Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  The room erupted. Everyone was off their chairs screaming for the blood of the government scum. They vented their fears and losses on the four wide eyed men slouching in the middle of them all. The four men who represented the country that was supposed to have taken care of them. The country that’d left them to die instead. These four men had been part of a force looking to make slaves out of them. When you looked at it that way Jeff didn’t really blame them for being pissed off.

  Tommy held up his hand for silence to speak again. “They came to make us slaves and threatened us with cruise missiles. These men paid for that in the garage. The ones who sent them here will pay for it soon enough as well. I’ve already sent a team to show them what we think of being threatened. I gave my word as a leader of the Living Zombies that if they made it out of the garage, they’d go free. I didn’t think any of them would actually make it out but here we are. Getting into it with our enforcers was just a continuation of that run for them. They still need to pay for those deaths though.”

  “They could do our grocery shopping.” The man sitting next to Tommy said. He’d been the man Tommy had originally been chatting with. Tommy snapped his fingers loudly.

  “Perfect! If I can get a pack of Twizzlers out of this then the whole mess might have been worth it. Everybody good with that?” Tommy stood up and looked around the group.

  “Wipes!” An older woman yelled out gleefully. She didn’t look like she was entirely sane. Her snaggle toothed smile showed she wasn’t afraid to pass a crack pipe around if the situation called for it. Her request for wipes was echoed by pretty much every female in the room. LeBron and Drew exchanged glances. Drew looked a little lost, but LeBron had a sinking feeling that he knew what was coming next.

  The four of them found themselves hustled out into the parking lot where the chinook was still sitting. A team went around making sure no crawlerz were camped out underneath any of the vehicles. Once the all-clear was given the four prisoners were perp walked across the broken concrete and unceremoniously pushed into the back of a white pickup truck. LeBron and Billy were both still limping. Billy was finally getting his bearings after spending the night knocked out.

  The truck got rolling and they drove for a few miles. Other vehicles started joining their parade as they headed down the main drag in Columbia, Pennsylvania. By the time they rolled into the parking lot of a grungy shopping center there was close to twenty bikers who’d joined up with them. The bikers and the people arriving in trucks began congregating around Tommy. The prisoners were ordered to make their way over to where Tommy was holding court in the open air. As they limped their way over the men and women in the crowd took notice of them. By the time they were forced to their knees in front of Tommy they were pretty much dripping with spit.

  “I’ve never been so grossed out in my entire life.” LeBron said. He was careful to keep his lips pressed together when he talked. He didn’t want any of the gunk rolling down his face to get in his mouth. It was like they’d taken a shower where the water source was a spittoon. He had slimy stuff dripping down to invade every crevasse in his body. He was happy when a man walked over and took the handcuffs off each one of them. Then he got to experience the painful feeling of his hands slowly coming back to life. At least that pain meant his hands weren’t going to turn black and fall off though.

  Except for the men guarding them everyone else was strolling around at what’d become a social occasion. The Living Zombies had survived by forming pods. The pods were each given the resources they needed to do whatever needed to be done in their territories. People were moved around as they were needed. Welders were sent to secure the different buildings the pods would migrate around to. Other trades came behind and hooked up electrical to solar panels, made toilets work, and anything else it took special skills to accomplish. If you didn’t have a special skill, you became a scavenger and were told what to go get and where to store it.

  Tommy had been telling them the truth when he said most of the bikers weren’t the outlaw type. They were just guys who liked hanging out with a club. What he hadn’t mentioned was that the core group were the outlaw types. Tommy had been on every law enforcement agencies watch list before everything went down. If the infection hadn’t come along, he’d probably have been running things from the inside of a prison cell by now.

  Being at the head of a gang that had a supply chain stretching into South America Tommy had known early on that the spreading sickness was a real thing. He already lived outside the law. He wasn’t about to sit back and assume the government was going to protect him. Even if the government was able to protect its citizens it wasn’t like they were going to waste a lot of time trying to protect the man they’d been trying to put in prison for a decade. Tommy had started calling up the heads of all the other clubs in his local network.

  The result was the Living Zombies. As the infection washed over the Northeast, they took power and declared Pennsylvania to be their turf. They collected people with useful skills and gradually spread out across the entire state. The logistical brains behind moving loads of cocaine and heroin from Central America into New York City were now focused on a different kind of supply chain. They scavenged everything they needed to survive. They killed anyone who threatened them. That combination of ruthlessness, skilled labor and logistical talent was why they’d survived and thrived when most people had either been killed or turned by the infected.

  The men who’d rolled into the parking lot represented the different gangs that were united under the Living Zombie umbrella. Tommy allowed the gangs to keep their own local customs as long as none of it interfered with their overall success. Fights between gangs resulted in the leaders of both gangs being dragged in front of Tommy. Criminals were either dealt with locally or sent to Columbia if their crimes were particularly heinous. Punishing these people had become something of an art form in the newly named capital of the independent territory of Pennsylvania.

