The men boarded the helicopter and quickly subdued the pilot. More men began emerging from the buildings all around them. They were screaming for Jeff and his crew to lay down their weapons. One of the squad said screw it and literally blew a chaps wearing tough guy’s head off. Before the man’s decapitated body had even hit the ground the men ambushing them opened fire. They shot the squad member who’d shot back and half a dozen of the other men standing around him. The rest of the squad backed up around Jeff ready to take their cue from him. True to their namesake they had no problem going down in a blaze of glory if the man leading them chose to do so.
Jeff did not choose to do so. He called out for everyone to drop their weapons and surrender. He didn’t see how getting killed was going to help their mission at all. They were outnumbered and surrounded. They’d lost their air support. In less than five minutes on the ground they’d been completely beaten.
Chapter 17: Stupid is as Stupid does
Drew set his weapon down as ordered. This was a nightmare. It was going even worse than any of them had thought it would. Drew had pictured them circling around in the air exchanging fire with some lone gunmen on the ground before calling it a day and heading back to Weathertop. What’d happened instead was a colossal screw up. They’d basically handed these chap wearing asshats a brand new helicopter along with the pilot to fly it for them. These people had also scored one of the leaders of the US government. Said leader was currently on the ground spitting out blood.
Drew was also on the ground. He’d been kicked in the stomach versus catching a rifle butt to the face like Jeff had. He’d gotten the breath knocked out of him while he suffered the indignity of being extremely thoroughly searched for weapons. By the time they were through checking everybody for weapons two more squad members were dead. They hadn’t been able to just sit there while these guys beat them and took their stuff. The two squad members had taken three more of the Hell’s Angels rejects along with them.
Drew was feeling pretty good about not being handcuffed or zip tied. He even joked about it to LeBron as they were being ordered to their feet. Of course LeBron couldn’t tell what Drew was saying between the way Drew was wheezing and the way he was having orders yelled into his ears. As part of the search their clothes had been ripped off. Drew and LeBron were still rocking boxers at least. Looking around Drew saw that several of the squad were now completely bare assed as they were marched across the parking lot.
Confused as to why they were being taken back to the chinook Drew looked over at the leader of the group they’d been trying to talk to. He looked calm and in control. From the slightly bored expression on his face you’d think that blowing up helicopters and taking high level political prisoners was just another day at work for the guy. Not that the man necessarily knew he’d taken a high level political prisoner. Unlike the militia units they’d run into before who’d known about Jeff’s plans and seen his face these guys didn’t seem to have a clue. They just knew that the government had tried to take what was theirs. They’d treated the government the same as they would’ve any rival gang.
“In the chopper. Get in before your buddies start launching the fireworks. I want to be up in the air and out of here in the next five minutes. If we’re not, then I’m going to start killing people.” The leader of the gang announced the chilling message like he was telling them what was for lunch. Drew had no doubt the guy would shoot them in the backs if they didn’t hurry. He ran up the stairs as fast as he could and worked his way towards the back of the helicopter. It appeared to be where the prisoners were being put.
The rest of the men piled into the helicopter. Looking out the windows Drew saw that the rest of the men down below were busy vacating the area on a different kind of chopper. True to their biker heritage most of them were riding Harleys. Those chromed up middle aged crisis machines were easily attainable at the dealerships now. There was absolutely no credit check needed. As long as you had a set of loppers and the patience to search for the keys you were good to go.
Drew and the other prisoners weren’t offered seats as the helicopter filled up with the rough and tumble men that they’d sought to make their allies. Reading the patches more closely Drew saw several that said ‘Living Zombies’. He nudged LeBron and asked him if he thought that was the gang name these morons had picked out. LeBron laughed out loud at the comment. The laugh was interpreted as a slight by one of the men seated nearby. The greasy looking man stood up and punched LeBron in the face. LeBron slammed into the bulkhead then tried to figure out who’d hit him. It was hard to see the guy because Drew was already on top of the tall, greasy biker beating the hell out of him.
“Tell your boy to cut it out or I’m going to pop him right here.” One of the men seated on the bench was lazily pointing a shotgun over in LeBron and Jeff’s direction. He didn’t seem overly concerned about the guy Drew was beating the hell out of. More like he was just in charge of keeping everything calm in this section of the aircraft.
Jeff reached down and with the help of a squad member pulled Drew off the bloody gangbanger. None of the other men seemed to care that Drew had beat up the guy so he must not be super popular. That theory was backed up when Drew took a cheap shot and kicked the dude hard in the crotch right after he got himself back to his feet. The gangbanger fell backwards into his seat. He appeared teary eyed which was cracking up the guy sitting next to him. One of them kept trying to use an iPhone to get a picture of the guy crying.
