Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  They ended up discussing the mobile strategy out on the train platform for so long Jeff almost missed his meeting with Tom. They were talking about how they could leverage the fancy electric bikes that’d been stored at some of the depots when Jeff realized what time it was. He gave Yue a quick kiss noting that her Valium smile was starting to slip off her face. Thanking them all for giving him a ton of ideas to bring to Tom he walked purposefully towards the administrative offices of the train station for his meeting.

  Chapter 17: Hobo Warriors

  The engine was the best place to spend the day as far as Yue was concerned. The other options were hanging onto the roof of the cars or stuck inside. They’d started with a pretty slimmed down crew since this was more of an experimental run. The engine was pulling two cars behind it. One of which was filled with supplies and the other with bunk beds. The one with bunk beds also had extra supplies in it. This after LeBron had asked what they were going to eat if they got surrounded by a bunch of surgers and couldn’t leave the freight car.

  He’d brought it up as more of an academic point, but Jeff had taken him seriously. It was true that there weren’t really many surgers around today. To LeBron’s point that didn’t mean they could just assume that was going to always be the case. For all they knew the crawlerz would decide that sunlight didn’t suck as much as they thought it did and start prowling the day as well as the night. To be on the safe side Jeff had jammed in even more supplies for them to transport.

  Jeff’s plan for a more mobile approach to rebuilding had been well received by the leadership at Weathertop. They’d approved a trial to determine the feasibility of the ‘armored rail caravan’. To support the trial they’d allowed Jeff to pick a team. On top of the people Jeff chose they also assigned a train engineer. Yue, Drew, Harley, Lisa and LeBron were all along for the ride as were a mixed squad of five handpicked military men.

  The leadership at Weathertop had agreed Yue should stay in the field. They requested she be observed to see if the psychic link she was developing may be useful in the fight against the crawlerz. Reading between the lines the people back at headquarters didn’t actually believe she could do the things they were reading about in the report. Even if they did believe the report there was no way they were letting any of the infected anywhere close to their own base to test out the theories. They were more than happy to let the freak wander around the battlefield doing her thing. There was more than enough weirdness to go around without adding to it.

  Yue had looked pretty freaky during the day back in Fayetteville. She’d take a couple of Valium once everyone was tucked safely in the freight car for the night. Until then she considered it her responsibility to be on the lookout for infected that may ambush them. That meant she had to keep her mind open to images of depraved insanity all day. She had to constantly fight back the urge to rip into the flesh of those around her. She floated through the day on a dark wave of lusty despair. It was a darkness that was slowly poisoning her soul. There was only so long you could spend looking at the uninfected as hated prey before it twisted your whole perspective.

  A weaker person would’ve crumbled by now. It was possible that a lot of people had begun developing this power Yue had and then just not been able to cope with it. Yue was handling it with the use of the drugs at night. They did their best to keep the area around them cleared out and crawler free. The less infected around the weaker the network of psychic communications that plagued Yue. It also just made sense to kill as many of the monsters as possible. That was what their mission was all about anyway.

  Looking out the window as they rolled down the tracks Yue was struck by how little the countryside really cared that humanity was close to being completely obliterated. Her favorite parts of this trip so far had been the vast spaces where there simply weren’t any crawlerz. At least not enough for her to feel their presence as they traveled the tracks. She could feel the cities approaching when they got close. An angry hum in the air that hit her right in the chest. The crawlerz never really slept.

  She’d been happy to find out that her sensitivity to the psychic communications blasts didn’t make her fear the sun. She’d worried she’d become as nocturnal as they were. So far that hadn’t been the case at all. She couldn’t even explain to the others really why the crawlerz feared the sunlight so much. As far as she could tell all it really did was relax them. Maybe it relaxed them enough that their real selves crept out and were broken by what they’d become.

  Their new mission was to see how far they could ride the rails northwards. The track between Fayetteville and Weathertop was well used at this point so that was a known quantity. What wasn’t known was what’d happened to some of the larger cities up north. New York City specifically was almost impossible to find out anything about. The bulk of what was generally known came from a few scouting missions pilots had flown to see what could be seen. Much more detailed information had been gathered on New York City and the rest of the country by the Air Force satellite observation teams that the United States Government didn’t want to admit still existed.

  Since they didn’t want to admit the existence of the satellites, they needed to send people out to ‘discover’ what was already known. Who better to send on such an important seeming task than the director for the continuation of the United States government? If pressed to explain why they were practicing all this subterfuge no one really had a great answer. Old habits just died hard.

  A trip that would’ve taken half a day back before the apocalypse was going to take a lot longer now. Especially once they got past the part of the tracks that’d been used for the Fayetteville to Weathertop run. The engineer would keep them steaming along at a steady thirty miles per hour while he scanned the tracks ahead for anything that looked abnormal. For every abnormality they had to slow the train to a crawl while they pulled up to it to investigate.

