Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  That’s why LeBron was standing with the back door to the first Humvee wide open. Jeff hopped the four feet down from the loading dock to the asphalt and tossed Yue in the backseat. He jumped in with her followed by LeBron. In the front seat Lisa was taking the driver’s seat with Drew standing watch over her until she got her door shut. Randomly pulling the trigger at anything that freaked him out Drew ran around to the other side and jumped in.

  Harley had been the one to open Drew’s door for him. Once Drew was in his seat Harley hopped into the back seat of the Humvee parked next to them. Harley didn’t shut his door though. He slid over and waited for the soldiers who’d stayed behind to slow down the crawlerz in the dining area. Tom was in the driver’s seat of that vehicle. One of his other men was already settled into the passenger side seat.

  Neither of the two soldiers covering their retreat in the dining room made it out. Staring at the door leading into the cafeteria they saw a string of crawlerz start emerging. Harley slammed his back door shut and Lisa reversed her Humvee out of the area it’d been parked in. They needed to get to the service road that wrapped around the back of the school to get out to the main road. Major Tom whipped his vehicle around to follow Lisa. The crawlerz coming out of the cafeteria were already trying to hitch rides on both Humvees.

  Gunning the engines they flew around the back of the school at completely unsafe speeds. Jeff might have had some trepidation about sitting Lisa in the driver’s seat. All that went out the window when she started driving. The skinny girl rocked the Humvee off the main road and tore through the overgrown football field to get around a big clump of crawlerz that suddenly appeared in her high beams. She ended up doing a donut at the fifty yard line to shake off a few who’d managed to cling to the front of the vehicle blocking her view.

  Completely ignoring the fact that she was driving a Humvee and not a helicopter she took them over the top of a massive drainage ditch to make it back to the service road looping away from the football field. Smashing the grill of the Humvee through a couple of crawlerz she executed a hard turn to the right when they ran into the main road. Gunning the engine once again she accelerated at what everyone in the vehicle thought was a fairly suicidal speed to get them away from any crawlerz who might be lingering in their wake.

  “You guys out there?” Harveys voice crackled out of the radio on the dash. Drew reached forward and picked it up.

  “Got you loud and clear Harley. Where are you guys at?” Drew asked looking behind them for headlights.

  “You know that ditch you guys jumped all the way over?” Harley asked.

  “Yeah.” Drew transmitted quickly dreading what he knew he was fixing to hear.

  “We jumped most of it too. Tom and the dude up front are both out. They should’ve buckled up. We’ve got crawlerz all over the vehicle and we also appear to be sinking somehow? I guess this ditch is a swamp on the bottom. Anyway there’s water pouring in so we’re pretty much screwed. Just wanted to tell you guys not to wait up for us. I’ll see you on the other side. Harley out.” The radio went silent as Harley let go of the transmit button.

  Lisa sighed and hit the brakes without saying a word. They squealed to a stop. She did a quick one eighty and gunned the engine once more. This time they were driving straight for the danger instead of trying to get away from it.

  “Hey Harley. You guys sit tight and listen for the radio. Don’t do anything stupid until we get there. Which the way my girl drives won’t be too long.” Drew transmitted. Even as he said it, he already knew the next thing he was going to hear.

  “You’re driving back to rescue a bunch of dudes drowning in a ditch covered by man eating demons and you’re telling me not to do anything stupid?” Harley transmitted. He was so predictable.

  Chapter 11: Last Ditch Effort

  Harley put the mic down on the console where he could reach it. He was kicking himself for grabbing it in the first place. He should’ve known those guys wouldn’t be able to just drive away and leave him here to drown. Now because he’d been his usual dumb self his friends were all going to die. They may be dead already. Driving like a bat out of hell straight into a massive crawler festival like this one wasn’t conducive to a long life. He started to pick the mic up to wave them off then stopped realizing it’d be a waste of time.

  Instead of trying to stop the inevitable he decided to do what’d served him so well throughout his life. He’d go with the flow. He was pretty sure he was going to flow right down the river Styx, but he wasn’t going to go out blubbering in a car like a baby. He wasn’t going to risk getting his friends killed trying to come to him. Not while he still had two legs that worked anyway. As long as he was at it, he might as well bring the others in the car along for the ride.

  “Wake up!” He roared slapping Major Tom across the face. He went ahead and smacked the other soldier to for the hell of it. Both of them had gone face first into the dashboard when they’d unsuccessfully tried to replicate Lisa’s trick of jumping the ditch. Thinking back to the completely reckless driving she’d executed Harley felt proud just to know the girl. It’d been a straight up awesome display of sheer ‘ballsiness’. He didn’t know another way to describe the way she’d made that Humvee an extension of herself.

  “What the hell man?” Tom said coming to from the slap to his face. The other soldier still wasn’t moving. He was out cold. Harley gave Tom a couple of moments to realize they were completely screwed. It was almost funny watching the panic ratchet up in the man’s eyes. Or at least it would’ve been funny if Harley wasn’t pretty sure his own eyes were a perfect reflection. Tom did some sort of trick with his face and he suddenly looked calm again.

