Drew shook his head to clear it. It wasn’t like any of them were going to live to be eighty. If you managed to pull that off, you wouldn’t care if you had a dog’s ass tatted on your forehead. No one would mess with you because it’d be guaranteed that you weren’t the type to be messed with. Worried they were moving too slowly Drew picked up the pace. He was using the baseball bat to feel the floor ahead of him again. Occasionally he used it to nudge boxes or other garbage out of the way. His whole body went rigid with ice cold fear when he felt the bat connect with something solid.
Trying to control his shaking he stuck the bat out beside him until he felt LeBron pulling on it. A second later LeBron was next to him. Drew whispered he’d found something. Ready to swing the bat like a madman Drew poked the object that he’d discovered in the darkness a little bit harder. He pushed on it with the end of the bat. He almost fell over when whatever he was pushing on was suddenly snatched out of the way. A couple of boxes fell over. The noise the boxes made sounded like thunder in the dead silence of the store.
“Guys?” A weak voice called out. More boxes fell over as Billy worked to extricate himself from the shelf that he was only half lying on. He’d been slipping in and out of consciousness when Drew had started jabbing at his leg. If he’d managed to get his leg all the way on the shelf like he’d tried to do then Drew would’ve walked right by him. He’d have been left to fend for himself with a concussion and no help on the way. He heard a round of muted shushing coming from the aisle.
Knocking more stuff over Billy dragged himself out from the shelf. LeBron couldn’t say too much about the noise. With his screwed up ankle LeBron was using the shelves as his support system. That meant he’d sent a few boxes on the short journey to the floor while him and Drew had been hobbling around looking for Billy. Nothing about this situation was ideal. The fact that they were still breathing made Drew want to go out and buy a lottery ticket.
Moving at the speed of a concussed guy with a bad ankle they made their way to the front of the store. They’d made so much noise by then that Drew was assuming there must not be any crawlerz left in the store The infected must’ve all taken off for their nightly haunts the second the sun went down. The front of the store was dimly lit by moonlight filtering in through the shattered windows of the main entrance. LeBron bent down to pick up a pistol he saw on the floor. He worked himself back to his good foot then shoved the pistol in the pocket of the trench coat he was still wearing over his ripped boxers.
The shoes he had on may be highly uncomfortable but at least they were protecting him from the broken glass scattered around everywhere. They picked their way slowly through the corpses scattered around the cashier stations near the entrance to the store. Eyes glued to the ground they picked up weapons when they saw them. The bulk of the bodies were the remains of the crawlerz who’d been shot by the bikers. Only a couple of the bikers had died outright during the skirmish. Most of them had been turned and were now wandering the world. The annoying part about that was that they were doing it with their weapons and ammunition dangling uselessly off of them.
Drew signaled for LeBron and Billy to stay by the entrance and keep on stripping the dead of every weapon they could find. LeBron was keeping his eyes out for some pants that weren’t soaked with any sort of bodily fluids. It made sense for Drew to leave them there since they were moving agonizingly slow with their collection of injuries. Drew himself was feeling fine. It’d been at least a week since LeBron had shot him in the back. That was ancient history in apocalypse time.
Drew returned way sooner than LeBron had anticipated. He was ok with that for two reasons. One it looked like Jeff had come through the ordeal intact. The other reason was he’d figured out there was no way he’d be able to poke his swollen ankle through a pants leg. He was fantasizing about pulling out a communicator and asking Scotty to beam him back to Weathertop. With his luck he’d probably get there at the same time as the men Tommy had sent on the retaliation mission. Threatening the crazy outlaw biker club probably hadn’t been the smartest way to approach bringing them back into the fold.
Feeling much less naked with a tactical shotgun in his hands LeBron limped painfully after his brother. The four men were beyond fear at this point. Determined to make sure no harm fell to their comrades at Weathertop they walked out into the moonlit parking lot. They had a long hard night ahead of them.
Chapter 24: Run and Gun
There was a single surger still wandering the parking lot. He had a lost look in his eyes as he ran towards the four men walking out of the store. The confusion could be a side effect of being turned. More likely it was a side effect of whatever had dented his forehead in. The freshly turned biker was coming on at such a slow speed that Drew pushed down the barrel of Billy’s rifle and stepped forward with his baseball bat in hand. When the freshly infected man surged towards him Drew completed the damage that’d been started with that dent.
Quickly stripping the man of everything useful they parceled out the additional gear. LeBron was excited to at least have a shirt to wear. It didn’t smell like a Tide pod exactly, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Leaving the pale body of the deceased biker in the middle of the parking lot they walked towards the line of bikes and trucks parked closer to the road.
A quick check revealed they had their pick of about five trucks. None of them had any desire to try riding a Harley past a bunch of crawlerz in the middle of the night. When cruising the ‘poc by moonlight it was always better to be surrounded by a nice layer of steel and glass. The thicker the better. The two trucks they chose had been modified to be safer to drive at night. Steel bars had been welded over the windows Mad Max fashion. They were all seriously thankful for the welders with the idle time on their hands. Those bars might very well end up being the reason they survived the night.
