captain stayed that way until they could get some serious painkillers into her.

  Yue looked around with interest as they were wheeled into the store. A skinny pale man wearing a black leather trench coat was standing with his hands on his hips watching them. The store only had the glass doors in one section. Those doors had been completely covered in solid sheets of reinforced steel. Whoever had done it looked like they must have aced welding in high school shop. It was way cleaner looking than most of the hack jobs Yue saw in the different places they’d stayed at. The inside of the store was lit up with battery powered lanterns. The cavernous space had been emptied out along the front wall where the nail salon and the bank and such were situated. Yue assumed that was for a fallback in case the infected managed to get in through some unforeseen chink in the Walmart armor.

  The guy dressed up in the black suit and long coat pointed to the nail salon area. The guards dutifully rolled the bound prisoners in there. They were yanked out of the carts one by one. The tie wraps were replaced with standard metal handcuffs. Each of them was shackled to a different section of the chain link cage that covered the front of the store. When there wasn’t enough room for all seven of them to be evenly spread out, they handcuffed Lisa right next to Lindsey. Yue figured that was because Lindsey looked half dead anyway.

  One of the guards sat down in the comfortable nail salon chair and the rest of them left. The man sitting in the chair appeared to be a decent enough guy. At least compared to some of the ones they’d met thus far. Lisa asked him if they could get some some painkillers for Lindsey.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you. If you talk too much, I’m supposed to hurt you. I don’t want to do that. Can we all just sit here quietly for a little while?” The guard answered. There really wasn’t any good way to argue with that. He’d said it firmly and obviously meant it. He sounded much more scared of whoever had given him his orders than he was of hurting them.

  “What kind of man are you? You’re going to let a couple of women sit here and die of thirst? Women who just got beat up by your little woman beating pals? You going to come over here and hurt me now little boy? Why don’t you try it!” Lisa spit the last bit at him. Her eyes were flashing with rage. Her face was covered in blood from her shattered nose. She was handcuffed to a chain link security fence but in that moment she was terrifying. The guard looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

  “Please just settle down.” The guard tried again. A small group of men emerged out of the shadows right as he said it.

  “Please just settle down.” The man in the black coat said in a whiney voice. “Private Spencer what were your orders?” The man asked switching to a strong authoritative voice.

  “If they spoke up, I was to hurt them sir.” Private Spencer answered.

  “You do everything this wanna be Batman asks you to do?” Lisa took the opportunity to spit a big glob of blood at the skinny man dressed in all black.

  “Private Spencer, shut her up.” The man in the long coat said with a flicker of annoyance in his voice.

  “Yes sir.” The private said miserably. He walked over towards Lisa and then just kind of stood there. He stared down at her then looked back at the man ordering him to shut her up.

  “Hi.” Lisa said brightly. She had a big grin on her face. Yue wished she was closer to Lisa. At this point she’d have kicked Lisa herself to shut her up. The male members of the suicide squad were staying quiet, but Yue could sense them tensing up. These were men who’d spent the last year jumping into hell holes and fighting their way out. They were in no way intimidated by these Walmart warriors. She got more of a feeling of resignation from them. Like they knew what was going to happen and didn’t think there was too much they could do about it. It was almost like they were welcoming the end of it all.

  The leader nodded at one of his other men. The tough looking guy took three long strides over and aimed a kick at Lisa’s already shattered nose. It was exactly what Lisa had been hoping for. They’d screwed up big time by just shackling one of her hands to the fence. That left her with a whole lot of other limbs to use. She let the guy kick her in the face. She was busy throwing her arm up to grab the man’s foot immediately after he kicked her. She pulled him as hard as she could towards the fence. The guard lost his footing and tumbled sideways. He ended up landing in the squad member’s lap who was shackled next to Lisa.

  The squad member was ready. Knowing Lisa he’d been anticipating something like this. Without missing a beat he pulled the fallen guard’s pistol out of its holster and started shooting at the men standing in front of them. He tagged two of them before the others even realized what was going on. Lisa meanwhile had found the fallen man’s knife and was stabbing the camo wearing bully like a cranked up toddler trying to stick a straw in a Capri Sun. The goofy looking guy in the leather cape had hit the deck as soon as shots were fired. He pulled out a pistol and shot the shackled warrior next to Lisa multiple times. Standing back up he screamed for Lisa to put down the knife.

