Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes

by Merritt, R. S.

  “It’s not doing much.” Yue whispered to Jeff. He casually walked over and let Tom know that the mirrors were a bust. Tom nodded and ordered the mirrors to be put to the side. He told Jeff they were going to try a few flash bangs next. He said it loud enough so that Yue heard him. He was obviously looking for her feedback on how those worked compared to the mirror idea. Yue settled into a trance to ‘listen in’ on the crawler mind network.

  Yue was yanked out of her trance by LeBron poking her in the side. Annoyed she looked up in the air where he was pointing. A trio of large military style helicopters were coming in for a landing out by where they’d left their vehicles parked.

  “Who the hell’s that?” Jeff asked. His mind was racing as he considered where the men in the helicopters might have flown in from.

  “I put out the word before we left on what we were doing and got a couple of confirmations that we’d get some reinforcements today. They said they’d be here at first light which is why I’d kind of given up on them already. Better late than never though.” Tom said turning to stomp back up the concrete roadway and see what kind of reinforcements they’d been sent. He hoped they hadn’t wasted space in those birds on anything stupid like giant mirrors.

  Chapter 33: Better late than Never

  A bomb went off in her head. She was assaulted by a rampage of colors she’d never known existed. A raw note of power hit her. Yue crumpled to the ground with blood pouring out of her nose. Jeff and Lisa were on their knees beside her helping to pat back the flow of blood. Drew pulled a t-shirt out of his pack and handed it to them to use. Yue’s eyes slowly blinked back open as she gasped for air and flung her arms around blindly.

  When she was finally able to see she saw that Major Tom was standing a little back from their group. He was staring at her questioningly. Despite her suddenly pounding headache she smiled and gave him a thumbs up. They’d experimented by flinging a single flash bang into the warehouse. The grenade was mean to blind and disorient opponents. It was commonly used by SWAT teams or other infiltrating forces who were trying to rescue or take hostages.

  It turned out they were a great tool for disorienting a gigantic room full of crawlerz. If the flash bangs hadn’t worked, they‘d talked about flinging in fragmentation grenades. The problem with that was they were actually trying to rescue whoever might still be stuck in the massive warehouse. Flinging explosives into a base stockpiled with explosives might not end well. When even Drew thought that grenades might not be the right answer then you knew you needed to spend some time thinking through your options.

  Three helicopters had been launched from an offshore carrier to assist in clearing out the warehouse. The reinforcements hadn’t brought much more than themselves and boxes full of ammunition. They expected to go in hard and clear the place out. It was kind of their thing. The same strike force had been sent all over North America to rescue important people and gather critical supplies. The unit consisted of a ragtag collection of various specialties from multiple branches of the military. They’d enlisted the printing department on the carrier to come up with a new patch for them. ‘Suicide Squad’ with a picture of Harley Quinn’s face seemed pretty dead on for what they did.

  The men lined up now to take the warehouse. The suicide squad members had brought their own flash bangs. It turned out they were the best thing since sliced brains when it came to distracting the infected. Having done these sorts of operations hundreds of times at this point the officers accompanying the squad took command of the overall operation. There was no jockeying for politics or credit or any of that. Neither Jeff nor Tom cared who got credit as long as the operation was successful. They both recognized the expertise of the men who’d shown up.

  The capabilities this force brought were obvious. The creepiness factor was something else entirely. The members of the squad had fully embraced their suicidal persona. Joker grins were tattooed onto more than one face. In the spirit of esprits de corps the men were allowed to get away with blatant violations of military dress code. Their weapons went well beyond the standard as well. On top of the normal assortment of handguns, knives, shotguns and long guns they also carried things like spiked baseball bats and samurai swords. The majority of them sported some kind of body armor. Almost all of them preferred to have bite resistant leather covering their entire body. One of them lined up to be the second man into the warehouse was sporting a hockey mask ala Jason Voorhees.

  “These dudes are bad ass.” Drew said in awe.

  “There’s a few dudettes in there too.” Lisa said. She wasn’t so much standing up for feminism as she was in awe of the women who could hang with those kind of men. Looking at them in line they seemed like they could carry their share of the burden if not more.

  “I always thought dude could mean a girl or guy?” Drew whispered.

  Jeff tuned out the Lisa and Drew show to focus on the assault. The squad was going in first. Tom’s men would follow on their heels to help secure the warehouse space. Hopefully in the next three minutes they’d see a warehouse full of dead crawlerz. They should be able to see them easily as soon as the lights were flicked on. Once they’d secured that first space there were still multiple levels and spaces to repeat the process in. Hopefully a lot of those were sealed off so that the crawlerz couldn’t have accessed them.

  Loud bangs and flashes of light from the entrance to the warehouse signaled the start of the assault. The suicide squad members went in immediately after the flashbangs went off. They didn’t want to waste a single second of the crawlerz being in a bewildered state. Tom’s men waited for the second set of flash bangs to go off then they entered as well. The roar of automatic weapons sounded like rolling thunder. It was actually a little less than three minutes later when the ‘warehouse cleared’ message was piped out.

