Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  Looking in the mirrors and hanging out the windows the passengers in the engine car could make out the burning truck approaching them now. The sound of weapons firing was coming from the warehouses off to the side. Windows started being shot out as Jeff yelled needlessly for Chris to get them going the other direction. Chris had already guessed what they needed to do and gotten started on that.

  The sound of explosions behind them as Drew started tossing grenades. Even with everything else going on LeBron still grinned at that. There was no problem that Drew thought couldn’t be solved with a well thrown explosive device. They ducked down below the windows in the train car. Sticking your head up in the opening where the guys in the warehouses with scopes were focusing on was suicide. The thick metal wall of the train should keep them safe but what about the people riding on the back car? There was nothing back there but boxes and crates.

  Back on that back car Drew was nursing a bloody ear behind a stack of crates. The three of them had put their backs to the river and as much stuff between them and the people shooting at them as possible. Drew was tossing random grenades to make sure no one ran up and hopped in the car with them. Despite the gravity of the situation Lisa and the Marine they were in the back with were pretty amused by how many grenades Drew carried around with him. Those things weren’t light.

  The train shuddered to a stop then started moving the other direction. The Marine stood up beside them and popped off a couple of shots. A ton of return fire came back at them and the Marine tumbled backwards off the car. Drew and Lisa clung to one another as the sky continued to rain bullets down all around them. The Marine looked like he might have survived the first bullet but as soon as the car was no longer shielding him another salvo of bullets ripped into his body.

  Lisa was crying. Drew wasn’t sure if it was from fear or out of sadness for the Marine. He hadn’t been a very talkative guy. He’d mostly sat around reading. They’d teased him about it pretty mercilessly. Everything from asking if he needed to borrow crayons to asking him why he’d joined the Marines if he could read. The guy had taken it all in good humor. Now he’d died. Another warrior who’d fallen beside them. He’d died and they were leaving him behind for the vultures and bugs.

  Drew was more focused on making sure they didn’t join the Marine than feeling sad for him. There’d be time to feel sad later. Right now bullets were bouncing off pretty much everything. He was scared to move. If they didn’t move then as the train kept going, they might give the shooters a better angle at them. He thought about making a run for the roof of the middle car. If they could get on top of that they’d be difficult for anyone at ground level to engage. He wouldn’t be surprised if the men shooting at them were up on the roofs though.

  The train was rolling faster. Drew imagined a sniper just waiting for them to come into his scope. He wasn’t used to indecision but there didn’t seem to be any good moves here. He kissed Lisa who kissed him back hard then pulled back and smiled at him.

  “We hang on and hope they don’t hit us.” She said finally.

  “Works for me.” Drew said looking into her eyes. He loved that girl. He remembered that the Marine had been talking to Jeff. He fished his radio out of his pocket.

  “This is Drew over.” Drew said once he’d fished the little radio out of his jacket pocket. He’d been scared for a second that he’d left it in the engine room. Having a zillion pockets was awesome for carrying around everything you needed. It sucked for finding things quickly when you needed them though. He told himself daily to start putting things in the same pocket every time.

  “What’s your status over?” Jeff came back over the radio interrupting Drew’s silent contemplation of organizational issues with clothes that had way too many pockets.

  “Lionel’s down. Lisa and I are fine. Over.” Drew said. Lionel being the name of the Marine who’d been shot. He’d started to give more details about where they were pinned down at. He’d stopped himself when he remembered they were communicating over a walkie talkie set they’d found at a Wal Mart. If the ambushers had a radio, he didn’t want to announce exactly where they were sitting. He realized suddenly he might have been better off just staying silent. Now the enemy might know how many were in the back.

  He picked up his rifle as the train car went around a corner and fired some random shots into the windows of the warehouses behind them. Two SUVs with sunroofs pulled out of an alley and start following them. A man with a rifle popped out of each sunroof and started lobbing shots in their direction. Drew started tossing grenades without counting to three. He was hoping they’d blow up closer to the trucks with that bit of a delay.

  They got lucky. A grenade went off and pelted the lead truck with frags. The window blew out and it looked like they scored a tire or two as well. The other truck stopped too. Men with rifles got out and started lighting up the back of the cargo car where Drew and Lisa were.

  “Let’s get on the top of the middle car!” Drew yelled doing his best to shield Lisa with his own body as they worked their way perilously around the strapped down crates. He looked down between the cars when they finally made it to the part where they connected. He noticed they’d slowed down again as they were now going over the bridge for the third time.

  “No!” Lisa shouted at him. Drew had to admit she made a really good point. He totally agreed now that he was looking at it that this was a stupid idea. Instead of jumping he turned and took a couple of pot shots at the SUVs in the distance. He just wanted to remind them who was boss. He heard Jeff’s voice coming from somewhere. After struggling for a few minutes he found the radio in a different pocket than before.

  “Hang on! Be ready to dismount and get in the middle car on my signal!” Jeff’s voice came through shrilly.