  She threw it at him as hard as she could. It banged off his forehead. The hard blow
made him drop his pistol as he reached up to his bleeding head in pain. Unfortunately it’d hit him hilt first instead of blade first, but Lisa was still feeling pretty good about it. Yue was watching everything go down in sheer amazement. She’d been hoping to get a chance to try and talk them out of this mess. After everything that just went down, she figured she should just start saying her prayers instead. They’d moved way past the talking stage. The man with the cape picked up his pistol and shot each of the surviving men shackled to the fence a few times. He was shooting them in their extremities so that they wouldn’t die fast.

  Private Spencer was staring at this total cluster with his mouth wide open. The man in the cape ordered him to get it all cleaned up and left. This time there was absolutely no talking to Spencer. His whole body was shaking as he gingerly collected the pistol off the floor by the dead suicide squad warrior. The shackled men who were still alive were moaning in pain as they slowly bled out. Spencer was careful to avoid getting anywhere close to them. Lindsey was still unconscious. There was blood everywhere. Lisa was cackling hysterically with blood bubbling out of her mouth. Yue was wondering if she had some Valium in one of her pockets. She could use a little pick me up right about now.

  When the man in the leather cape walked back over Spencer was on his hands and knees trying to mop up blood. He was trying his best to do it without getting within the reach of the men chained to the fence. He was ordered to get out of the way.

  “What’s your name?” Lisa asked the man.

  “I’m Kernel Schmidt of the Virginia Volunteers. I need you each to tell me who you are now please.” Schmidt asked politely. All trace of his former aggression was gone. Yue thought the psychopath probably wanted to wrap up this interview so he could get back to drowning kittens. The demented dude probably had lamp shades made of human skin.

  “Screw you. I just didn’t want to get killed by a guy I was calling anorexic Batman in my head.” Lisa cackled. More blood spat out of her mouth. On looking over at her Yue had another random thought. These guys better hope Drew didn’t show up and see how bad Lisa looked. They’d die a lot cleaner if they let a few crawlerz in the building.

  “I’m going to ask you questions now. If you don’t answer completely and honestly, I’ll put another bullet in one of your men. I already know enough to tell if you’re lying or not. It’s no accident we’re keeping the women alive. I’m looking to interrogate the leader of your group. I was informed you have a female captain. I’m also looking to find out what’s so special about a young lady called ‘Yue’”. The Kernel turned his attention to Yue. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess out of the three of them which one was most likely named Yue.

  The whoomphing sound of a chinook sized helicopter setting down amid a sudden onslaught of automatic weapons fire sounded from outside. Lisa heard men scrambling around inside the store to get to their battle stations. The Kernel calmly stood up and issued a few brief orders to the men who’d come running in to see what he wanted them to do. When they’d left to carry out his commands, he sat back down facing them again. He didn’t seem the least bit frazzled.

  “You might want to ask us those questions pretty fast. I’m thinking in about thirty minutes you’re going to be the one handcuffed to this fence.” Lisa said with a ferocious grin.

  Chapter 6: Dodging Bullets

  Drew pushed himself up off the sopping wet dead dude he’d collapsed on after Yue whacked him in the back of the head with a baseball bat. Looking down at his hands he saw that they were coated in sticky red blood. It hadn’t had time to congeal which meant he hadn’t been out for too long. He stood up leaning against the bunk beds beside him and looked around.

  The car was a complete disaster. The dead were scattered all over the place. One woman was lying in a bed holding a pillow to her stomach. The pillow was covered in blood. Drew walked over to help her. He touched her cold dead arm. He jerked his hand back and the pillow fell to the floor. Frantically scanning the other bodies in the car he was able to breathe again when he didn’t see any more women among the dead. He knew he should feel bad about the KIA all around him. It was hard to get around the massive surge of relief that neither Lisa nor Yue could be numbered among them though.

