Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  “We’re lucky to have made it last night. There’s a ton of dead crawlerz out there.” LeBron said.

  “Not everybody made it.” Marshall admonished. The helicopters they’d flown back in were missing a lot of the men who’d rode out in them initially. Not to mention the helicopter wreckage still embedded in the roof of the warehouse. LeBron kept quiet. He hadn’t intended the comment like that. He considered himself rebuked.

  They hadn’t been able to get in touch with the people inside the warehouse yet. They sat down in the parking lot and Marshall continued pressing the button on the walkie talkie. He kept trying to get an answer from someone inside. They finally got out of the helicopter and walked towards the warehouse. Halfway across the parking lot Marshall finally got in touch with the refugees inside. They were trapped.

  The bulk of the men and women in the building had made it into the safe room in time. The safe room was located towards the front of the warehouse. They’d reinforced some administrative offices with steel to make them safe. They’d even had a route to get out in the event the warehouse filled up with crawlerz. That route had been destroyed by a certain gigantic helicopter. On having all of this information relayed to him LeBron’s first ask was to be given a layout of the warehouse with the safe rooms clearly marked on them.

  “Our men are already working on a plan to get in and rescue them.” Jeff said handing over copies of the rough drawings Marshall had worked on for them.

  “Hopefully there‘s no need to do all that.” LeBron said. He pulled the drawing around and pointed out that the bulk of the warehouse was free of refugees. The parts that did have refugees in them were reinforced with steel.

  “What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

  “We shoot holes through the wall and ceiling to let the sun in. We knock out the wall on this side over here and setup a shooting gallery. We should be able to clear most of the crawlerz out that way.” LeBron explained.

  “Where are we taking all these people after we get them out?” Jeff asked. The refugees wouldn’t be able to stay in the warehouse any longer. Marshall was listening in on the conversation. He was able to answer that question.

  “We’ve got multiple safe places within an hour’s drive. If we can get them out within the next few hours, we should be good. Just try not to damage all the vehicles we have around the back. Unless you want to be making a lot of extra trips on the helicopter.” Marshall said.

  Thirty minutes later they had their plan of attack all figured out. The pilot had messed around with his radio until he was able to pick up the broadcasts from the refugees inside. The refugees were all laying on the ground inside with whatever cover they could find. They were freaking out as they could hear the crawlerz working to beat their way into the safe rooms. Safe rooms that’d been seriously compromised by the impact of the chinook crashing into the building.

  Jeff gave the pilot a thumbs up. The pilot increased rotor speed to get off the ground then flipped the switch to make the guns hot. Without any further warning he let off a stream of bullets that would traverse the warehouse wrecking anything they touched. Carefully studying the diagram he’d been given the pilot clinically shot up the building before concluding with a rocket to the roof on the side opposite the refugees. That was pretty much the extent of the damage he was comfortable doing with people inside the building. It’d been confirmed the families of the militia were in the warehouse with them.

  The pilot set the helicopter back down on the blacktop. Everyone piled out with the exception of the pilot who stayed in to hit any spots that needed some extra TLC. To avoid any friendly fire incidents they took their time and did it by the numbers. Practicing extreme fire discipline they targeted the crawlers inside who were mesmerized by the light peeping in from the bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. One corner of the building had pretty much collapsed after getting blasted with a rocket. There was no telling how many of the infected were hiding in the rubble.

  Following a complete circuit of the store they began working on clearing a path for the people trapped inside to safely get out. Jeff couldn’t help but think how nice it would’ve been to have Yue here for this part. She could’ve told them where to focus their fire and what the safest way out of the building would be. Drew had missed out by hanging back as well. They’d tossed at least a hundred grenades into the building during their circuit to clear out as many of the monsters as they could.

  Men climbed into the shadowy interior. They carefully made their way over to where the safe rooms were. Shots were fired and a few more grenades were tossed. Jeff was hopeful that those were just to take out crawlerz who were already dazed by the sunlight. The handful of men standing around outside cheered when the first refugees emerged blinking into the light of day. Other than some weird looks at the squad members with the more flamboyant facial ink the refugees showed no real sign of animosity towards their rescuers.

  Jeff didn’t relax until the last refugee made it out of the building. Unsure of how evil he was considered by them he hung back versus getting too involved. The corpsmen from the helicopter had no such compunctions. They charged right in to help with a variety of ailments and injuries. There were even a few pregnant women who got extra attention from the corpsmen. Captain Marshall jumped in to help with the most serious cases. During a break he walked over to see how Jeff and the others were doing.

  “You might not be such an evil traitor to humanity after all.” Marshall said leaning against the side of the helicopter next to Jeff.

  “We did help you rescue all these people. That’s got to score us some points.” Jeff responded.

  “You kind of got them into this situation in the first place. Remember the part when you attacked us and smashed a helicopter into the building that we were storing all our supplies in? Oh yeah, then you shot the living hell out of it just in case anything had survived.” Marshall replied immediately.