Drew and LeBron took one truck while Jeff and Billy took the other. They searched all the trucks for anything useful before turning any of the keys. The second they turned an engine over it was going to be time to drive it like they’d stole it. Any crawlerz within a half mile of the vehicle would come running on hearing the engines start up. The discovery of an atlas had them delaying their start to walk around looking at street signs. A complete butt clencher of a hike that paid off in a better educated idea of which direction to head off in.
Jeff turned the key and quickly pulled out of the parking lot. Drew did his best to stay close behind Jeff. If they got separated, then they weren’t going to be finding one another again anytime soon. The goal was to get off the street and onto the interstate as quickly as possible. Once on the interstate they’d drive like mad towards the bridge. In theory bridges should be fairly crawler free. If the bridge was covered in the beasts for some reason, then they were just screwed. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the one they had.
Assuming they made it over the bridge they’d be spending the next two to three hours on the road before arriving at Weathertop. It wasn’t very far at all as the crow flies. That leant itself to other problems. What were they supposed to do once they got there? It wasn’t like the people at Weathertop were going to open the doors and let them in. They couldn’t even hop in the cars sitting vacant at the railroad station to spend the night. They’d be torn apart within seconds of stepping out of the trucks.
None of them really expected to survive the next ten minutes so worrying about something that was still two hours away seemed overly optimistic. A wave of pessimism hit them in the form of crawlerz who appeared out of nowhere to fling themselves at the trucks. Jeff opted to try and outrun the noise of their own engines to get away. It didn’t end well. Two blocks from where he originally mashed the accelerator to the ground like he was Ricky Bobby on the final lap at Daytona a crawler crashed into the windshield hard enough to knock the steel bars loose.
In a flurry of broken glass, chunky bloody bits of the very dead crawler and bent steel rods Jeff lost control. The truck he was driving ended up buried in the front
of an out of business floral shop. Bloody faced with burn marks all over them from the air bags Billy and Jeff fumbled around weakly trying to exit the totaled truck. Less than five seconds later Drew skidded into their back bumper.
Slamming the truck into park Drew jumped out yelling at LeBron to get in the driver’s seat. Drew ran towards the front of the smashed truck to see if Jeff and Billy were still alive. He leapt forward and ripped off the mold covered awning that’d fallen down to cover the side of the truck. He could see Jeff moving around inside. They couldn’t open the door though since the truck was stuck inside the wall right where the door was. Drew grabbed the metal bars covering the drivers side window and tried pulling them off. He’d hoped the collision may have loosened them.
The bars on the window were in no way loosened. He heard gunshots behind him. LeBron had stepped out to keep the crawlerz off him while he tried to pull Jeff out of this mess. The bars on the windows were quickly becoming a liability. Instead of offering protection now they just imprisoned the two men in the truck. The only possible way out that Drew could see was the hole the crawler had made slamming into the bars covering the windshield.
“Go through the windshield!” Drew yelled pointing.
A dazed Billy started prying the bars out of the way. Jeff reached through the hole and pushed off a large section of cracked drywall. Dust covered everything. The two inside the cab were moving with agonizing slowness.
“We need to hurry up!” LeBron yelled from behind Drew. That was followed by the sound of an AK-47 spraying bullets down the street. LeBron couldn’t even see what he was shooting at. It was all just darting shadows as the crawlerz started converging on them.
Drew reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the grenade he’d found in one of the trucks. Pulling the pin he yelled for LeBron to get behind the truck. He took a step forward and flung the projectile as far down the street as he could get it. It was only after he’d thrown it that he realized he had nothing to shelter behind. Hoping he’d tossed the grenade far enough away to avoid killing himself he hit the deck and covered his head with his hands.
Once the grenade went off, he bounced back up and into the back of Jeff’s wrecked truck. The smell of battery acid and burnt rubber was overwhelming. He made sure that there was room for Jeff and Billy to crawl out over the roof of the truck. Once he’d done that, he turned his attention up the street. He started popping off shots at anything that moved. He had no idea if he was hitting anything or just attracting more of the infected by making so much noise.
A hand gripped his shoulder and pulled Drew towards the other side of the truck. It took him a second to realize it was Jeff. Billy was already running over to get in the back of the other truck. He’d had the presence of mind to grab a rifle and some spare magazines. He was shooting as he ran but Drew wouldn’t bet those shots were landing. They were shooting in the direction of the enemy like the crawlerz were a normal opponent. The infected had no fear of bullets. They should have all been saving their bullets for when they had nice clear shots.
Even as all that ran through Drew’s mind he continued shooting at shadows. If you hesitated in this sort of confrontation, you were dead. They were fighting using the instincts they’d each honed by hundreds of hours of fighting for their lives. If those instincts told him to blast away at a window on the other side of the street Drew wasn’t trying to argue. He saw LeBron get back in the truck. There was no time for anyone to get around to the passenger side, so they all piled in the truck bed.