  “Copied. Over.” Drew said back. For some reason he’d finally decided to try and use proper radio lingo.

  “Brace for impact!” Came Jeff’s shouted voice over the radio. A second later the whole train shuddered. Pieces of burning metal filled the air. Men on either side of the train were shooting at them. The train wasn’t slowing down any. They left the second group of ambushers behind in an explosive exchange of fire. Drew and Lisa were shooting as fast as they could reload. They’d been joined by everyone in the engine room. They’d realized that keeping their heads down would mean Drew and Lisa fighting on their own.

  The train shot sparks up on both sides as the wheels locked up. If they hadn’t already been braced for impact Drew and Lisa would’ve been thrown right off. As it was, they were both dangling by the straps they’d wrapped around themselves. It was pretty painful. If they hadn’t pulled some muscles or overextended some joints, then it was a miracle. The more exciting part was they hadn’t been shot dead yet.

  “Get to the middle car!” Jeff’s voice again.

  Drew and Lisa unwrapped themselves and jumped off the still moving car. It was moving slow but definitely still moving. They ran as fast as they could to where the others were piling out of the engine room into the middle car. Bullets were pinging off the metal all around them. Harley and LeBron both stopped for long enough to let loose on the men running towards them. Those men all hit the ground to avoid being shot.

  Drew couldn’t figure out what the plan was until he looked up ahead and saw how close they were to the entrance to the tunnel. The tunnel Yue had referred to so eloquently as a ‘death hole’. Pushing Lisa ahead of him Drew ran and climbed into the middle car along with everyone else. Bullets were pelting the sides of the train sounding like the worst hailstorm ever. Then the attack stopped. The noise abated.

  “I guess we’re in the death hole now.” Drew announced. Realizing what he’d just said he joined everyone else in the car in wishing he’d learn when to keep his mouth shut.

  Chapter 20: In the Darkest Depths of Mordor

  The pelting of the bullets against the train was replaced by the sound of flesh smacking the sides and top. Yue was curled into a ball shivering. She was lying in
one of the beds they’d installed in the train. Lisa was sitting next to her rubbing her hair. The interior of the car was lit by the lights they’d installed prior to leaving. Normally they turned those from white to red at night to help with night vision. It was just a matter of sliding these red plastic pieces over the long lights they’d bolted to the roof.

  The car was a heavy duty one. They’d picked it out specifically to outfit to spend the nights in on this expedition. They weren’t sure what all they might face so they’d selected one that was heavy duty enough to guarantee the infected mobs couldn’t beat their way through it. That had the added bonus of making it almost bullet proof. You’d need a super high caliber rifle or a rocket to do any damage. It was basically a tank on wheels. A tank without any sort of gun sticking out of a turret on top.

  A massive gun of some sort would be a comforting thing to have. The situation was bad. It was to the point that everyone was wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off just surrendering to the people who’d ambushed them.

  “Maybe the flyers weren’t such a great idea.” Jeff said reflectively.

  “You think?” LeBron retorted sharply. He turned away and went to sit beside Yue.

  “You thinking we managed to piss off a bunch of antigovernment anarchist types?” Drew asked.

  It made sense. They’d been leaving flyers and shooting flares in the air for people to come find them. Flyers that said the United States government was here to help. The same United States government that’d told them they were on their own back when everything started. Drew picked up one of the flyers and scanned through it. He handed it to LeBron when he was done.

  “Yeah. I guess those guys out there with the guns and the bad attitudes couldn’t figure out in all these months how to turn on the radio. If they had they’d already know where to go for the government to help. Hmmm. I wonder if they maybe don’t trust the government anymore. What do you think Jeff? Do they have a reason not to trust the government anymore?” LeBron asked testily. He was in a rare mood. Seeing Yue’s state and knowing they were basically buried underground in a metal tube with the infected crawling all over it was freaking him out.

  The two remaining soldiers were both listening raptly wondering what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. Chris the engineer was only partially paying attention. He was much more focused on the motion of the train beneath their feet. As long as they kept moving forward, they were ok. If they stopped then they were screwed. The train engine had all kinds of automated safety measures built into it. None of them were a big deal as long as he was up front. Sitting here in the back though he was worried one of those safety measures would kick in and they’d be stuck sitting here until the diesel ran out.

  A lot of those safety protocols required an up and running network. The digital age had wrapped itself around the train industry promising better safety and more efficient utilization of the rails. Chris had retired right as a lot of that was being implemented. He’d setup the train already to bypass the standard safety features. There were switches built in for just that purpose. The older safety features kicked in if there wasn’t a network available.

  One of those included a manual check on trains to make sure drivers were alert and paying attention. They were typically used in tunnels to make sure a driver didn’t come flying out going way too fast. Homeland security and other three letter agencies had gotten involved as well and added other mandatory safeguards. After all you wouldn’t want someone to load up a train with explosives then set it to speed down the track like a rail bound rocket. One of those systems kicked off in the middle of the tunnel. It’d been specifically designed to utilize manual means in the event of an EMP blast or other attack.