  Most of the time the obstacles turned out to be minor things. Garbage that’d made its way onto the tracks or trees that’d fallen across the rails and needed to be cleared. So far there’d been no sign of any people still living along the tracks. Not a big surprise to Yue as she was seeing for the first time how big the country really was. It was giving her hope that someday they could find their own corner to live happily ever after in. She was constantly checking the map against the chart the engineer was using to keep track of where they were.

  They’d been provided with a map from Weathertop of where possible groups of survivors may be. If they were able to make contact with them, they were to inform them of the efforts of the government to retake the country. Anyone they found could either choose to continue where they were or come with them back to Fayetteville to be processed and shipped off to one of the secure refugee facilities. The government had gone from treating the survivors like garbage to understanding that to rebuild the country they needed people. To fight hundreds of millions of the infected they needed people.

  Every military specialist on board the train knew immediately the locations had most likely been surmised via satellite data. That was the easiest way to be able to find groups of people in a messed up world like this. Weathertop had the processing power to sort through the video feeds it received to sift away the ones that weren’t relevant. In this case the search would’ve been pretty easy. The obvious variable would’ve been people moving around outside during the day.

  They planned on coming back through the same way on their return trip. Since they were coming back, they left a note on each of the train platforms they passed. The note explained who they were and what the options were for any survivors who wanted to meet up with them. Yue and everyone had agreed that sounded like a much better idea than wandering around strange cities looking for survivors. Those survivors may very well not want to be found. Least of all by representatives of the President who’d come into their living rooms via all the major networks at the beginning and told them they were on their own. A government that’d abandoned them when they nee
ded it the most.

  No one really expected large groups of survivors to meet them on the way back. There was zero anticipation of being greeted with flowers by people who’d been waiting to be liberated into the arms of a loving government. What they hoped for was that there’d be some refugees who saw the flares and came to investigate who’d like what they read. People who were sick of living in fear. If they could save some of them then the trip was worthwhile.

  They stopped well before dusk to get ready for the evening. The engine was securely locked up. No one would be sleeping in that car. The windows were tempered but a group of crawlerz could bash through it in no time. Everyone would be sleeping in the freight car in the middle. The car hauling the supplies was open. They’d wanted to save a little bit of weight to use less diesel. That car was just a flat car with crates of supplies strapped to it. There were way more supplies than they’d ever need. The plan was to gain some goodwill by providing supplies to survivors they met along the way who needed them.

  They spread out nets around the bottoms of the train cars taking care to spike them to the ground at close intervals. Harley teaching them a couple of hilarious circus songs as they hammered in the long stakes they’d brought. The idea was that the fencing would dissuade any of the infected from crawling under the cars to spend the night. It was one of those ideas that Jeff had already commented might not survive testing in the field. The concept wasn’t bad. The problem was going to occur when collecting the nets in the morning. It would mean walking along super close to the bottom of the train pulling up the stakes. If a crawler had slipped through it’d be stalking anyone pulling up the stakes from under the train. If you were that close to a crawler coming full speed the net wasn’t going to stop it.

  “Pull the net back out.” Jeff ordered when they were about seventy percent done. He’d imagined himself having to wake up in the morning and being responsible for pulling up the net.

  “You don’t want to try it out for the night and see how it works?” Yue asked. She’d been one of the people who’d loved the idea. They’d come up with it back in a brainstorming session in Fayetteville. They’d also come up with pouring instant drink mix into a vodka bottle to make shots for a brainstorming game Drew made up. That whole night had been one horrible idea after the other.

  “It’ll suck to pull it up in the morning. I don’t think the risk is worth the reward on this one.” Jeff answered her honestly. He saw her stare at the net then nod as she saw what he was getting at. She’d been so excited about the idea that she’d missed the possible repercussions of removing it in the morning.

  “I’m all about not getting yanked underneath again if one of those things wants to play Hungry Hippo.” Yue said smiling back at Jeff. Yue had been dragged under a truck before and had to fight her way out. Jeff could see how she’d want to avoid reliving that particular experience. He called out to everyone else to start taking the nets out then bent down to help Yue gather all the stakes.

  “How are you feeling?” He asked her carefully. He’d been worried about her ever since the psychic phenome the crawlerz radiated had started overwhelming her. She’d be fine one minute then they’d drive past a building with a nest in it and she’d suddenly lose her mind. It embarrassed the hell out of her to lose control like that. No matter how many times everyone around her told her they understood. No one could really understand unless they’d experienced the feelings full on like she had.

  “I’m good. I love being out here in the middle of nowhere. This net probably wouldn’t have even been tested. I don’t sense anything anywhere. Unless they hit the tracks and start running for us as soon as the sun goes down, I think we’re good for the night.” Yue announced.