  Dropping people on the parking garage roof had been a pretty popular punishment for people who did something really bad. The only problem with that one being that prior to Lynn showing up they’d only had one pilot who could actually fly helicopters. He was working on training others, but it wasn’t like they had a flight school running. Tommy had always worried about losing their only pilot so had reserved the garage execution method for special occasions. They’d tried doing a Mad Max sphere of death thing to watch people duke it out with crawlerz. That’d turned out to be just as dangerous for the audience as it was for whoever was in the pit. Not to mention the poor schmucks who’d been put in charge of collecting crawlerz to be thrown in the sphere to fight.

  One of the women Tommy liked to spend time with had randomly brought up that she really missed watching Supermarket Sweep. That’d percolated in the back of his mind for a few days then popped out when they had to punish a trio of rapists. The Living Zombies were pretty lax when it came to laws. Except for laws that kept them all safe like not leaving a safe house after dark and that sort of thing. Rape and murder of members or their families was punishable anyway Tommy saw fit.

  People were a valuable resource. Every time they put one of their gang up against the wall and shot him in the head, they lost whatever talents that person brought to the table. They lost the use of those hands to build and protect their turf. To avoid all that brain drain Tommy had devised punishments that gave the accused a way out. If the accused was talented enough to win one of these contests, then they got to live. They still might whip the guy or cut off a finger or something, but he’d be allowed to walk away.

  There was a grocery store in the downtown district that was haunted by crawlerz during the day. The store had never been looted as far as anyone knew. Remembering the Supermarket Sweep comment the woman had made to him he came up with an interesting challenge. He had the back doors welded shut. He gave the three rapists a shopping list and told them the first two to come out with every item on the list would live. None of them
actually made it out. Since then Tommy had played with the rules to see if he could make it a better game.

  Greetings complete Tommy walked over to the four men kneeling on the ground. He’d thought of something that might make the game more interesting. He nodded at one of his men who ran over to a truck and grabbed four baseball bats out of the back. The man jogged back over and threw the bats down in front of the four prisoners.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do with those?” Drew asked. He had no idea why they were kneeling in the parking lot of a grocery store. He highly doubted it was for something good though.

  Tommy launched into an explanation of what he wanted them to do. His voice became animated as he described the challenge that he’d laid out for them. Tommy knew it was kind of weird how much he got into this, but it wasn’t like they had HBO. There were no live sports to watch anymore. Watching sports had been one of his favorite past times before he got stuck living out the Walking Dead series for real.

  “All four of you go in with your bats. You fight off the demons until you find Twizzlers, raviolis and a box of wipes. The first three people to bring one of those items out here gets to live. The fourth person is screwed. Bring an item someone else already brought and you get to go right back in. Got it?” Tommy asked.

  The four prisoners nodded. Each of their minds racing to figure out a way out of this nightmare. Even if it were possible to fight off crawlerz with a baseball bat they were being told one of them was already a walking dead man. That just wasn’t acceptable.

  Chapter 22: When You Hear the Beep!

  Standing in front of the shattered glass doors leading into the pitch black interior of the store Drew was still trying to piece together what the hell he was supposed to do. One thing he knew for sure was that LeBron would be getting out of there even if no one else did. He planned on grabbing his brother a pack of Twizzlers and hurling him out of the store as fast as he possibly could. Spinning the baseball bat in the air he caught it by the handle. If the infected started throwing balls at him he was totally prepared.

  Going into this store with an Uzi would be a nightmare. Going in with a couple of baseball bats carrying your limping brother along was suicidal.

  “Find a place to hide and leave when it gets dark?” LeBron threw the idea out there. They were huddled together in the last sunny spot before entering the store proper. Behind them they were being jeered and laughed at by the assembled gang members.

  “Either that or try to fight our way to freedom with these nifty new baseball bats.” Drew answered. He could feel the eyes on him from within the store. It wouldn’t be long now until they were crawler bait.

  LeBron let himself relax. They only had a few seconds to make life or death decisions. He could barely walk. Billy was possibly worse off than LeBron was. LeBron suddenly got a clear image of himself standing in the sunny doorway. He saw himself getting closer and closer. Without overthinking it LeBron dropped to the floor.

  The crawler that’d been running at him had been excitedly broadcasting his thoughts for the world to see. LeBron happened to have been in the right state of mind to pick up a snippet of that broadcast. Those images that used to freak them out were now welcomed. They gave you a heads-up you might be about to die. The infected old man streaking through the store let his bloodlust overcome his pathological fear of the sunlight in the broken entryway. He sprang at LeBron just as LeBron dropped to the rubbish covered floor.