  “Cool trick.” Harley said looking the man in the eyes.

  “Yeah. Not the first time I’ve been about to die. I’m hoping it won’t be the last.” Tom said straight faced. Authority figure or not Harley decided right then and there that he really liked Tom. It sucked that they were most likely both about to die.

  “They’re coming back for us. If we sit in here, we’re going to end up dead. You up for making a run for it?” Harley asked.

  “I’m not leaving Lipsey.” Tom said. It took a second for Harley to figure out what the hell a Lipsey was. He finally realized it must be the unconscious solider in the other seat. He liked Tom a little more for saying it out loud. Even as he felt a little insulted that the man had thought Harley was saying they should leave Sleeping Beauty in the passenger seat to be ripped apart.

  “Cool. I’ll carry him.” Harley said. They weren’t going to make it much more than three steps before ripped apart anyway. It was already almost impossible to hear one another over the hands hammering away on every part of their gigantic mobile military grade sarcophagus. At least by carrying the guy they could be eaten alive feeling better about themselves.

  “He‘s my responsibility. I’ll carry him. Maybe you can make it out of here while these things are snacking on the two of us.” Tom said seriously. It made sense. If Tom went out one side and let those things jump him then it was possible Harley could sneak out the other side and make a run for it. Another option was to shove Lipsey out like a big pile of dog treats. Once the pack of wolves pounced on him then he and Tom could both try the sneaking away plan. It probably wouldn’t work but it was worth a shot.

  “Screw it. I‘ll distract them. You try and get your guy out and away.” Harley said. He figured he could open the door and start shooting then run like hell through the swampy ditch until he was pulled down and eaten. The sound of glass cracking somewhere under all the pressure wasn’t super reassuring. Whatever they were going to do they needed to do it soon. Or they were just going to be eaten alive sitting inside the car like a couple of idiots.

  Assuming he was going to die in a lot of pain really soon Harley shoved a random handful of pills into his mouth and dry swallowed them. One got stuck in his throat and he had to grope around for his flask. Once he found it, he gave himself a very generous hit of
a very expensive scotch. Feeling generous he handed the flask to Tom who had his hand stuck out in expectation. The major took a very healthy hit then handed the container back to Harley.

  “Don’t leave your vehicle. Unless those things are crawling in through the windows stay inside. Wait for our word.” Drew’s voice boomed out of the radio. Harley and Tom looked at each other wondering how to respond. Drew’s voice boomed back out asking them if they copied.

  “We copy. No one in this car wants you morons getting killed trying to save us though.” Harley transmitted.

  “Good. None of us morons want to die trying to save your stupid ass either. Standby and wait for our signal. When we say run you fight your way out of the ditch and run for the road as fast as you can. Make sure you’re waving your flashlights around. We’ll be opening our door so please try not to shoot us. Over and out.” Drew said.

  In the silence that followed the two conscious people in the slowly settling vehicle listened to the soothing drumbeat of dozens of killers hands smacking the vehicle all around them. Occasionally they’d hear a crack or snap as some joint broke or another piece of glass lost a little more of its integrity. They’d addressed those noises by making a drinking game out of them. Every time they heard a noise like that and didn’t die Harley unscrewed the lid of the flask. At this rate they’d both be too drunk to climb out of the ditch if they ever got ‘the word’.

  They’d been assaulted by the singular sense of fear they always felt when close to a large group of the crawlerz. Gruesome images popping unbidden into their heads ever since they’d been pinned down in the ditch. Both men had learned to live with the images. They blocked them out when awake and ran from them in the throes of their nightmares. It made it odd now when they both suddenly sat up in fear. They’d seen Yue and the others being dragged down to the ground and ripped apart. They’d seen others running unprotected into the tall weeds beside a truck parked by the loading dock.

  The demons crawling all over the Humvee saw it too. There was unprotected prey close by. The bulk of them sprang off the Humvee they’d been working on getting into. Turning away they galloped up the side of the ditch with that unnatural crawling motion that’d given them their namesake. They disappeared over the top and kept on going.

  “Did you see…” Tom couldn’t finish the sentence. He looked over at Lipsey who was still passed out in the passenger’s seat. In the seat behind him a stunned Harley was fighting back tears. He’d told them not to come back.

  “The word is now. Haul your asses up the ditch. We need to see some light. I think we see where you are. Flick your high beams if you can. You have like thirty seconds to be in our Humvee or we’re all going to die.” Drew’s voice surprised the holy hell out of both men. They felt like they’d been stranded on a deserted island for years and the Coast Guard had just landed, and they’d brought beer.

  Without wasting time talking the two of them jumped out of the Humvee. The water at the bottom of the drainage ditch was about waist deep. They met on the side with Lipsey and dragged him out of the Humvee. Harley ended up carrying the man just because Harley could handle that kind of dead weight while climbing up a ditch and brandishing an assault weapon all at the same time. Tom may be a licensed Green Beret or whatever but there’s some things some people can just do better than others.

