Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  “At least they didn’t just shoot us in the head right away.” Drew said sitting down on one of the beds. When no one seemed int the mood to talk he sighed and lay down to get some shuteye. It seemed to him like they were going to be in this room for a while. Might as well get some rest.

  Chapter 27: Quarantined

  They were able to get plenty of rest. There wasn’t much else to do, and they all needed it. After they’d been there a day someone knocked on the door and asked if they were ok. After they convinced the person on the other side of the door that they were ok they heard the barricades being removed. They stood there waiting to see what was going to happen. When the door finally opened, they found themselves staring down the barrels of a couple of shotguns.

  “Those barbed wire cuts getting any better?” Captain Kate asked from behind the armed guards.

  “Telling you the truth when we’d already sat down and started eating with you guys just seemed a little awkward. We’ve seen people turn enough to know how it works. I apologize for the lying but I still don’t think you’re in any danger from us.” Jeff said.

  “I just wanted to come by to tell you that you’ll be in there another week just to be on the safe side. Also, I wanted to let you know that we still haven’t been able to raise Weathertop. Once they answer we’ll let them know you’re here.” Kate said.

  “If you could leave out the details of our current status in your report to them that’d be appreciated.” Jeff said with a smile.

  “Sure. I’ll just tell them you’re recovering from a nasty barbed wire incident. The doctor’s going to check on you now. Then we’re going to seal you in here with some buckets and enough food to last a week. There’s a guard on your door. If you need anything just knock. Try not to need anything.” Kate waved and walked away.

  “At least we each get our own bucket.” Drew said after the doctor had checked each of them out. They organized the supplies and went back to bed.

  Jeff spent a good portion of the week writing down ideas for reclaiming the countryside. LeBron and Drew tossed ideas at him as they thought of them. They came up with plenty of survival ideas but not so much on the massacring the monsters side of the house. The best they could come up with was rigging claymore style explosives around their train cars each night. Once they had the explosives setup, they’d use cameras on top of the cars to determine when to pull the trigger. That should allow them to kill hundreds per night per team.

  They went through multiple iterations of making the killing more efficient. They talked about using bioweapons. None of them were really comfortable setting off another plague to try to stop the one already killing them though. Nuclear weapons were ruled out as well. Those would kill massive numbers of crawlerz, but it’d also render parts of the countryside uninhabitable. It’s not like they had access to any nuclear devices anyway. The only way that’d work was if Jeff got the President on board.

  By the time the barricades were removed to let them out of quarantine they’d come to the conclusion that getting rid of the infected was going to take a while. Trying to kill millions of the enemy by luring them into ambushes every night was going to be a long and dangerous process. LeBron had started doing the math at one point then stopped once he saw how the answer was coming out. Jeff had seen what he was doing and asked how bad it was. LeBron had told him they needed to get serious about stepping up their recruitment efforts. The more trucks and trains working the mobile claymore strategy the better.

  Yue rushed in the room to hug Jeff as soon as the barricades came down. The doctor and the guards tried to stop her, but Yue was a force of nature. Especially now that she was in a crawler free environment. Without that constant buzzing in her head she’d almost returned to her normal self. She’d spent the last week Valium free doing pretty much the same thing that Jeff had been doing. She’d consumed way too much coffee and tried to come up with ideas on how to take back America.

  Lisa came in right behind Yue making a beeline for Drew. The two of them intertwined in a passionate PDA display that was edging towards a PG-13 rating. Harley barked out for them to get a room and they finally got the hint. Haywood and Harley were much more reserved in their greetings. A handshake and a quick greeting pretty much taking care of them being separated for a week. Men could be apart for years from their friends and when they met up, they’d just pick up right where they left off. It was one of the few characteristics that distinguished them from the fairer sex that Yue was jealous of.

  Jeff was informed he’d been invited to attend dinner that evening in the officers mess with his plus one. The rest of the group had been downgraded to eating in the enlisted galley. Everyone except Haywood anyway. He’d been able to walk right into the chiefs dining room. It wasn’t as fancy as the officers mess was, but you also didn’t have to wait until after dinner to break open the bourbon. The seasoned warrior was instantly welcomed by the other chiefs.

  Jeff left to go check in with Kate and see if there was any more news on Weathertop. Haywood and Harley offered to help Drew and LeBron move all their junk into their new room. While they were packing up a man showed up with a mop bucket and some other cleaning supplies. When Drew said they’d hurry up and get out of his way the blue flight suit wearing enlisted man smiled and shook his head. He informed them that the captain herself had told him to drop off these supplies for Drew and LeBron to field day the room before they moved.

  Haywood and Harley both suddenly remembered they had urgent business elsewhere and disappeared. Yue and Lisa hung out right up until Drew asked if they could help with emptying their buckets. Drew thought it was hilarious. The girls did not. Drew and LeBron ended up cleaning the whole room by themselves. The enlisted man who’d brought the supplies down was helpful enough. As long as they just needed to be told when something wasn’t clean enough yet. He was happy to point those items out.