Other than that excitement there wasn’t much else that happened for the next thirty minutes. Drew was almost knocked off his feet when the helicopter suddenly swooped down to land on the roof of a parking garage. They were forced out the doors of the helicopter onto the top of a large parking garage in the downtown of a medium sized looking city. Drew was so busy trying to hide the pistol he’d taken off the guy he’d beaten up that he didn’t hear a whole lot of what they were being told. It wasn’t easy hiding a large handgun when you’re wearing a pair of boxers that are already a size too small.
A cold breeze was blowing on the top of the parking garage. The grey haired man told them that the whole parking garage was filled with the infected. If they could make it out alive, they were free to go wherever. They were told they should think carefully about where they wanted to run to. The man chilled them all to the bone when he rattled off some very unwelcome information from the doorway of the chinook.
“You guys are pretty slick with the satellites and everything. We have our ways of finding out stuff too though. We know most of your leadership is holed up in Weathertop. We know that’s probably where this goat rodeo came out of today. If you happen to make it out of this garage alive you’ve got about five hours before we crack open your little secret base. We may not have harpoons, but we’ve got other toys that’ll do the trick. You shouldn’t have screwed with us. Thanks for the helicopter though. The pilot’s especially useful.” The man mock saluted them before closing the helicopter door.
“This sucks.” LeBron said loudly. The small group around him consisted of the seven squad members still alive plus Jeff and Drew.
“At least you’ve still got your underwear man. This is just messed up.” The squad member with the full skull tattooed on his face was named Billy. He didn’t look happy at all standing on the roof naked. It wasn’t a really great situation for any of them to be in. Once the sun went down there wouldn’t be anything holding the crawlerz on the below levels back from joining them on the roof.
“So you did just get your face tattooed.” Drew noted with a grin. Billy turned to face him with absolutely no attempt at modesty.
“I thought you had a girlfriend dude?” Billy joked. He was talking to Drew, but his eyes were roaming the top of the garage. It didn’t look like they’d been the only group to fall prey to this little gladiator rooftop adventure. Dead bodies were scattered all around the roof. Most of them had been chewed on pretty well.
“Why are you holding your butt like
that?” LeBron asked looking over at Drew oddly. Everyone else turned to look as well. Even in their current situation that phrase was still odd enough to capture everyone’s attention. With a triumphant smile Drew pulled the pistol out of the back of his boxers.
“I hope you have some Lysol wipes or something for that.” Billy said. He was grinning though. Having a firearm in their possession was a great morale booster. They didn’t have a lot more going for them standing around naked on top of a parking garage. They didn’t have much else to do besides wait for the sun to go down so the crawlerz could come eat them.
It turned out Billy wasn’t really super concerned with germs. He began circulating around the top of the parking garage searching the mummified corpses for any sort of weapons. Drew thought the dude was looking for clothes at first. That would’ve taken a stomach of steel to slide on a dead guy’s massively stained tighty whiteys. A full circuit and all Billy had to show for it was a pair of combat boots he was now proudly wearing. He looked like a complete idiot, but it was a good idea. Everyone else began searching for shoes for themselves as well.
“Well now the infected are screwed. We’ve all got shoes on.” Drew commented once they’d finished up their shoe shopping excursion. A couple of the guys were now wearing some truly disgusting outfits in an effort to cover their nakedness. Revolting or not they were going to have to do what they had to do to get out of this one. Pretty soon everyone was wearing horribly stained and ripped clothing. A few of the men had puked during the process of removing it from the dead then pulling it on themselves. Drew had decided he was good with a pair of too small sneakers he could barely lace up and his boxers.
He was also the one with the gun. There’d been a brief but spirited debate about whether he was the best person to carry the pistol. Drew had ended that argument very quickly by declaring that he was indeed the best person to be carrying their only weapon. He made a show of looking around and asking if anyone else had bothered risking their lives to snag a weapon on the way off the helicopter. It was beginning to get a little heated between Drew and one of the squad guys when Jeff ordered them both to stand down.
“Shut up both of you. Drew, hang onto the pistol for now. We need to get the hell off this parking garage. Once we get down, we need to figure out a way to contact Weathertop and tell them SECDEF’s idiotic plan is backfiring like crazy. I need ideas on how to go down through five levels of the infected without being ripped apart. I need those ideas now.” Jeff said. Everyone stared at him blankly. The possibility they were going to survive running the parking garage gauntlet was pretty much zero. Jeff wanted them to also be worried about trying to warn Weathertop?
LeBron was the only one not completely thrown off his game. He’d been considering the locked door on the corner of the roof. It would lead to stairs that would take them down to the first floor if they could get it open. He’d watched a couple of the squad guys do their best to open it and given up on that approach. Even if they did get it open there was no guarantee the doors on the other levels weren’t already wide open. The staircase could be the main place the infected were hanging out for all they knew.