  “Should we sleep under the stars? Maybe whip up some s’mores?” Jeff joked with her.

  “Yeah, I don’t trust these feelings enough for any of that. If you’ve got the stuff to make s’mores and haven’t pulled it out until now though I may have to kill you.” Yue paused to throw a wink his way. “Immediately after you make me s’mores of course.”

  Jeff kissed her. Immediate cat calls and people advising the two of them to get a room followed. It wasn’t easy trying to date during the apocalypse. Especially not in a train car with her two brothers and a bunch of soldiers. It didn’t help that he was over a decade her senior either. He was about ready to smack Drew around some if he came at him with anymore of those robbing the cradle jokes. With nothing else to do they all piled into their armored car to pass the time until morning.

  “When do you think it’ll be safe to watch a sunset again?” Lisa asked idly. None of them were really tired. They had games to play, books to read and dinner to put together but none of them were in the mood for any of that yet. It was the time of day the infected typically showed up. A time of day they all dreaded.

  “Once we’ve killed all the crawlerz. If you want to sooner, we can always watch it from a boat or an island. Your wish is my command and so on and so forth” Drew said sidling up close to Lisa. His performance earning him a ‘get a room’ comment from Jeff. LeBron suggested they could put on full suits of armor and stand outside. They ripped that idea apart for a few minutes.

  There was a monitor on each end of the car that showed the camera views from the four cameras mounted outside. The views automatically switched to night view when it got dark outside. They’d talked about using cameras mounted under the cars as an early warning system instead of using the nets to keep the crawlerz out. If you could just pan, tilt and zoom a camera mounted on the bottom of the trailer then you could be confident you weren’t going to die getting out to take a whiz. At least not from a stalker lurking under the car waiting for someone to come out.

  Harley watched the monitor like it was the playoffs. As of now all four views were indicating Yue’s earlier prediction was coming true. There was no sign of the infected so far. Just an empty track heading through the woods in either direction. Hoping their luck would hold they settled in for a gloriously mundane night of beautiful boredom.

  Chapter 18: Learning by Doing

  It started getting sketchy as they went further north. They passed the spot the engineer told them was the farthest north he’d gone on the line since everything happened. Stops to drag stuff off the tracks and check out bridges before going over them were much more frequent. They’d been steaming along at a decent speed before. Now that they were riding on track that no one had been maintaining they traveled at a snail’s pace. The engineer had zero desire to smash into a broken piece of rail leaving them all stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  “Next time we should bring some of those electric bikes.” Drew said out of the blue. They were taking their turn sitting up in the engine room staring out the windows. They were driving through what was either a big town or a small city. None of them cared enough to check the chart and see where they were. It’d gotten depressing marking their progress when they were going so slow.

  “I honestly can’t believe we didn’t think of that earlier. If this train wrecks, we’ll have to find a vehicle to get home. We could’ve just towed them with us like on those Amtrak car trains.” LeBron said.

  “Excellent point. I’m adding that to the list. We’ll need them to explore and try to find survivors too.” Jeff said.

  “We’re going to be wanting some ultra-bright lights too.” The engineer said. The old man didn’t really talk much. No one even remembered what he’d mumbled his name was when they first met him. He was like a lot of others. Beating his way through the apocalypse with no real zest for life since he’d lost the love of his life. He’d beat her and one of their grandkids to death after they’d turned. He’d been sitting on a couch with a bottle of bourbon and every pill bottle he could find when the special forces had crashed into his home and saved him. They’d needed people who could drive trains.

  “How come?” Lisa asked the man curiously. He reminded her of her own grandfather. Or what her own grandfather would be like if yo
u sucked all of the fun out of him.

  “We’re going to be going through more and more tunnels the further north we go. Subway tunnels and the like. It’s going to be darker than night in those now.” The old man was tugging on his beard thoughtfully. He may have lost the zest for life but, he’d decided to hang on to it a little while longer at least. Thinking about those tunnels coming up was scaring the hell out of him.

  Tunnels. That was a word to strike fear in the heart of anyone living in this new normal. It was something someone from a big city would’ve thought of instantly. It hadn’t really occurred to Jeff or the others as something they’d be dealing with. Tunnels were up in the mountains as far as trains went. Now that they were thinking about it though subways were just trains that went underground. None of them had ever been commuters either. They’d never gone down to the train station for the ride into work.

  “Tell me we’re not going through tunnels.” Yue said breathlessly. The place they were riding through was well populated by crawlerz. She could feel them in the buildings they passed. She caught flashes of their sudden rage at hearing a train pass by. Some small part of their brains still able to connect the sounds of a train passing by to their hated prey. Tunnels would be suicidal as far as Yue was concerned. She asked the engineer how long before they started hitting the bigger ones. She wanted to make sure she swallowed a couple of pills before that happened.