  Warehouse cleared did not mean warehouse secured. Men would still be poking in every corner of the massive space to see if they could locate any more of the monsters in hiding. Yue saw an opportunity to be useful and took it. She slipped into a trance again as she combed through the scattered visions she was still seeing. She relayed what she saw to Jeff. Jeff told Tom who had the info passed to the squad leaders. The remaining stalkers and lurkers in the warehouse were hunted down and dispatched based on Yue’s insight.

  The group moved into the newly formed beachhead of the warehouse space at the entrance to the massive underground complex. The doors from the warehouse space to the rest of the base had been closed. They could all hear the sporadic smacking of hands against those doors now as crawlerz fought to get out. Yue was about to let her mind wander to see what she could find out when a tall woman walked up and said hello.

  “Hi.” Yue said uncomfortably. Jeff had gone off to check on the supplies that were in the warehouse and help plan the next phase of the assault with Tom. That left Yue with Lisa, LeBron and Drew. Harley had jumped in feet first with the squad to hold down the warehouse.

  “You’re a psychic right? I didn’t know they had one with this group.” The woman said. It wasn’t really a question.

  Yue started paying attention. The woman addressing her was almost six feet tall. In her combat boots she towered over Yue. Being tall for a girl Yue wasn’t used to another female towering over her like that. Long brunette hair was clamped down in a braid that went halfway down the woman’s back. She had leather and body armor up to her throat with a walkie talkie built into the helmet resting on her head. She also had a black heart tattooed onto her cheek which immediately identified what unit she was with. The captain’s epaulets told Yue this was most likely the leader of the unit that’d just taken out a warehouse full of crawlerz quicker than most people take out the trash.

  “It’s good to meet you captain. I’m Yue. This is my brother Drew and my other brother LeBron. My future sister in law here is Lisa.” Yue said extending her hand to the Amazonian warrior in front of her.

  “Good to meet you. I’m Captain Lindsey Glenn. I take it you’ve worked it out
already that I‘m in charge of these guys. Sorry for not introducing myself sooner.” Lindsey said.

  “No worries. You had crawlerz to kill.” Yue said smiling.

  “You’re their psychic right?” Lindsey asked again.

  “What do you mean by that?” Yue asked in return. Drew, LeBron and Lisa were watching the discussion between the two strong women like it was a tennis match. Their heads moving back and forth as they watched the two of them volley words back and forth. Lindsey smiled crookedly at Yue’s evasiveness.

  “We’ve been sent in to pick up people like you before. Three of them to be exact. Two of them killed themselves and the third one refuses to leave the ship now. We’ve worked with people like you who can get in their heads and stay there. We’ve just never worked with somebody who can do it and not go crazy. If you help out with the rest of this sweep, you’ll most likely save some lives. You down?” Lindsey asked challengingly.

  “Yeah. I was planning to help anyway. I just haven’t really told the whole world about what I can do.” Yue answered.

  “No problem keeping it on the down low. Hell we may both die in the next five minutes anyway. Let’s do this.” Lindsey gave an awkward high five to each of them before turning to direct her people on getting ready for the next stage of the assault. Standing in one of the lines was Harley. In his oversized duster with a shotgun dangling out of each hand he fit right in with the military misfits he was going to be fighting beside.

  Tom and his men didn’t seem to quite know what to make of the unique force that’d shown up to reinforce them. The squad was a colorful group of men and women who’d fully embraced their role as special ops in a war against the demons of hell. Most men in the military get tattoos that aren’t visible when they’re wearing dress uniforms. That’s pretty much the unofficial rule in the military to avoid being disciplined. The CO for this unit had a facial tattoo. The black heart on her cheek was actually on the conservative side compared to a lot of her people.

  After the first assault where they’d quickly and efficiently taken the warehouse back no one appeared to care anymore that some of the newcomers had gigantic joker smiles tattooed on their faces. These tattooed warriors were true professionals. Watching them work you could easily tell that they’d been there and done that. They keyed all of their actions off those flashbangs. They’d toss them with their own eyes covered with special goggles built for this sort of operation. As soon as they went off, they went to work.

  Yue and Drew watched from about fifty yards away as the squad opened the doors to the corridor that went deeper into the fortress. The corridor that was bursting at the seams with the infected. The crawlerz poured through the door like the water from a fire hose. Lindsey had lined everyone up so that the crawlerz were running a gauntlet from their first step into the warehouse. From about twenty feet away three men were working the incoming crawlerz with .50 caliber machine guns they’d mounted on top of boxes they’d dragged over. Trip wires had been rigged to literally trip the crawlerz to prevent them from doing any of their spooky fast stuff and flanking them.

  In case the machine guns chewing them up wasn’t enough there were men with rifles guarding the gunners. They were taking shots at anything that looked like it might be moving too fast. Any of the infected who looked a little too sure of themselves were provided with special treatment. More men were lined up on the same side as the other gunners. They were shining spotlights into the crawlerz faces to further disorient them. Still others were covering the men with the spotlights.

