Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  “Are you wearing chaps without pants?” Harley asked.

  “You guys smell horrible.” Yue said pushing Jeff away. Jeff had walked over to give her a hug and a kiss. He’d been summarily rejected. His outfit wasn’t going to be winning any fashion awards either.

  “Were you guys trying to blend in with the infected?” Harley asked. It didn’t even sound like he was kidding. If that really was a valid question, maybe they should consider a shower before moving forward with trying to get everyone out of the doomed facility.

  “LeBron’s ok though, right? What’s wrong with his foot?” Yue asked. She’d evidently accepted that they’d needed to jump off a parking garage to escape a bunch of crawlerz. That was a good thing since Jeff wasn’t sure that they had time to go into all of that right now. Looking back on it he couldn’t believe they’d only been a gone a little over a day. He’d sat down with SECDEF less than forty eight hours ago to hatch this suicide mission. Having had time to think about it he now realized SECDEF had manipulated him into it.

  A knock on the door gave Jeff a reprieve from answering the question. He assumed it would be LeBron and Billy with their escort outside when he yelled to come in. The door opened and two Marines walked in looking around. Immediately after them SECDEF and the President entered the room. Jeff held himself back from shooting SECDEF in cold blood right then and there. The old man’s fat face would look a lot better with a bullet hole in it. He stopped fantasizing about causing the old bastard pain in order to acknowledge the President talking to him. It actually sounded a lot more like Shaun was yelling at him.

  “Was this attack your fault?” Shaun asked loudly. The President of the United States looked flustered. He was covered in dirt and had a bandage on his head. The bandage had a slowly spreading red spot on the front from blood seeping through.

  “This would be the fault of the geezer standing next you. We lost two helicopters worth of good men thanks to that idiot. We barely made it back alive. Treasonous bastard never thought he’d see us again.” Jeff jumped right to the attack.

  “Are you calling me a traitor you dipshit?” SECDEF stepped forward swinging a haymaker at Jeff’s face. Jeff sidestepped and kicked the old man in the leg. A sickening snap was heard by everyone in the room. SECDEF collapsed to the ground. Jeff stepped forward to finish the fight with a thrust kick right to the old man’s wrinkly face when one of the Marines pushed him backwards.

  Drew and Harley were in it as soon as the Marine laid hands on Jeff. Drew took out the Marine who’d shoved Jeff backwards with a punch right to the back of the guy’s head. Harley body checked the other Marine before he could get his pistol into play. Back against the wall SECDEF yanked a Beretta out of his shoulder holster. Before he could get it aimed Yue had pulled a pistol out from somewhere and was screaming for him to drop it. Instead of dropping it SECDEF spun to shoot at her instead.

  On the scale of bad ideas that was up there with adopting a lion cub. Yue didn’t hesitate to blow the old man’s brains all over the pristine hospital wall. The two loud shots echoed in the hospital room. All of the other fighting came to an immediate halt. More Marines rushed into the room to see what the hell was going on. Yue was quickly disarmed. Everyone who wasn’t either a Marine or the President was soon kneeling with their hands behind their backs. A visibly livid President was yelling for no one else to shoot anybody else.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Jeff yelled. It didn’t bother him in the least that SECDEF was dead. He just wished he’d done it instead of making Yue have to do it. It did give him a warm feeling to know she had his back even when she was lying in a hospital bed trying to recover from all kinds of serious injuries. He’d absolutely won the lottery when she’d decided to spill coffee on him that one fateful night back on the Ford. She had qualities you just couldn’t search for on E-Harmony.

  “What are you talking about? Your girlfriend just wasted the most senior member of the US military still alive.” Shaun said. He was freaking out. That had been a lot of action in a short amount of time in a very confined space. He’d witnessed every bit of the action up close and personal. SECDEF had drawn on Jeff first. Jeff had just broken the guy’s leg though.

  “We have to get everyone out of this base and somewhere secure before sunset. Otherwise we’re all crawler food.” Jeff answered.

  A few minutes later Shaun decided to ignore the dead SECDEF in order to focus on getting everyone out of the base. He started issuing orders to the Marines he was with to setup a perimeter in case the bikers came back. Harley reminded them to watch out in case there were any surprises the biker gang had left behind for them. Orders were issues for everyone to exit the base and assemble in the front entryway.

  Shaun took Jeff with him to work out the logistical details to get everyone evacuated. A big question was still where were they expecting to go? Drew was working with Yue and Harley to answer the questions he had. Like how he was supposed to get the three invalids to the entryway with just him and Harley to take care of it. Harley then reminded him they needed to take care of Captain Lindsey to.

  “Dude. Stay here with them. I’m going to go grab a couple of guys to help us. See if you can commandeer some wheelchairs or anything. If you can find a doctor, ask how the hell we’re supposed to move the captain with all that crap holding her arm together. I’ll be back.” Harley ended his directions in a fake Arnold Schwarzenegger accent that earned him a host of groans from all around the room. Flipping them all off he walked out past the recently lobotomized corpse of SECDEF.

  “Are you ok?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m fine. I just got a little banged up.” Drew answered. He loved that she was concerned enough to ask him.

