Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  They couldn’t even tell the tower snipers to stop as they needed them to keep shooting. The shed they were in was on the verge of being demolished by the crawlerz slamming into it. Over the radio the snipers informed them that the roof top had turned into a patio party. The crawlerz were leaping for the fences covering the windows and then swinging themselves up at a rate they’d never seen before. It seemed the demons had learned a new trick. In between trying to breathe and hoping he wasn’t about to die LeBron mused that the infected probably communicated psychically with each other. His out loud musings were cut short by everyone hissing at him to shut up.

  LeBron shut his mouth so as not to get the infected within hearing distance even more stirred up. He lay there uncomfortably considering for the first time that the psychic torture inflicted on them by the crawlerz wasn’t really intended to torture them. As soon as he thought about it, he knew he was right. The kind of things that popped in their heads were obviously crude images being used to communicate with the other crawlerz. The horrific images in their heads of people being ripped apart were the thoughts of the infected who saw them. The way they could taste the hot blood being sucked from their own bodies was what the infected saw when they sensed they were near. The way they saw themselves from the crawlerz viewpoint on the tops of buildings was the way the crawlerz communicated to one another where the prey was.

  None of it was necessarily a conscious effort by the infected victims of the Cairo contagion. It was a side effect of the massive influx of adrenaline and psychotropic chemicals into the infected peoples brains. LeBron wondered if he’d have caught a vision of jumping up and clinging to a fence before jumping higher to get to victims if they hadn’t killed the crawler broadcasting how to get on the roof. It’d taken a few minutes, but that thought had resonated with the mass of the infected below enough that a mob of them followed the actions of the first. Why it’d happened this night instead of the others could be because the crawler who’d got onto the roof tonight had seen a bigger group of normal humans than on previous nights.

  Trying to ignore the bony butt of his sister painfully grinding into his leg LeBron considered the suicide waves. The crowd of the infected down below were able to look up and occasionally catch a glimpse of a normal human on the roof. At that point there’d a few hundred infected focused on either getting on the roof or somehow getting the normal to come to them. The focused thoughts of so many psychic transmitters could override the soldier’s ability to think for themselves sometimes. Hence the need to secure their ankles to the scaffolding they were on.

  Now that he’d figured out what all the mind babbling was LeBron forced himself to open up to it. Instead of doing his best to block out the crawlerz he consciously let them it into his head. Their thoughts slithered in like he was French kissing the slime covered tongue of a long dead corpse. He bathed in the ecstasy of warm blood and flesh swishing together in his mouth. He felt the powerful muscles in his legs propelling him high up the wall to grab the chain link fence. He could see the shed they were in and knew they were in it. He hammered at it with all his might.

  The flashes of psychic imagery they were getting were basically the remnants of the crawler party line hitting them. The fear they felt was part of what the crawlerz felt. It was the insane certainty that they’d feel unknowable pain if they didn’t devour the uninfected humans in front of them. The crawlerz were broadcasting the same pain and terror that drove them forward to their intended victims. The images and thoughts that corrupted them once they were infected. LeBron closed his mind back off after a brief struggle and tried to think of how exactly they could use his epiphany to their advantage.

  Not everyone spent the night in deep introspection coming to scientific conclusions about their common enemy. Pretty much everyone else spent the night terrorized by the ‘psychic party line’ LeBron had finally figured out. That meant night terrors and lots of bolting upright. Waking up absolutely positive you were about to die. The hammering on the walls of the small shed didn’t help with the morale inside the space. The crawlerz were doing their best to get in. Drew took it on himself to saw off the fingers of the infected who poked them in through the bullet holes.

  Lisa had not been thrilled that one of those fingers had landed on her head. She’d jumped up each time certain the wall had finally given in to the relentless beating it was receiving. Her jumping up inevitably meant someone was getting stepped on. She was a skinny waif of a girl given their dystopian diet. Covered in weapons and gear while wearing combat boots though she still could inflict some serious pain by not looking where she was stomping. Not that there was anywhere she could step where she wouldn’t be hurting someone in the cramped space.

  No one was happier than Harley to see the beam of sun piercing the shed through that singular bullet hole. As the biggest person in the shed he’d ended up at the bottom of the pig pile. Every time Yue had a bad dream or Lisa had a finger fall into her hair, he got to feel the repercussions. He was cruising on a massive medley of medications, but he still could tell that he was going to have bruises in the morning. The second he saw that the shed was slightly less dark he started brushing people off him like they were dandruff before a first date. Ignoring their pissed off comments at being dumped on the ground with no warning he stood to his full height. Not caring that his head was pressed into the ceiling he stretched until he heard a series of satisfying cracks.

  “Good god that night lasted forever.” A rumpled looking Major Tom said as he got to his feet beside Harley.