  Not all of the crawlerz had gone away. A few were still outside the Humvee. Harley and Tom took them down in a flurry of fast shooting augmented by Drew and LeBron who came sliding down the side of the ditch to help them up. Together they stumble sprinted their way up through the thorny underbrush out of the wide ditch. At the top of the ditch they threw themselves into the Humvee. Before they’d even gotten the doors closed Lisa was already going sixty miles an hour down the narrow service road.

  A crawler slammed into the door Harley was still trying to pull himself through. The crawler spun off into the darkness with multiple broken bones. The door snapped all the way open then slammed shut right on Harley’s foot. He squealed in pain and pulled his foot up to make sure it hadn’t been snapped off or anything. It hurt that bad. Up in the front seat Lisa was working her magic with the massive Humvee she was driving. The pain in his foot reminded him that Lisa was nursing a sprained wrist herself. You’d never be able to tell by the stunt driver moves she was pulling off though.

  Jeff and Yue were crammed into the passenger seat. Harley immediately teared up on seeing Yue alive and well. The vision of her being ripped apart by the crawlerz had been so vivid. It’d felt so real. Looking up at her now he saw that she was passed out. Jeff was holding her in his arms with one hand rubbing the hair back off her forehead over and over.

  “Is she ok?” Harley asked timidly. He wasn’t used to being timid about anything, but he felt there was something going on here that he just wasn’t privy to. Something that was important that he was missing.

  “I think she’s fine. Just really tired.” Jeff answered as they careened around a corner. A crawler faceplanted in the windshield then slid off leaving a trail of blood and grime. If you looked closely, you could tell the little hunks of ivory stuck in the windshield were teeth. Lisa hit the windshield wiper fluid to knock the mess off. They all watched the wiper blades and cleaning fluid fight the blood smears for a few mesmerizing minutes. Everyone’s thoughts preoccupied with the weirdness that’d managed to get them out of this situation alive. Assuming Lisa didn’t end up killing them all with her crazy driving.

  “I thought I saw you guys losing a fight up here? Like in one of the crawler visions. I think Harley saw it too?” Tom asked. His tone the same level of timid Harley’s had been a few minutes prior. The tone standing out as yet another component of a super surreal night. Neither Harley not Major Tom were known for being shy.

  “We all saw what Yue wanted us to see. We saw what she broadcast to the crawlerz to get them to leave you alone.” Jeff answered.

  “She did what now?” Harley asked incredulously. It was one thing for humans infected with an ancient Egyptian mummy curse to have supernatural powers. It was quite another for a former IHOP waitress to be warping time and space out of the blue. He was freaked out but thankful that she’d just managed to save them with her psychic shenanigans.

  “She’s attuned to them more than the rest of us. I think that means she’s opened herself up more to their visions. She’s opened herself up to the point that she’s almost like one of them as far as broadcasting the mind waves goes. Kind of like a repeater that makes radio broadcasts go further from the station they’re being broadcast from.” LeBron explained. He stopped to see if anyone had any questions. Not that he had any answers, but he thought it was polite to wait. It also gave him a second to gather his own thoughts. This was new territory for all of them. The one person who could be considered an expert on what’d just happened was passed out in the front seat.

  “She didn’t just repeat their thoughts though. Did she?” Harley asked.

  “Nope. We all saw what went out. She got the idea when she saw a crawler in front of us on the road. She had Lisa speed up to hit it then told her to stop. We got out of the car and beat that crawler until it’s bones were all broken. Then we dragged it into the Humvee with us. It was thrashing around everywhere. I swear we beat it hard enough to paralyze it, but the damned thing was still flopping around like a fish out of water. It’s mouth was going a mile a minute. I saw white flecks shoot out when it breathed. The little pieces of teeth that were chipping off it was slamming it’s gums together so hard. We could all feel its thoughts. This close it was easy.” LeBron said. The memory of those thoughts made him pause again. A feeling of coldness washing over him as he remembered what he’d looked like in the crawler’s eyes.

  “I think Yue took those thoughts and used them. She twisted what that thing wanted to do to us to make it look like it was doing those things to us. She twisted the thoughts into what we needed for a diversion and she broadcast it hard. The second she was done she pulled her pistol
and put a bullet into each eye socket to shut that thing up. We’re all probably sitting in brain goop from that poor freak.” LeBron finished up his story.

  They were all silent for a short time after that as they drove. Each of them lost in their own thoughts. They all knew what it was like to catch the little glimpses of the crawlerz warped world view. To feel the blood rush into your mouth through that vicarious connection with the infected minds around them. Those instants of connection with those otherworldly inhuman thoughts were enough to give them nightmares. They were all traumatized from the extremely short interactions they had. To think Yue was knowingly submerging herself in that world for long periods of time to save them. There was no way to say thank you enough to a person who would do that for them.

  “Don’t go too far.” Tom finally broke the silence.

  “How come?” Lisa asked. She was driving down a country road now into the middle of nowhere. She liked the middle of nowhere personally. Canada was also sounding like a good idea to her.