Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  Jeff searched around in Yue’s stuff until he found a bottle of the pills that he’d gifted her previously. He pulled out two of the pills and crushed them up. He dumped the smashed pills into a cup then poured in some water. He handed the cup to Lisa and told her to make sure Yue drank every bit of it.

  Knowing it’d be a little bit of time before Yue was able to talk, he turned his attention to Chris and asked him to explain exactly how they could get the train moving again. It turned out that the train had a pretty flexible safety system that was going to require someone who knew what they hell they were doing to unlock. Jeff told Chris thanks and handed him a Valium for his efforts. Sucking down one himself he started handing out the little pills like they were tic tacs.

  “Hey man. You’re doing awesome. This crew is bad ass even if half of them are still kids. Let’s chill for the next few hours unless you have some ideas. We’ve got a good ten hours before we’ll be able to tell if the sun is coming up on the cameras.” Haywood said taking a Valium from him.

  The night turned into a crushing assault on all of their senses. The massive waves of hatred radiating through the train walls inflated the desperation everyone was already feeling. The crawlerz beat on the walls while the people inside the train passed around bottles of booze and swallowed whatever pills they could find. Jeff tried to keep watch at first to make sure no one was overdoing it but pretty soon he himself was too wasted to know what was going on. In the end everyone was wrecked. One last hurrah before they needed to do something. They didn’t know what that something was, but they assumed it’d probably end in a painful death.

  Chief Haywood nursed a bottle of bourbon over the next ten hours watching over his flock. Jeff had put him on the shortlist not excepting to actually be allowed to take such a seasoned professional along with him. Little did he know that Haywood had requested to go along with the group. Haywood was here because he wanted to be on the front lines. He wanted to be in the thick of the fight. He wanted to win but he recognized that on the other side of that fight there was nothing there for him. Not with his family already dead. Luckily, he didn’t think it was very likely he’d survive the fight. Especially not when he pushed to go on missions like this one.

  Checking his watch he stared at the monitors willing them to display some damned light. There was nothing. He gave it another hour then woke up Jeff. The whole crew had hit the bottle and drugs hard the night before. Jeff woke up after only a few taps of Haywood’s boot on his head though. He stumbled up off the floor where he’d ended up sleeping.

  “You look like ass.” Haywood told him.

  “Good morning to you too. I kind of feel like ass. Is it morning?” Jeff asked excitedly glancing over at the monitors. The excitement dying almost immediately when he saw the same thing Haywood had seen. There was no indication of any light at all.

  “You need to pull it together. I’d love to get out of this tunnel alive today.” Haywood told him.

  “You’re the SEAL what do you propose?” Jeff asked. He was wondering if it was safe to take more drugs to fix the hangover that he was pretty sure was caused by the previous night’s abuse of drugs. He should’ve asked the sailor about that. Hangovers the man knew how to deal with. The situation they were in now he only had vague ideas and they weren’t pretty. He pitched them to Jeff regardless. There might not be a clean way out of this mess but there was a way. There was always a way. You just had to want it bad enough.

  Jeff walked to the front of the train and made coffee thinking through what the SEAL had suggested. It was by no means a sure proof way out of this mess. It pretty much guaranteed the death of at least one of the men under his command. It could very easily kill them all. It was a Hail Mary as far as plans went. He thought about what the SEAL had said. The way he positioned this was important. Not necessarily for the plan to work but for how they’d feel about it if it worked. If it failed, they’d all be too dead to care.

  Sipping his coffee Jeff beat through his hangover to put together a plan for how he was going to address what they needed to do once everyone woke up. To help a little with the pressure he went ahead and cut a Valium in half and dry swallowed it. He handed the other half to Haywood who downed it without even looking to see what Jeff had handed him.

  Jeff sipped on his coffee for another five minutes then went around waking everyone up. It was time to do this thing. Assuming everyone agreed to their part in the thing. Some of them had way better parts than others.

  Chapter 21: I’ve Got This

  Valium and coffee were truly the breakfast of champions. Jeff stood leaning against the wall watching as everyone returned to the land of the living. He’d wondered how long it may take based on the number of grunts and middle fingers he’d received when trying to get them to wake up. They’d all come through like troopers though in the end. Except for Yue. She was the one person Jeff wasn’t willing to toss a Valium quite yet. He’d given her coffee mixed with whiskey though.

  “Good morning. We’re still pretty screwed as far as we can tell. No light visible on the monitors. That indicates we’re still pretty far from the entrance. There’s still a zillion infected crawling all over the train. Haywood and I talked it through. I think we may have an idea. We need to flesh it out with you guys though. It may require some sacrifice to make it happen. It’s not without risk for everyone in here.” Jeff said.

  “Well what’s the plan then?” LeBron asked. He wasn’t used to the level of partying required for a last night on earth kind of bash. He’d woken up so sick that he almost wished he hadn’t made it through the night. He was struggling even now to hold down each sip of coffee he took.