Drew was the last to climb in. LeBron was accelerating before Drew even made it over the side of the truck bed. His lower body dangling off the side he held on to Jeff and Billy’s hands to keep from falling to the street. A crawler face planted into the side of the truck right beside him. That near miss jacked his adrenaline level way up. Thanks to that sudden surge of energy he managed to bypass the laws of physics and join the others in the back of the truck. It was a miracle he’d gotten in with the crazy driving LeBron was doing to evade the crawlerz. The pale beasts were doing their best to plant themselves in the windshield.
Not wanting to repeat the same mistake Jeff had made he kept the speedometer pegged at a reasonable speed for driving evasively through dark streets being pursued by a mob of vicious monsters. In his steel bar covered safe space he rammed any crawlerz he saw that might have a chance to make it into the back. He knew that his compadres in the back didn’t have the luxury of that shark week cage around them to keep the predators at bay.
The goal was to keep the infected from hopping over the cab and landing in the back. He also had to drive fast enough to keep the infected from just jumping in the back. If he drove too fast, he was scared he’d end up burying this truck in a building like Jeff had just done with their other vehicle. He was trying to read street signs and remember how the hell to get to the on ramp. Meanwhile he needed to get new wipers and a refill on wiper fluid. The windshield was covered with all the gooey goodness the infected were leaving when they smashed into the bars.
In the twin beams of his headlights he saw the sign to turn onto the highway. With complete disregard for the trio of battered human beings desperately trying not to get tossed out on the road LeBron swerved like a madman to hit the onramp. They lost some weapons and random other gear, but Drew, Jeff and Billy were able to avoid being bucked off. Loudly cursing LeBron’s driving skills Drew sat back up to see if there was anything he should be shooting at. There was no way he was going to hit anything, but he felt like he should at least make the attempt.
Drew had decided he should probably lay back down again to avoid getting pitched overboard when a target fell right into his lap. A pint sized crawler had leapt for the front of the truck, bounced off the hood, flew over the cab and landed right in Drew’s lap. The thing’s teeth were snapping in the air as it tried to tear a chunk of flesh off of him. Drew grabbed it by the hair and flung it off of him in disgust. LeBron had chosen that moment to swerve out of the way of something or other. The diminutive crawler hit the tailgate and bounced back in the truck versus going flying off into the darkness like Drew had intended.
A wild eyed Jeff went full auto on the little beast. Bullets and sparks flew across the back end of the truck bed. There wasn’t enough left of the crawler when Jeff was done to tell if it’d been a child or a midget. Drew found himself relieved to be able to think that maybe they’d just wasted a little person instead of a child. It somehow made the bloody mass of hamburger dripping all over the back of the truck bed a little easier to accept.
Jeff was shaking like a leaf. Never a good thing to see in a guy who’s positioned slightly behind you waving around an AK-47. Billy looked like he was trying take a nap. It was like he’d decided to compete with Yue to see who could rack up the most head injuries. Maybe if Billy got hit in the head a few more times he’d start finding Jeff attractive as well? Drew saved up that little zinger for when they weren’t all about to die. It’d be really annoying if Billy or Jeff died before he was able to tell it though.
The road was clear leading to the bridge. LeBron took them across the river in record time. He didn’t slow down when they got to the other side either. Pedal to the metal he drove through a bunch of inky black nowhere before randomly slowing to a complete stop. The three very rough looking people in the back crawled out of the truck bed up into the oversized crew cab. Blood and sweat staining their stolen clothes they crammed themselves one after another into the cab. They felt a million times more secure with the protective bars and walls of the truck around them.
“Now what?” LeBron asked.
“Beats me. I didn’t think we’d make it this far.” Drew answered instantly. He was doing that thing where his mouth operated without the use of his brain.
“We can’t go sit outside Weathertop yet.” Jeff said looking at the clock on the dash. According to the clock they had about four hours before the sun was going to come up. It was only about an hour further to Weathertop. That meant t
hey had three hours to kill. It’d be nice to pull over and take a nap. They were all super weary of the infected showing up while they were napping though.
There was a pause in the conversation when Billy had to fling open the passenger door and puke onto the median. It was a reminder that they were not a healthy group. The best case scenario for them would be to wind up at Weathertop in the morning and find out that a group of leather clad saboteurs had been caught trying to do something stupid. LeBron had visions of them laughing about the foolish bikers trying to attack the massive base. In his fantasy they were sitting around drinking coffee and eating bagels in the breakroom. It was such a good fantasy that his foot didn’t even hurt in it.
The rest of the foursome in the truck were nowhere near as optimistic as LeBron. They were picturing the base split open via some kind of explosive. The only people moving around when they got there would be surgers. They’d left Yue and Lisa with Harley to guard them. They all had a lot of faith in Harley’s bravery and loyalty. They had much less faith in his sobriety. Considering Yue and Lisa had been barely functional when they’d last seen them, they felt justified in their concerns.
Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails Page 21