  “Do we just open the door?” Lisa asked. She was impatient to go make sure Drew was still alive. Jeff had sent out a quick broadcast that they were good to go the previous night, but it hadn’t been enough to satisfy either Yue or Lisa. Jeff and Tom both flatly refused to send any more broadcasts saying that Drew and Jeff were either safe or they weren’t. The only thing another broadcast might do is reveal them if they did happen to be hiding out waiting for an opportunity to get into the shed.

  “Give me a minute.” Tom said grumpily. Being the second largest person in the group he’d spent the evening in a similar state to Harley. Lisa had stepped directly onto his face the second time a severed finger fell into her hair. Unable to scream in complete disgust like she wanted to she’d flung a quick tantrum instead. That tantrum had included a lot of stomping. Tom had a nice sized shiner going in one eye and was pretty sure his nose was broken. He couldn’t bring himself to yell at her though. He wasn’t sure how he’d personally react if body parts started raining down on him in the dark.

  The tower snipers radioed over to standby while they confirmed all was clear. The guys out in the towers had a hard life too. Spending the night in a renovated port a potty bolted onto the top of a telephone pole then wrapped in aluminum foil wasn’t all roses and caviar. It didn’t help that the enclosures still smelled strongly of their former purpose. Even worse than the smell was the relentless psychic babbling the tower snipers were exposed to. Aluminum foil wrapped hut or not they got more than their fair share of the madness broadcast by the huge group of infected swirling around below them.

  It wasn’t actually tin foil they were covering most of the structures with. Cars had been cannibalized all around town to build out these facilities. The hoods and roofs were cut out to to cover windows and bolt onto two by fours to create crawler resistant structures. The activities of the night before had shown that nothing was truly crawler proof. They’d keep scratching away at any building with humans inside until they found a way in. Once one of them found a way they all knew about it thanks to that psychic party line. Assuming all the other infected humans out there actually paid strict attention to the images.

  “Ok. Open the doors. Everybody be ready just in case.” Tom ordered.

  Lisa shrugged and worked with Harley to get the door open. They were crammed into the structure so tightly it was difficult to get it to unlatch. Lisa finally just told Harley and Tom they needed to suck it in. How they were
managing to maintain stomach fat with everything going on was beyond Lisa. Most people looked like underwear models when they took their shirts off now a days. Which happened a lot in public since communal living and bathing were much more common now.

  Lisa stepped out of the shed with her rifle held at the ready. Luckily there was nothing outside the shed needing to be shot. They once again worked on clearing the roof. This time moving excruciatingly slowly since it was very likely there might be a crawler or two hanging out in a dark corner somewhere. The monsters weren’t able to handle being out in the sun. They could do a lot of damage in the second or two they had before the sun took their full attention though.

  They moved forward releasing the soldiers from their caskets as they did so. The more men they released the larger the area they could clear as they moved forward. It was killing Lisa and Yue not to know for certain if their respective significant others had survived the night. They were within twenty feet of the shed when automatic rifle fire kicked in from a section of roof about ten yards from where Yue and Lisa were standing. They both ducked instinctively looking around wildly to see what was going on.

  When nothing immediately attacked them, they began moving in the direction the rifle fire had come from. A dead body lay on the ground between a generator and a stack of ammunition boxes. The body was obviously one of the infected. A gaunt hair and dirt covered nude man lay sprawled out in a pool of blood. He also had blood around his mouth. Yue noticed the bloody mouth first and immediately pointed it out to Lisa. They dropped into low crouches scanning the area around them.

  Harley and LeBron came up behind them. They’d moved that way as soon as they’d heard the shots fired. Lisa was pointing at the dead man’s mouth when one of the roof snipers appeared on the top of the generator before diving straight down for Yue. It all happened so fast that Yue would’ve been infected if she hadn’t jumped forward at just the right time. Whether it was a brilliant move based on her finely honed combat instincts or just complete paranoia that drove her to leap forward the quick reaction saved her life.

  The surger went face first into the concrete rooftop where it was pinned down by automatic fire from LeBron, Harley and Yue. None of them could figure out how the damned thing was still alive when it suddenly shot past them to leap onto a wide eyed rooftop sniper who’d been trying to find his battle buddy. He’d found him.

  They carefully shot the back of the surger as it mounted the flailing sniper. They did all they could to kill the surger before it could infect the unlucky soldier it’d grabbed. Harley ran up to the surger and shoved his tactical shotgun barrel against the side of its head. He literally blew the things brains out. That did the trick. The surger tumbled to the side as the soldier it’d been on top of scrambled back to his feet. The major came running over to see what was going on. He glanced down at the soldier missing most of his head then looked up at Harley.

  “He was infected?” Tom asked. The question was rhetorical but given the adrenaline and the drugs he was on Harley answered anyway.

  “He was.” Harley said emphasizing the second word in that sentence.

  “What’s wrong with your ear?” Lisa asked after pointing her rifle at the man who’d stood up after Harley dispatched his attacker.

  “It’s nothing.” The soldier said fearfully stepping away from them.

  “Put your hand down soldier!” Tom barked stepping forward.