  The air was thick with the sharp odor of gunpowder. Everyone had given up on ever being able to hear clearly again after this. The crawlerz just kept on coming. Lindsey had a man standing by with a truck with a snowplow on the front of it in case they needed to push the bodies out of the way.

  Yue surfed the thoughts she was picking up in rapid fire succession. She didn’t get a sense of fear at all from the crawlerz being shredded in the grinder. All she felt was their excitement at seeing so many potential uninfected victims standing around. The bullets ripping their bodies apart didn’t even register as important enough to broadcast. They were seen as nothing other than an obstacle to get to the flesh they craved. Having seen enough Yue snapped her thoughts back and meditated to try and clear her mind. It was her new way of fighting a dependency on anti-depressants.

  Her hope was to learn how to dial her sensitivity up and down without having to rely on drugs. She may still need a little something at night to get some sleep. Hopefully she could get away from competing with Harley for who could take the most drugs every day. Although with the steady pounding of the guns in the enclosed warehouse she felt like she’d be slamming Advil along with everyone else for the next few days. She also made a note to try and find some of those little orange things you could shove in your ears. Her dad used to take a plastic jar of them to the range when they all went.

  The crawlerz kept coming until there were so many dead ones lined up on the floor in front of the door that they had to squirm and push their way through. A lake of blood was spreading across the warehouse floor. The barrel on one of the machine guns melted down and had to be replaced. Luckily the crawlerz were coming out so slowly now that wasn’t a problem. Yue gazed in awe at the pile of bloody corpses and body parts. A lot of it looking like hamburger after the constant pounding of the high caliber bullets at such close range.

  Lindsey was circulating around checking on everyone. She got up close to Yue and stared at the side of her head for a second. Yue stepped back uncomfortably looking at the warrior woman. Lindsey smiled which brought her intimidation level down a few notches and handed Yue a set of ear plugs. Yue smiled back and yelled out her thanks. Not that anyone would be able to hear it. She hoped the ringing in her ears would go away eventually. The ear plugs were very welcome even if they were a little late.

  It was weird standing around with nothing to do while there was a full scale battle happening less than forty yards away. At one point Jeff came by and invited them all to walk outside for a bit. They blinked in the bright sunlight and took a quick break. All of them expressing their thoughts on the newcomers who’d stepped up and right into the middle of the action without skipping a beat. They were sharing a lemonade from an instant drink packet that’d been in the warehouse when a soldier came jogging out to tell them Captain Lindsey thought it was time to take the corridor. She was requesting Yue come and give her a second opinion.

  Jeff looked over at Yue who simply shrugged. The captain had figured it out and was now looking to leverage her abilities to save the lives of her soldiers. They watched Yue follow the soldier back inside then followed along behind her. LeBron cast one last look over his shoulder as they reentered the warehouse. It felt like they’d been fighting for days but it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Chapter 34: Way Worse than Ants

  They fought and cleared two more levels before they were at the giant locked doors to the area Yue and the others remembered being quarantined in when they’d first arrived at Weathertop. The corridors they’d come down to get to this point were paved with brass shell casings that glittered in the light as they floated around in shallow pools of blood. The corridors were illuminated by harsh overhead fluorescent lights. The walls painted a horrible green color where they weren’t pockmarked with bullet holes or stained with the blood of the dead.

  The newcomers hadn’t done all the fighting. Tom’s men had cycled in and out as they slowly progressed through clearing different areas of the base. Crates of ammunition were being dragged along behind them. The amount of ammunition it’d taken to get them to this point was staggering. Even with all that lead flying they’d suffered some losses. The crawlerz were just too inhumanly fast to get them all. Bright lights and a wall of bullets worked for most of them though. The narrow confines of the corridors really helped by limiting the usefulness of the crawlerz insane maneuverability.

  Drew had been standing next to one of them who’d gone down. Th
ey’d stormed into yet another hallway only to be met by a group of stalkers. The dozen or so crawlerz had broken off in multiple directions when a road flare was tossed near them. The men in the lead opened fire immediately but it was like they’d kicked over a bucket full of vipers. The crawlerz were unbelievably fast. They struck out faster than the men in the hallway could even see them.

  The battles to get to where they were had turned into that after they killed all the infected lemmings. Not every one of the demons was willing to just happily run into their hail of bullets. Plenty of them hung back lurking waiting for the right time. Yue could sense them containing their hunger as they stalked their prey. The mindset a complete one eighty from that of the ones who charged forward blindly. The stalkers were much scarier.

  They’d lost people but thanks to Yue they’d lost a lot less than they would’ve otherwise. She directed them to where those stalkers were watching from dark corners. She warned them when she saw a fast approaching crawler about to strike. Yue acted as their early warning system on top of telling them where to go. Lindsey ordered four of her squad to guard Yue with their lives. She told them if Yue died, and they weren’t already also dead then she’d shoot them herself. Based on the serious expressions on their faces the threat was neither lightly received nor idly spoken.