  When they’d gotten the room cleaned to the approval of the man who’d been sent to watch them, they were given a shopping cart to get their gear loaded up in. The man continued to watch them as they did all of the work. At least he watched them when he wasn’t busy with the little handheld blackjack game he was playing. Seeing that they were ready to go he shoved the game in his pocket and took them down the hall to an exit.

  Outside they piled their gear in the back of a pickup truck for the short ride to the barracks. The big building coming up had been covered with solar cells to generate power. Their escort told them they’d gone out on a couple of missions to collect all the wires and piece parts needed to hook up the solar cells. The original shipment had arrived at the beginning of everything though.

  “That would’ve been Jeff or one of the guys under him. So all the buildings have power now?” LeBron asked.

  The seaman shook his head. “Just this one barracks has it. The admin center where you guys were just at has it. That’s pretty much it. A couple of the houses have it too. Those were the ones who had it before everything happened though.”

  “Does everyone live in the barracks then?” Drew asked.

  The seaman nodded again as he pulled into the parking lot for the barracks. There was a good bit of activity going on in the early morning sun. The strong breeze from the ocean not doing anything to slow down a game of kickball in the field adjacent to the barracks. There were adults playing along with a handful of kids. The seaman noticed them looking over at the kickball game.

  “Yeah. Everybody from the cape who’s alive lives here now. That includes the civilians and their families who decided to stay. We do outdoor stuff during the day to keep everybody active. There’s still a guard or two around on a just in case basis. Plus even the kids are carrying these days.” The seaman said with a disbelieving grin.

  This time the seaman helped them carry their gear. They were assigned racks in a long row of bunks. While some of the bunks were definitely in use a lot of them were empty. Lisa and Yue were waiting for them when they showed up. They told them that Haywood and
Harley were on bike patrol.

  Bike patrol was how they kept up regular patrols of the island without using up all their gas. During the day there were always at least three groups of at least three armed men apiece riding bikes around the island. They were in charge of checking the beach for any signs of the infected. Yue and Lisa both seemed amused by something as they told them what they knew about the bike patrol. LeBron asked what it was. A very giggly Lisa told them to watch Harley and Haywood when they came back.

  Unable to get any more information than that out of them they busied themselves with stowing their gear. That exercise mainly consisted of shoving all their extra weapons and ammunition into the footlockers at the bottom of the racks. A few people came by and introduced themselves as they were doing that. It was mostly a collection of refugees and military guys who swung by. One of the refugees had a really strong accent. He turned out to be a merchant marine who’d ended up in Cape May when his ship left him in port.

  “I take it the people here aren’t like the ones who ambushed us.” Drew remarked once the short stream of well-wishers had ended.

  Yue shrugged and told them her thoughts. “Most of them seem happy to be somewhere safe like this. Even if they do occasionally have to go out on scavenging missions. It’s not like anywhere is really safe now a days. They seem to get that though.”

  “There’s a bar here.” Lisa said.

  “Really?” Drew asked.

  “So we’ve been told. We were waiting on you guys to get out before we went over to check it out. This place is way too testosterone heavy for me to want to walk into somewhere with alcohol flowing without an escort.” Yue answered.

  Lisa smiled. “Want to go check it out?” She asked. She was fairly bouncing with enthusiasm. She was thrilled to have Drew back out of quarantine. If they could spend the day doing something fun like bar games, then that’d be the cherry on top for her. It was only a matter of time before they’d all be given jobs if they hung around long enough. She was ok with that. A little manual labor was a fair trade to stay in a nice safe place like this. It was what everyone wanted in this new normal. She was planning to enjoy the hell out of it while it lasted. There was no doubt in her mind that they’d be back out on the road risking their lives again in no time.

  It was a decent walk to the rec hall they were talking about. The place was opened up for four hours per day to allow people time to swing by and enjoy the activities if they weren’t on duty. There was plenty of alcohol available from the scavenging missions that’d been sent out. No one was allowed to get too drunk anyway so that helped with keeping up on the inventory. There were pool tables, a dart board and all the standard bar type games. All of them had been configured so that you didn’t have to put in money to play. The place was lit up with some battery powered lanterns hung in strategic locations along with the windows being left wide open.

  “Pool? Boys against the girls?” Lisa asked.

  “Should be fun. They both suck.” Yue said following Lisa over to an empty table. There weren’t that many people actually in the center. Even if it was opened and theoretically allowed it wasn’t like getting drunk in the middle of the week was highly encouraged. Most people just came by on the weekends when they were excused from normal duties.

  Drew worked on getting the balls racked up. He was thinking how surreal all of this was. He was loving that it kind of felt like him and Lisa were on an actual date. True they were on the date with his brother and sister but whatever. If their first date had to be a double date, he couldn’t think of two people he’d rather have along with them. He stood back to watch Yue break and groaned when she got a ball in right off the break.