  “Are we slowing down?” Drew asked abruptly. His voice accompanied by the drumbeat of a hundred crawlerz on the train car they were all sealed up in.

  “Feels like it.” Chris answered. He didn’t want to say anymore until he knew for sure.

  “What do you mean it feels like it?” Lisa asked. Harley had come to stand beside her. He was staring down at the concerned conductor. Everyone was turning to the man as the train continued to slow.

  “There are safety mechanisms on every train. Some I could disable, and I did. I hoped this wouldn’t happen. We must have run into some other safeguard.” Chris said.

  “What about crawlerz? Could there be so many crushed crawlerz on the track ahead of us that it’s slowing the train down?” LeBron asked. He was hoping for some alternative. An option where they weren’t stuck in a stationary metal tube underground in a tunnel filled with demons who wanted to eat them alive.

  “Could be but I doubt it. We’re going pretty slow and the tunnel here’s pretty wide. The cow catcher on the front should do a pretty good job of diverting them off to either side.” Chris answered crushing LeBron’s hopes.

  They sat in nail biting silence willing the train to continue its forward momentum. Their collective prayers weren’t enough to do the trick. The train surged forward one last time before coming to a total standstill. The shocked passengers stared in horror at one another. The beating of hands against the walls of the train took on a frantic pace. Yue screamed and sat upright before collapsing back into bed with the whites of her eyes showing. They busied themselves fussing over her for a few minutes before they found themselves once again faced with an impossible dilemma.

  “Is there a way to control the train from back here?” Jeff asked. He knew it was a stupid question, but he wanted to get everyone’s creative juices flowing. Plus, maybe there was a remote control hidden by one of the monitors. At the thought of the monitors he walked up and flipped them on. They hadn’t been on earlier as it was still daylight outside.

  “We’re so screwed.” Harley announced after one glance at the monitors. Jeff couldn’t think of anything else to add. Harley had summed it up pretty well.

  The monitors were each divided into four sections to show the views from the four cameras mounted to the outside of the train cars. Only two of them were showing anything useful. The other two were covered by the bodies of the infected. The two that were showing the outside of the cars utilizing a mix of night vision and the trains running lights were jaw dropping. It looked like someone had taken a toy train and shoved it into a fire ant pile. They were covered and smothered like a waffle house omelet from hell.

  It was too much. Drew started laughing and crying at the same time. Lisa started hitting Drew. Harley collapsed onto the closest bed and curled up like Yue. Jeff sat down on a bed and put his face in his hands. He’d screwed up this mission beyond belief. Now not only would he suffer his friends would as well. Yue was going to die, and it was all on him.

  “You guys ain’t quitting, are you?” One of the soldiers had stood up and walked into the middle of all of them. He was a special ops guy with a big bushy beard and hair that he’d let get way too long.

  “You have an idea on how to get out of this?” LeBron asked.

  “I sure do. The specifics may escape me at the moment, but we will get out of this. We will not go out like a bunch of pussies. I got on this train with you people because I respected you. I’m kind of disappointed that a minor inconvenience like this has thrown you all off your game.” The man speaking was Chief Petty Officer Haywood. He’d been a SEAL for ten of the twelve years he’d been enlisted. His family had been infected while he’d been deployed in Africa trying to track down the source of the infection. He now lived to kill the infected. He didn’t fear death. In death he’d be reunited with his beautiful wife and his five year old princess.

  “Specifics are kind of what we need.” LeBron said. He appreciated Haywood making the effort to motivate them, but it was hard. The crushing weight of the crawlerz was bearing down on all of them in multiple ways. Yue may be the most sensitive but all of them were fighting off the mental mayhem radiating towards them from the crawlerz. They were all getting glimpses of the frustration the attackers felt. They were all getting hit wi
th how much pleasure ripping their bodies open would bring to their attackers.

  “We could be close.” Chris said. The old man’s voice was weak. He was in no way used to these kinds of conditions. He’d basically spent the entire apocalypse at Weathertop eating three squares a day in between driving the train to Fayetteville and back.

  “Close to what?” Jeff asked looking up.

  “The exit to the tunnel. I’ve kind of lost track but what if it’s just dark now. I’ve been trying to tell from the monitors, but you really can’t. We may be close enough to make a run for the exit. We’d been in the tunnel for a while before we stopped.” Chris explained. His voice cracking with every other word he spoke.

  “How do we find out?” Jeff asked. He liked the way Chris was thinking. He liked the way Haywood was keeping them pumped up. They needed something to counteract the overwhelming despair they were getting from the infected crawling all over them. Jeff wasn’t ready to give up either. He had too much to live for.

  A big part of what he wanted to live for was currently incoherent due to the massive psychic burden she was under. To get out of this situation Jeff was thinking they might need to leverage her ability to exert some manner of control over the crawlerz. The first step to that was to bring her back to the world of the sane. Ironically enough that was going to require a large dose of mood altering drugs.