  “You attacked us first.” Jeff said. They were both talking in a normal tone of voice. They were more thoughtful than angry.

  “All the people who wanted to attack you are dead. The rest of us just want to live in peace. We’re still hurting from getting hung out to dry when this all started but I think we’ll come around.” Marshall said looking back over at the line of wounded the corpsmen were carefully prioritizing. He was leaning forward getting ready to get back into it.

  “You should come around quickly. I don’t know that I can keep talking people out of dropping bombs on you. That includes by accident. We’re going to keep cleaning out the country and that might mean bombs or whatever else. You’d be well served to be on our side for all of that.” Jeff said.

  “Is that a threat?” Marshall asked turning to stare at Jeff.

  “Absolutely. I’d a million times rather threaten you enough to make you come on board than fight you again.” Jeff said seriously.

  “Alright then.” Marshall turned and walked back towards the line of wounded. He hadn’t said anything out loud yet, but his mind was spinning. After spending the day with Jeff he was having a hard time reconciling the evil image that’d been pitched about him with the tall sincere man willing to risk his life to save a group of strangers. The President had been pretty prickly, but Marshall was ninety percent sure that’d been mostly bluster. Either way the prospect of trying to keep this group alive on his own was daunting. Having allies could very well be the difference between life and death in this struggle they found themselves in. If that required bending the knee to a government that’d deserted them then so be it.

  Chapter 15: Pass the Morphine

  “What a sorry looking group.” Shaun said walking into Yue’s infirmary room. He wasn’t wrong. If bruises and sprains were spam, then they’d be end of the world rich. Yue was still lying in bed barely moving. She was conscious but riding a physician endorsed morphine high that left her randomly saying weird things. Otherwise the itching in her forearms and finger drove her nuts. They’d taken skin grafts from other parts o
f her body to try and patch her up. It wasn’t like they had the expertise in house to do that. Although thanks to the proliferation of roadside bombings in the past couple of decades the doctors weren’t complete strangers to it either. To try and make sure their efforts paid off they were keeping Yue knocked out while she recovered.

  “Can someone let the orange raccoon out?” Yue asked quietly from her resting position on the hospital bed.

  “Absolutely sis. I’ll take care of that right now.” LeBron answered. He’d taken over the seat by the head of Yue’s bed. He reached up and held her hand tenderly until she drifted back off into the land of housebroken multicolored raccoons. Talking to a drugged up Yue was a surreal experience. The raccoons who needed to be let out were a welcome change from the screaming about bugs in her arms that’d happened the night before.

  “Did you hear from Marshall?” Jeff asked. He’d gotten off the helicopter when it landed at Weathertop and gone straight down to see Yue. They’d left the radio equipment necessary to communicate between Marshall and Weathertop back with Marshall.

  “I did. I swung by to let you know that thanks to your efforts they’re ready to come fully on board. They also dropped that whole sovereign land requirement. I told him he could call himself the governor of South Carolina if he wanted to. As long as we supply the bullets and bombs, they’re willing to kill as many crawlerz as they can.” Shaun said.

  “You made him a governor?” LeBron asked. Drew, Lisa and Harley were in the room as well. The three of them were fast asleep after a long night dealing with Yue thinking her arms were infested with bugs. Luckily the doctors had figured out the right medicine ratio to magically get rid of the bug paranoia.

  “They made me President so why not? When this is all over with, we can have lawyers and constitutional scholars tell us what we should’ve done. Until then we’re just going to do whatever works. I don’t think Thomas Jefferson and the rest of those wig wearing rebels were thinking about a zombie apocalypse when they whipped up the constitution.” Shaun replied with a grin. He’d evidently spent some time thinking it through.

  “Fair enough.” LeBron answered with his own tired grin.

  “Doctors tell me she’s probably going to be kept under sedation for a couple of weeks at a minimum. Even after that she’s going to still be healing. Captain Lindsey is on the same sort of schedule. Except there’s a good chance she’s going to lose her arm.” Shaun informed the group.

  “Does that mean we’re off for a couple of weeks?” Jeff asked. He already knew the answer, but it was fun to ask. Plus this way he didn’t have to break the news to everybody. Although he still might since half the people in the room were sleeping right through the whole conversation.

  “Not so much. We’ve got one governor working on one state. I need him supplied and operational. We can reinforce him with men from the ships. That’ll also make sure he stays in line. That leaves forty-nine more states we need to appoint governors for.” Shaun had latched on to the recent success. He was all in on this governor idea.

  “I thought SECDEF was just going to poison all the infected?” Jeff asked. He was glad that plan didn’t sound like it was on the table anymore.