  He was reconsidering letting Yue come on any more dates as they played. She was basically a pool shark. He wasn’t sure when she’d gotten so good, but she was pretty ridiculous. A few of the men from the table next to them had stopped and were commenting on how good she was doing. It took Drew a minute to realize the compliments had transitioned from how good she was doing to how good she was looking. Yue just laughed it off and kept playing.

  One of the men who was slurring his words started asking them all kinds of personal questions. He was also getting a little handsy. Yue asked his friends to get the guy to back off and they just laughed. LeBron looked around to see if there was a guard of some sort in the room. He had a bad feeling about where this was going. The drunk men harassing them had about ten years on them and at least fifty pounds. Not that it mattered when everyone was covered in weapons.

  The men weren’t military. They let on that they’d been truck drivers and still knew where tons of supplies were. Only one of them was being truly obnoxious. The other two just weren’t doing anything to try and stop him. He got too close to Lisa and she turned around and pushed him off of her. The man stepped back laughing and acting like it was no big deal. LeBron had his arms solidly locked around Drew and was telling him it wasn’t worth it. By the way Drew was shifting around LeBron was worried that Drew was starting to absolutely think that it was worth it.

  “What’s not worth it boy?” The drunk man slurred over at Drew.

  “It’s cool. We’re leaving. You guys can have the place.” Yue said trying to stop what looked like was about to happen.

  One of the men with the drunk guy laughed. It wasn’t like the other two weren’t drinking heavily either. This wasn’t going to end well. The drunk guy who’d tried to rub up on Lisa and appeared to be the ringleader decided to answer.

  “Oh no. We don’t want you and the other little hottie here to leave. Just these two little boys you brought in with you.” The man took a threatening step towards Lisa. She backed away from him with her hand going to her belt to rest on her pistol. One of the men must’ve realized this was going too far.

  “Hey! We’re sorry. You guys keep playing. We’ll go back to our side. We don’t get out much and we haven’t been around any single ladies lately.” The man said.

  “They’re not single you asshole.” Drew said throwing LeBron’s arms off of him. He walked up to the main guy and got right in his face. It looked like a David and Goliath kind of fight was about to happen. The man towered over Drew.

  “Wait!” Yue shouted. Everyone looked over at her.

  “Yeah gorgeous?” The man Drew was facing off with asked.

  “No weapons. Drop them on the table over there. You win we’ll play a game with you. You lose the three of you walk out of here.” Yue said. The big man laughed and agreed with a glance at the kid he towered over. Drew and the man both stripped off their obvious weapons and turned to face each other. Anyone who didn’t know Drew would’ve thought Yue had lost her mind.

  The truck driver was six foot something with biceps he was showing off in all their red neck glory. What he didn’t know was Drew had been winning state tournaments in wrestling before any of this happened. He’d spent a good part of his life in foster homes getting the hell beat out of him before he learned to fight back. Since the first infected had shown up Drew had woken up every day and fought for his life. Mr. Tall Guy was about to learn a lesson in humility.

  The man stood there smirking. Normally his size made it where he didn’t actually have to fight. Most people took one look at him and let him have his way. Drew stood directly in front of him and shot him the bird. Looking to end this quickly the man lunged forward and swung a hay maker. If that powerful swing had connected, then Drew would’ve most likely woken up in the hospital. After fighting crawlerz in the field though the truck driver was pathetically slow.

  Drew felt like he was fighting in slow motion. He ducked the punch with ease and came up with a powerful punch right into the dude’s groin. Before the pain had even had time to set in Drew spun around behind the man and put him in a sleeper hold. The big guy bucked around a bit but eventually Drew was able to just leave him unconscious on the floor. He didn’t say a word. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He walked over to the table and started putting his weapons back on.r />
  “Why are you still here?” Yue asked the unconscious man’s friends.

  Mouths hanging open they quickly collected their friend’s gear and exited the bar carrying their slowly recovering companion. Yue waited until they were out the door before she started laughing. Lisa ran over and gave Drew a big hug calling him her hero. She was proud of him. He’d held his jealously in check until it was appropriate. Even then he’d let the guy off with a warning. Lisa had been worried when Drew got in the man’s face. She’d known he’d win the fight. She’d just been scared he’d kill the guy by accident.

  Chapter 28: One Bite at a Time

  Yue woke up with a massive headache. Her mouth tasted like a crawler had puked in her mouth then licked it out then puked in it again before stuffing it with cotton balls. Thinking about what her mouth tasted like made her sit upright and make a run for the bathroom. It was a race against the sudden surge of hot mess she felt coming up her throat. It was a race she lost before it even really began. She crumpled down to the floor and lay there sweating. The world spun and she kind of just wished she was dead.