  The old crawler rolled out into the parking lot. It jumped up with its eyes closed tight against the bright sunlight and sprang in a random direction. It happened to land on one of the bikers standing next to Tommy. The crawler took a deep bite into the man’s neck. Before he had time to even shudder with the ecstasy of the hot blood filling his mouth Tommy had shot him and the man that he bit multiple times. When they hit the ground Tommy shot each of them two more times for good measure.

  “Woah! That was intense! Why are you wusses still standing in the doorway? Get the hell in there or I’ll shoot you right now.” Tommy lazily pointed his pistol to put some random rounds into the entryway wall. Everyone not already lying on the ground put their heads down. Drew reached down and grabbed LeBron to help him up. Billy made a production of flipping off the bikers before turning and walking into the darkness with his bat spinning in the air.

  Drew and Jeff helped LeBron into the store. Ten steps in they were wishing Tommy had tossed them flashlights instead of baseball bats. It was impossible to see anything. Which explained why the crawlerz continued to return to this hidey hole every day. LeBron was about to whisper something about trying to find a flashlight to Drew when something suddenly dawned on him.

  It was too dark in the store for anyone to see. LeBron had been involved in approximately a million discussions around how the crawlerz identified their prey. He was pretty sure that the crawlerz didn’t actually need to see them to know that they were there. The more normal humans gathered together the easier it was for them to tell you were there. The crawlerz knew you weren’t one of them because you weren’t part of their psychic party line. Normally a crawler would see someone, sense they were different and go in for the kill. Unless those psychic tendrils reached out to warn them off, they’d attack.

  It was like the infected had a built in IFF system in their heads. Fighter planes use a system called IFF to identify if someone is a friend or foe. Basically friends broadcast an encrypted signal that lets their allies know not to shoot them. The crawlerz operated on a similar principle. LeBron had no doubt if a crawler sensed them and got close that it’d attack. In the total darkness though the crawlerz would be relying on their psychic magnetism to draw them closer to the non-infected. Hell half of them might still be asleep or in that weird catatonic state they got into during the day.

  Knowing that he may be screwing them all by talking out loud LeBron went ahead and did so anyway. It was the only way to quickly communicate the plan he’d come up with. Hoping it wasn’t the worst mistake of his life he went to each of his companions. After finding each of them in the dark he whispered the plan using as few words as necessary to convey the message. He panicked at the end since he almost couldn’t find Jeff in the darkness.

  “Go by yourself and hide.” That was the simple message he’d relayed to each of them in the lightest of whispers. He could only hope they’d heard him and would act on it. They’d called out a similar plan standing in the doorway so it should make sense to them. Alone they’d be less of a magnet for the crawlerz. They’d also make slightly less noise.

  “Hurry up with my Twizzlers!” Tommy roared from outside the door. Being the boss of a gang of people well versed in making shanks out of toothbrushes meant you couldn’t show any fear. Worried he’d possibly squealed like a little girl when that infected old man took out the gangbanger standing next to him Tommy was putting on a show. He lowered the shotgun he’d brought with him and fired a few blasts of birdshot into the building. If he hit somebody with that it was more likely to piss them off than to kill them. Which was exactly the point of doing it.

  Tommy reached down into the bag he’d brought over and pulled out a bunch of road flares. He started lighting them and flinging them into the store. Now that he was thinking about it, they needed to setup a wireless network and let the ’contestants’ wear cameras on their heads. That’d be some good TV right there. He chunked a few more of the flares into the store and walked back to his bike to grab another shot of tequila. He’d been impressed to see that he couldn’t see the four who’d gone in when he tossed the flares. He’d done this before and normally the people were either already dead or cowering a few feet into the shadows shaking like leaves.

  LeBron was much less thrilled by the flares. Inside the store wicked shadows danced around in the hellish glow given off by the hissing flames. Hoping the others would do the same LeBron began working his way as deep into the store as he could. He needed darkness to hide in. A crawler ran right past him. It’s focus on the f
ront of the store where all the noise was coming from. The large group of people in the front of the store was tugging at the consciousness of every crawler in the place. The image of the old man who’d busted out into the parking lot and managed to sink his teeth into uninfected flesh was still top of mind in the groupthink they all shared.

  Jeff and the others had been fortunate in the window of time they decided to go deeper into the store in. They’d drifted right through the wave of the monsters rushing forward to be as close to the front of the store as possible. LeBron continued to crawl on his hands and knees down the aisle he was on. He was crawling for a couple of reasons. For one thing he reasoned the lower his profile the better to avoid being seen. The main reason though was because he simply couldn’t walk on his ankle anymore. It wouldn’t support him when he’d tried. He needed a month’s worth of bedrest, a cast and a bucket full of pain pills.