  Jeff just looked at them. Now that it came down to it, he didn’t know how to ask them to do what needed to be done. He looked at them. Sitting around on beds or leaning against the walls. Harley looming over them all nursing a steaming hot cup of coffee. All of them trusting in him to come up with a way to lead them out of this impossibility. It was a situation where it was perfectly acceptable for them to whip up a big pitcher of poisoned Kool-Aid and pass it around.

  They weren’t a red Kool-Aid kind of crew though. If they died it’d be with guns blazing and blasphemies booming off their lips. They weren’t the type to go quietly into the night. Thinking of all that Jeff decided to just put it out there. People would have to make impossible choices. They didn’t have any options. It was what it was.

  Jeff laid it out. They needed someone to get up into the engine and get the train moving again. That person was going to need someone to watch their back. Considering the massive number of crawlerz surrounding them they’d have to fight like hell to keep them out of the cabin once they opened the door. That didn’t even count clearing a path for someone to get up to the engine room and get the train moving.

  “I’m the only one who can figure out why the train stopped and get it going again.” Chris said shakily.

  “I know.” Jeff said.

  “I’m not a fighter. I’m not even very brave. I don’t care if I die but I don’t want to end up as one of those things. I don’t want it to hurt too much either. Is that too much to ask?” Chris asked. His voice was resigned. At some level he’d already known that he’d be a key figure in any possible chance they had to escape. He’d already come to terms with dying. It was how he was going to die that had him worried.

  “I’ve got you brother.” Haywood said.

  Jeff nodded at him. Haywood knew better than anyone else in the car what that meant. He most likely wasn’t coming back if he went out the door with Chris. Like the Santa Claus cosplayer he’d be watching over this was a one way ticket.

  “I guess I’m expected to provide the magic sauce. That’s why you’re boozing me up instead of giving me the good stuff right?” Yue asked.

  “Yeah babe. That’s the idea.” Jeff answered.

  “That’s cool and I’m totally willing to do whatever to get us out of here. Just please tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do to
get all these infected to make a hole for Chris and Haywood?” Yue asked. She’d already added more whiskey to her coffee. The Valium had worn off for her. She was close to being swept up in the crawler net again. Close to lying back down and drifting away in a haze of cannibalism and rage. Close to a stream of consciousness where her love for everyone in this car was perverted into a deep loathing of their uninfected selves.

  “I don’t get it. How’s this supposed to work?” Harley asked. He hadn’t been around to see some of Yue’s more exciting crawler control moments. The others who hadn’t been there were also looking confused. They knew that Yue could do things like find where the crawlerz were and see what they were seeing. How did those parlor tricks get someone up into the engine room through the mob piling up on them now?

  “We’ve got one chance for it to work. We’re going to be basing a lot of it on people doing things they’ve never done before. When we try it some of us are going to die. Otherwise we sit in here and stare at each other until we all die. Now let’s dive into the details unless someone has an objection.” Haywood said.

  “When do we do it?” Drew asked.

  “Once we’re ready. We’ve got plenty of supplies in here to keep us fed and watered for a few days. I say we take every bit of that time to drill and talk through the plan. We need to be ready for any kind of contingency. This is an all or nothing play.” Haywood answered. Jeff let the chief take the lead. This kind of operation was much more in the SEAL team leader’s wheel house than it was his.

  “Have you actually told us the plan yet? Or are you just going to keep talking in circles around it?” Harley asked. All this talk of dying on top of their current situation was getting to him as much as it was everyone else. He normally just went with the flow, but he was getting worried for his friends. Not so much for himself. He’d slam a bottle of booze and jump out the door with a machine gun in each hand. It’d be neat to see how far he could get. He would like nothing more than to kill the monsters feeding him all the weird mind game crap. Haywood smiled back at Harley. He liked the way the big man cut right through the BS.

  “Yue is going to use her mind control powers to clear the way for us to get Chris safely into the engine room. Once he gets there, he’ll get the train moving again. We drive out of the tunnel and have a nice picnic somewhere.” Haywood responded.

  “Mind control powers?” Harley asked. Yue looked just as lost.

  “I’m wondering the same thing. I’ve swayed a handful of crawlerz to go one way or the other on occasion. I can even control one of them at a time if they’re weak. Getting hundreds of them to stand aside while Chris figures out what’s wrong with the train? That seems a little far-fetched. I’d have to send out some really enticing images. Way more than I’ve done before. It could get pretty bad.” Yue said.

  The conversation began to turn around the logistics of it all. They decided to give themselves a full two days to hash it out. It wasn’t like they were in any kind of hurry to get anywhere. Two days should be enough to convince the people who’d tried to kill them that they were dead. The last thing they wanted was to make it out of the tunnel only to be bushwhacked by those bozos again.