The parking garage was completely bereft of cars on the top level where they were at. If they could find a car on a lower level, they may be able to get it moving fast enough in neutral to coast the rest of the way down. They could even possibly get beyond lucky and find a vehicle with the keys in it and a battery that miraculously still worked. That seemed a bit far-fetched though. The way LeBron saw it they needed someone to recon the lower levels and they needed weapons. Drew’s pistol wasn’t going to get them very far if it’s all they had to depend on.
“We could take the bones from the dead and make weapons. We also need to find out as much about the level below us as we can. I don’t think we need to make it the full five levels either. We should be able to jump from level two. Most of us should be able to walk away from that kind of a fall.” LeBron rattled off the thoughts bouncing around in his head. Jeff had asked for ideas. He hadn’t asked for good ideas.
“Femurs are the only ones that’ll be useful. About the same as a short baseball bat. Better than nothing, I guess. If we had time to carve them, we could make some daggers, but I don’t think we have that kind of time.” Billy said hesitantly. It figured the guy with the skull face tattoo would know the most about using bones as weapons.
Jeff took a second to absorb the femur conversation before addressing the group with a quick round of orders. “Billy take three men and start ripping out leg bones. Drew, you take three men and go down the ramp as far as you can get without dying. Come back and let us know what you saw. Be careful! LeBron come with me. I want to walk the perimeter and see if we can find anything useful. If anyone thinks of any other ideas, speak up. Throw them out there no matter how stupid you think they are.”
Everyone dispersed as ordered. LeBron was ecstatic for his relatively easy job. He had no desire to rip leg bones out of corpses or go tease the crawlerz hiding in the darkness with Drew. The walk around the perimeter yielded nothing useful. There were no close buildings to leap to. There were no hidden fire escapes or anything. They couldn’t even drop directly down the sides to the next level. Unless they had enough leg bones to assemble a ladder down to the ground, they were going to be stuck doing this the hard way.
“We’re really going to try fighting our way down to the ground using a pile of bones as weapons?” LeBron asked. They’d stopped after doing two laps of the top of the parking garage. Jeff was watching with disgust as Billy and his band of butchers ripped apart the corpses they’d collected.
“You have a better idea?” Jeff asked. He turned his head so that he could look LeBron in the eyes. Jeff knew they were all here because of him. He should’ve just told SECDEF to go screw himself. Instead he’d tried to play the political game and gotten them all into an impossible situation. On top of that now Yue was in danger of being stung by the hornets from the nest that he’d played a key part in poking. If he had to run mostly naked through a parking garage swinging around a bloody legbone to fight lethally fast monsters to save her, then that’s what he was going to do.
LeBron didn’t bother answering. Instead he gazed hopefully over at Drew and crew as they came back up the ramp. The expression on Drew’s face conveyed the message that they were completely and totally screwed.
“We are completely and totally screwed. You can see them moving around in the parking garage. It’s like that Indiana Jones scene where it shows the snakes crawling all over each other. Once you take like a dozen steps down the ramp they start ripping at your mind. It’s bad. I guess they’re used to people being dumped up here for them to munch on.” The color was slowly returning to Drew’s face as he finished talking. The color was rapidly fading from LeBron and Jeff’s as they listened.
This was not welcome news. No one bothered to say it out loud since there wasn’t any sort of positive spin that they could put on it. If they couldn’t go over the side or fight their way through the garage, then what other options were there? Ever the optimist Billy asked sarcastically how many bullets Drew had in the magazine. When Drew told him Billy counted the people standing on the roof and told him it may be enough.
“Yeah, we’re not going out like some kind of suicide cult.” Jeff said.
“You asked for all of the options sir. This might just be a save the last bullet for yourself kind of situation. I personally don’t have any desire to be eaten alive.” Billy said. Looking around the group of men he was with Billy shrugged with a grin.
“People like us don’t get to take the easy way out. There are people at Weathertop who need us. Not to mention I’m not ready to die yet. There’s got to be a way out of this.” Jeff said. He was slowly spinning in frustration as his eyes took in every inch of the parking garage roof looking for some way out.
“We could jump for it.” LeBron piped up.
“Yeah, because laying on the concrete below with a broken back wai
ting for the night to come so those things can eat you alive is so much better than eating a bullet.” Billy said dismissively.
“There’re bushes and a bunch of weeds on the backside. We hit the bushes just right we might live? If a few of us don’t break anything important they can carry the others. We’d have to do it now though.” LeBron said.
“It’s a sixty foot drop. We’d all probably die right away. If you don’t die, you’re going to at least break your legs. I don’t see it as an option really.” One of the men in Billy’s group with extensive skydiving experience said right away. He was the expert. No one doubted him. They did look to him to come up with some way around it though.
“Climbing?” Drew asked finally.
“We looked. Smooth concrete all the way around. No way to climb down. Spiderman might be able to do it. We’d all just turn climbing into the whole jumping scenario.” LeBron answered his brother.
Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails Page 15