  “We really don’t have the experts available to pull off something like that. There’s a lot of steps involved where the people who could help are either dead or in some cases just refuse to help. For a lot of the same reasons you brought up. So for now we’re going to keep doing it the hard way. SECDEF has the locations for the main refugee groups we’ve located. He expects to see you in the briefing center first thing tomorrow morning.” Shaun said smiling even broader. He knew he was making it awkward, but he needed Jeff and SECDEF to start working together.

  “Sounds great. I’ll bring cookies.” Jeff answered settling into an oversized easy chair that’d been brought into the large room. It was one of those rooms that were normally used for two people. They’d pulled back the curtain divider and taken over the entire thing. Once settled in they’d highly discouraged the staff from adding anyone else to the room. Considering Jeff outranked almost everyone else on the base visiting hours weren’t really a thing for them. Shaun shook his head, said goodbye and left after making sure to let everyone know if Yue needed anything it was to be provided immediately.

  “He expects us to find forty nine more random refugee Rambos to command the forces in each state? That’s seriously his plan?” Drew asked. He’d been awake and listening the whole time. He’d started self-regulating himself when around people he thought he might offend. Lisa had told him to stop acting like an idiot in front of important people. Drew figured you couldn’t get much more important than the President.

  “Aren’t there still some governors out on the ships or in the camps?” LeBron asked.

  “The ones here all got killed when Yogi Bear stole their picnic baskets.” Drew said. He saw the looks that he was getting from LeBron and Jeff. Grinning he threw out the catch phrase that was way too often appropriate for covering up something stupid he’d just said. “Too soon?”

  “He’s actually right.” Jeff said shaking his head slightly. “Most of the governors from the East Coast were here. There are still a few governors in the Cheyenne Mountain base. Unless they were dumb enough to throw a picnic outside. Politicians aren’t what we need though. We need leaders. We need warriors. I don’t think Shaun really cares what we call the people we recruit. If the governors want to lead, they can leave the base and go fight.” Drew and LeBron both knew the likelihood of the lifelong politicians being willing to go out into the field and actually lead. Even if they were willing, they were probably not able. The instances of surviving senior level politicians with significant military experience was minimal.

  “You really going to bring SECDEF cookies?” Drew asked after a long period of silence. They’d all lapsed into states of contemplation. The President was constantly readjusting how he wanted to attack the crawler epidemic. A few days ago he’d seemed like he was pretty excited about the whole bioweapons idea. They were all happy he’d opted out of that approach at least. LeBron had described the Anthrax plan as ‘putting out a fire by dousing it in gasoline’.

  LeBron stood up and stretched asking Jeff if he wanted to take his spot next to Yue. Jeff moved over and LeBron started for the door. He stopped halfway to the door and asked Drew if he wanted to come with him.

  “Depends on where you’re going.” Drew answered.

  “I should have the latest satellite data on the crawlerz. Pretty much the same stuff SECDEF wants to show to Jeff tomorrow. I want to look it all over first and see if we can spot any trends or anything.” LeBron said.

  “If you can find something that’ll make me look smart that’d be appreciated.” A tired looking Jeff called out from his post beside Yue. Everyone else in the room was still sleeping. Jeff was planning on joining the slumber party as soon as they left. LeBron nodded and left with Drew behind hm. Drew had paused to look over and make sure Lisa looked like she was doing ok. She wasn’t on cloud nine like Yue but the stuff the doctors had prescribed for her got her pretty close.

  LeBron and Drew walked down to the suite of offices that Jeff had been given to run his operation from. Drew gave Jeff constant crap for having been given such a nice space to work in. He knew that LeBron earned it though. Following the whole senior leadership picnic fiasco a whole lot of office space had become available. For some reason no one had asked Drew if he needed a desk yet.

  LeBron sat down and turned on his laptop. It was seriously weird working in this plush office with lights and laptops. There weren’t many places left in the world you could do what he was doing right now. He logged onto the wireless server and went to his shared drive. The shared drive had a word document in it with links to the video and other data that’d been captured. He started clicking on the links. Forgetting Drew was even in the room with him he watched video after video that supported one of his main theories about the crawlerz.

  “Wha
t are all the circles and dots for?” Drew asked. LeBron was startled for a second. He’d forgotten that Drew was even in the room with him. The circles and dots were painting a foreboding picture.

  “A bunch of us are starting to think that the crawlerz are coming together to form large mobs. It makes sense when you think about how that groupthink thing of theirs works. The more of them there are in a single place the ‘smarter’ they are.” LeBron said. Drew nodded in agreement then added another tidbit he’d learned from talking to Yue.

  “Makes sense. It goes along with another theory that Yue has about the change from surger to crawler too.” Drew paused to make sure he was saying the next part right. “The infection opens up the psychic ability of the infected, but they don’t turn into crawlerz until they join the crawler network.”

  “Right. So more evidence that letting them get together in big groups is bad. A couple of these groups are in the thousands at least. That’s what the different sized circles indicate.” LeBron said pointing out different areas with large concentrations of the overlapping red circles and dots.