  He gathered his weapons and shoved as much ammunition as he could fit into his pack. Heaving the bulging bag up on his shoulders he walked over to the door leading outside. Noting the bullet hole riddled corpses piled up on the tracks he listened for any sounds that may indicate the enemy was still around. He could hear voices drifting on the breeze. If the ambushers had hung out at the scene of the crime, then they were idiots. Based on how efficiently they’d pulled off the ambush Drew was betting they weren’t idiots. He gripped his rifle in both hands and hopped down to the ground.

  He walked to the front of the train to check out the engine. It’d been blown to hell by some kind of explosive. Crossing the engine off as a lost cause he turned around and headed for car number two. It’d been set back a good hundred yards down the track from the car he’d been in. They’d wanted plenty of distance between the cars so they could attract the largest number of crawlerz to each. They’d have put it even further, but they only had so much cable to run between the cars to allow for control of the cameras and mines.

  There was something going on at the second car. By the time Drew got there he could make out a small group of men unloading a couple of the electric powered motorcycles. The giant man supervising them was easily distinguishable.

  “Hey Harley. You know which way they went?” Drew shouted once he got close enough.

  “I thought you were dead.” Harley walked over to meet Drew. He wrapped him up in a super painful bear hug.

  “Nope. Friendly fire from a baseball bat. When Yue says something, she means it. Didn’t you get shot?” Drew asked rubbing the back of his head ruefully.

  “Right in the Kevlar. Hurts like hell though. Going to be a cool looking bruise.” Harley responded. Done torturing Drew with hugging and emotions he turned to walk back over to the bikes.

  “You know which way they went?” Drew asked.

  “Yep. Only two bikes that survived the random machine gun fire. I take it you’re on the other one?” Harley asked needlessly. Drew had already run the original suicide squad soldier off who’d been planning on going with Harley.

  “Ready when you are.” Drew said looking around.

  “Cool. Follow me. I’m going to go slow once we get up ahead as we’ll be looking for tracks. Also, it hurts to breathe.” Harley said before he twisted the throttle and took off with a high pitched hum. Harley rocketed up and over the tracks in the direction he’d last seen the big, covered truck headed in. Drew followed right behind him. The remainder of the ambush survivors continued to sift around in the wreckage looking for anything useful.

  Harley rode up the street to where he’d seen the truck disappear from view. Drew pulled up next to him. Together the two of them searched for some clue as to which way the truck had gone. After staring around at the garbage in the road for about five minutes Drew counted out loud to three. They both pointed left at the same time. Their best guess was based on the way some of the trash on that side seemed to have gotten knocked around recently.

  Riding slowly they continued to look for clues to verify they’d gone in the right direction. Seeing fresh tire prints in the mud motivated them to speed up the search. Worry was eating away at Drew like maggots on a rotten apple. The burning bile from the acidic stress swirling in his stomach threatening to slosh up into his throat every time he hit a bump on the road. He couldn’t let go of the ice cold fear gripping him when he thought that he may lose Lisa or Yue. The lives of the two were coming down to Drew and a drugged out gypsy guessing which way they’d been taken based on the positions of garbage. Apocalyptic tea leaves predicting whether the two women who meant everything to him were going to live or die.

  They slogged their way through alleys and streets best guessing which way their prey
may have gone. They ended up on the on-ramp to the interstate with no freakin clue which way to go.

  “Now what?” Drew asked kicking the ground in frustration.

  “You go east, and I go west? Whoever finds the bad guys kills them and rescues the girls?” Harley said in exasperation. Neither of them could believe that any of this was happening. They were supposed to be cleaning out the infected not getting involved in whatever this was. Why would anybody want them to stop blowing up crawlerz? That was something any survivor should be able to stand behind.

  A familiar noise made Harley break out in an evil grin. He pointed out over the buildings to where a humongous helicopter with dual rotors was spinning to follow the interstate east. Drew’s echoing grin foretold the death of the men who’d taken his sister and his girl. They pegged the motors on their high tech Harley Davidsons as they took off in the same direction the helicopter was disappearing into.

  Drew passed Harley and kept pouring on the speed. He was driving suicidally fast already. He slalomed around random debris in the street. The trash coming at him so fast he barely had time to see it before he was shifting his weight to avoid it. The much more experienced rider was Harley. That experience made him a little more cautious than Drew when it came to opening up the throttle and just going for it. The main reason Drew had been able to pass him so quickly was that Harley weighed twice as much as him though.