  The man turned and ran. Tom shot him in the back twice. The man climbed jerkily back to his feet and turned to face them. The eyes no longer that of the frightened soldier who’d just tried to run away. The face now twisted into the grotesque bestial expression of a surger on the hunt. Their former brother in arms lunged for them. He fell to the ground a split second later when the major drilled him right between the eyes with a well-placed shot from his nine millimeter sidearm.

  “Kevlar vest.” Lisa suddenly spouted out. She’d been wondering how the surger had survived the rounds fired into its back. Then she remembered how many times they’d shot the other surger before Harley had finally killed it up close and personal with his shotgun. All of the rooftop soldiers were wearing as much kevlar as possible. Mostly to protect themselves from friendly fire. The tower snipers could get a little sloppy after shooting the whole night without a break.

  A hard breathing Major Tom fixed her with a hard stare. Two of his men were dead. He wasn’t happy. They continued moving forward. The other shed doors opening before they could get there. Jeff still trying to explain to Drew the procedure was for them to wait for someone to tell them it was ok to come out of the shed before they opened the door. The look on Drew’s face indicating he could care less about ‘procedure’. Not when his sister, his girl and his brother were most likely already out on the roof and he could hear shots ringing out.

  Lisa threw professionalism and procedure to the breeze as she ran up and leaped into Drew’s open arms. A grinning Yue walked over and chastely kissed Jeff on the lips as she simultaneously tried to pull Lisa off of Drew. Tom finally accomplished that by loudly pointing out there could still be infected on the roof. With that announcement everyone calmed down and the sweep began anew. A curious Lisa looked into the shed Drew and Jeff had spent the night in.

  “What the hell?” She asked loudly.

  “What do you mean babe?” Drew asked turning around.

  “You had blankets?” Lisa asked with fire shooting out of her eyes.

  “Well yeah. I know we were less cramped than you guys, but it still sucked. We just had those foam pads, the blankets and one pillow that we had to play paper, rock, scissors for. It was pretty rough.” Drew answered without thinking. Which was the standard way he answered most questions. A pissed off Lisa vanished into the stacks of boxes to help with sweeping the roof. A confused looking Drew trailing along behind her.

  “He’s never going to learn, is he?” Jeff asked with a bemused expression on his face. He had Yue’s hand in his.

  “Did you know about the blankets and pillows before you left us to go to this shed?” Yue asked.

  “Of course not.” Jeff lied. His lie must not have been good enough because he was immediately holding no one’s hand. He ended up trailing after Yue in much the same way he’d just made fun of Drew for traipsing along behind Lisa.

  Chapter 6: The Best Laid Plans

  Given that they were new and that they’d spent the bulk of the night up on the roof in fear for their lives they were given the next day off. Jeff kind of ruined that by telling them they’d be meeting at lunch to debrief. Jeff was doing his best to look sleepy and miserable like the rest of the group. Not an easy trick given the extreme difference in sleeping conditions over the night. Jeff and Drew had enjoyed a cozy little slumber party compared to the others. At least that’s the way the rest of them saw it.

  “What time should we be ready for lunch?” Yue yawned. She may be sleepy but there was no mistaking that evil glint in her eye. Jeff noticed it too. He was being punished for having fought his way over to the more comfortable sleeping arrangements the previous night.

  “Early afternoon work for you guys? I’ll swing by first and check to see if you’re awake.” Jeff said carefully. He was attempting to be as flexible as possible with them. Having to wait was frustrating for him as he really wanted to get their perspective on all of this. They may not be a team of highly educated scientists, but they were subject matter experts in surviving. There weren’t any other people in the world he trusted the opinions of more than the members of this tight little team.

  “Works for me. Right now I just want to stretch out on the cot and close my eyes. It’ll be nice to do that without worrying about something breaking through the wall and trying to eat me. I came up with some stuff last night on the mind games the crawlerz play that I want to run by everybody.” LeBron said making a beeline for his cot.

  “You going to stay in here or do you want to come with me?” Jeff asked Yue without thinking. Everyone in the room turned to
hear the answer. Everyone except Harley who was already face down in his pillow.

  “I think I’ll stay here. If you have somewhere more comfortable you could always take Drew with you.” Yue said with a sarcastic smile. Jeff shook his head and left to go do whatever it was that he did during the day.

  Everyone else lay down after downing copious amounts of ibuprofen. A flask was passed around and blankets thrown over the windows. Easy enough to do with the fences bolted to the wall. That had to be a fire code violation.

  LeBron was exhausted. He felt like he’d gone multiple rounds with a pissed off gorilla. One of those huge, angry ones you see beating their chests on the discovery channel. Despite that he didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep. His mind was spinning a mile a minute. It wasn’t just the way he’d pieced together the communication method for the crawlerz either. It was a million other things he’d noted during their brief stay. He pulled out the iPhone he normally just used for taking pictures and started taking notes. He wanted to make sure he didn’t forget anything. A page and half into it he felt his eyelids rebelling against him. Happy to be somewhere he felt safe for once he let his eyelids win the battle.