  Riding out of the tunnel also presented a timing challenge. They needed to do whatever they were going to do at the best time of day to do it. Yue found herself being addressed more and more like she was an expert on crawler behavior. It was even more annoying to her that she did have the answers to a lot of the questions everyone was asking. She could feel the gulf between her and her friends widening as more and more of her weirdness was exposed. A weirdness that stemmed from being able to open her mind up to hop on zombie radio. Being able to hop on and strong enough to stay sane.

  As for the timing they obviously wanted to ride out during the daylight. It gave whoever got stuck in the engine room the greatest chance of survival. They all knew that job was most likely one ending in a messy death, but it’d be nice to give the men who were going to make the short trip some hope of survival. LeBron brought up the fact that if they left at night more of the crawlerz may have ventured out of the tunnel giving them a better chance of making it. They finally agreed to record the number of monsters they could see on video over a twenty four hour period and try to figure out the best time based off that.

  When not being asked to tell them how the infected thought Yue was huddled in the corner letting her mind roam. She was prodding and poking at the huddled mass of monsters outside the train. The more of them there were together the stronger the network that bound them telepathically. The faster the viewpoints flashed around. To capture the attention of that many she’d need to do more than just plant an image in her head and share it. She thought about it until she knew what she was going to have to do. It was going to require some serious sacrifice. She gave it a fifty percent chance of working. That was a lot better than the one percent chance she’d given this plan to start with. Like Haywood told her though anything was better than just sitting around waiting to die.

  They’d decided to go for it at first light. They hadn’t been able to tell based on the monitors if the crawlerz thinned out overnight or not. They’d also sped up the timetable once Yue told them that none of the infected outside the train were leaving but more were constantly showing up. They were being attracted by those shared images of the people trapped in the train. If they waited too long the tunnel might fill up with the beasts. If they packed in too much, they might stop the locomotive from even being able to move forward.

  Haywood and a Marine named Salvador were stacked up on the door leading out to the engine room. Harley was standing in line behind them. In the red light of the interior he looked like he was either super constipated or had to puke or possibly both. Harley was standing by the door. His job was to open it until the three men were out then shut it. He’d been given that job because he was the strongest guy in the car. He might very well be playing tug of war with the hellish infected trying to get in.

  Drew and Lisa were covering the door as well. Drew had volunteered immediately to be the one to escort Chris to the engine room. He’d been shot down from all sides as too young and inexperienced. Lisa had been smashing the hell out of his foot to keep him from trying too hard to jump in on the suicide sprint. Inexperienced or not he’d be covering the backs of the men as they sprinted for the engine room. Lisa was helping with that as well, but everyone knew she was also there to keep her dumbass boyfriend from hopping out the door the second Haywood’s team came under attack. She loved him and hated him for his loyalty and bravery.

  Yue sat near the center of the enclosed gigantic metal coffin they were stuck in with Jeff and LeBron. Both of them had removed their shirts and had knives in their hands. Jeff was looking pale but determined. LeBron looked queasy as well even though he was just a backup. His primary job was to watch the monitors and yell “go”. Yue was pale and shaking. She was holding herself together by the thinnest of margins. She was fully immersed in the crawler world now while struggling to keep her grip on reality as well. When she was ready, she looked up at Jeff and gave him a little half smile.

  “I love you babe.” Jeff said then brought the knife down across his palm making a bloody gash.

  Yue gabbed his arm and plunged her face into this palm. She bit and slurped at the hot blood there. She let the grotesque images she’d been bombarded with by the crawlerz take over. She ripped into Jeff while sending images of the back of the train with all her might. Where there‘d been hundreds of competing viewpoints on the network of minds outside the train now there was just hers. Every crawler within reach of her mind moved as one towards the rear of the train. Yue grabbed Jeff’s other arm. He’d slashed it as well to give her more blood.

  She tore into the flesh of his arm. She let every sensation from every bite be transmitted to the hive mind outside. She felt their pleasure and frustration peeking. Their mouths watering with the images she was sending. It hurt them to feel those and not participate. None of them
wanted to be left out of the feast. Yue grabbed LeBron’s arm and bit into it. His blood a slightly different tang to it from the sweat on his skin. Yue shot images out combined with this new taste. There were other victims down the tunnel. Run that way she screamed inside of her head.

  LeBron waved to Drew with a mix of excitement and pain. His sister was busy chowing down on his arm. It hurt like hell, but it looked like it was working. Flashes were hitting all of their minds of the imagery Yue was putting out there. None of them were able to broadcast like she could but they could all receive. Her deepest depravities were laid bare for them all to see. Somewhere inside herself she felt shame. The other feelings were controlling her now though. She was riding them to help them all. Riding them into a pool of inky dark madness that she was too far gone to even wonder if she’d ever be able to come back from.

  Haywood and Salvador went out the front door. They’d discussed maybe just keeping it to knives to avoid attracting attention. Thinking about it though neither of them thought they’d make it far against even a few of the crawlerz if all they had were knives. The beasts didn’t know how to die when they were supposed to. Instead of knives they went out the door with guns blazing. Their bullets blasting a corridor of death for Chris to follow them through.