  “I wasn’t talking to you. That’s good though. You have no excuses not to get out there and get us handicappers hooked up with wheelchairs. You better come back with the chromed out ones.” Lisa said with a grin before reiterating her question and ensuring this time Yue knew it was directed at her.

  “Yeah, I’m ok. If we could just rest up for a couple of weeks, I’d be fine.” Yue said. Yue was staring at the shattered face of the man she’d just killed. It was different when you shot someone who wasn’t infected. As battle hardened as they all had become it was still hard.

  “Hey, look over here at me. Remember he tried to get your man killed. He almost got both your brothers killed and thanks to him our base got bombed. Screw that guy. If you hadn’t shot him, we’d be in a way worse situation right now.” Lisa called out.

  “You’re right. It’s all just a lot.” Yue said without rolling over. Lisa couldn’t think of anything else to say. That turned out to be ok since Drew and one of the squad showed up right then with wheelchairs and duffel bags galore.

  Roughly thirty minutes of packing and careful maneuvering later Drew was rolling Lisa up the concrete ramp that went into the main entryway. Directly behind him Yue was being pushed by Jeff. Behind them came Captain Lindsey with a whole host of attendees trying to keep her arm rig from falling apart.

  “Holy crap. This is more people than I’ve seen in one place in forever.” Drew said looking around. There were a few hundred people milling around on the ramp. The crowd was evenly divided between soldier types, technicians and leadership types. In Drew’s personal opinion they should have saved more soldiers and sacrificed more of the leadership types. He grimaced thinking back to Yue painting the wall of her hospital room with SECDEF’s brains. That was one less ‘leader’ they had to feed.

  “Yeah, it’s like Lollapalooza. If everyone was desperate and there was no music and camouflage was cooler than tie dye.” LeBron had finally caught up with them. A doctor had worked on bandaging up his foot for him. It turned out he’d broken a few bones. As if Drew needed any more reason to admire his brother, LeBron had been banging around on a broken foot for the last day. Not that Drew would ever actually say how brave that was because then LeBron would just endlessly tease him about it. Yue would probably jump into it t
o. Siblings are super weird that way.

  “I thought they were going to have somebody wheel you out?” Drew asked. LeBron was hobbling around on crutches with a very fresh cast on his foot.

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of people that had roofs fall on them. They get the cool wheelie chairs. Besides I’ve always wanted to try out crutches. Turns out they really hurt your armpits.” LeBron answered.

  They quieted down when a soldier came over and told them that anyone who couldn’t make the hike to the local train station should go over to the queue for a ride. Anyone who could walk without help should go ahead and start walking. The plan was for them to walk to the train station and spend the night in the cars there that’d been secured. It might end up being a really tight squeeze and a thoroughly miserable night but at least they’d still be alive the next morning.

  “You want to push me over to the queue?” Yue asked Jeff sweetly. Sensing a trap Jeff hesitated before replying.

  “Nope. Pushing someone as light as you a few miles down the road isn’t any kind of work for a strapping man such as myself.” He responded with zero coaching. It was pretty impressive. Drew was happy Jeff had gone first. He knew he would’ve screwed that one up badly. Now that he’d been coached, he was ready.

  “You going to push me or ditch me?” Lisa asked sweetly.

  “Now that Jeff’s pushing Yue do you think they’d let us both get on the bus?” Drew asked seriously. It’d just occurred to him that there may be a way he didn’t have to walk or push Lisa. Based on the way Lisa reached back and twisted the skin on his leg he’d said the wrong thing. He’d just been trying to get them an air conditioned ride to the trains. Getting there first would also get them a prime sleeping spot. He wasn’t excited about being stuck in the middle of fifty people standing around in a passenger car breathing on each other all night. It’s not like in the middle of roofs caving in from a bombing attack everyone had taken the time to thoroughly brush their teeth this morning.

  LeBron was the only one who ended up heading for the queue line. He was a thousand percent over the burning sensation in his armpits. The doctor who’d handed the medical torture devices to him had been less than useful when it came to using them. The doctor had taken the time to explain that typically the crutches were provided along with lessons on how to use them. LeBron’s insurance must suck because the lessons on how to use them didn’t materialize. Neither did the professional measurements to make sure he had the right size crutches. He’d basically been handed a couple of sticks and told to hobble his ass to the trains. Considering he’d seen people being dragged in with blood pouring out the sides of their heads he supposed he was ok with the triage type treatment.

  While LeBron waited in line to avoid further torturing his armpits Drew and Jeff set off down the road pushing the loves of their lives. Harley was trooping along with them having entrusted Captain Lindsey to the care of a couple of members of the squad. The small group of friends walked and rolled up the road with a chilly wind harassing them. The walking kept the boys warm while the girls complained. Sitting in a wheelchair wasn’t the best way to work up a sweat. Both Jeff and Drew offered up their jackets. The offers were refused after they’d been forced to admit where they’d gotten the jackets from.

  A few working vehicles were still available for the purposes of transporting people to the train station. Those vehicles kept zooming back and forth past them as they walked up the road. A long line of hikers extending both in front of and behind them as everyone worked their way to the supposedly secure train station. From there Drew was assuming they’d head for Fayetteville the next morning. The goal right now was to still be alive the next day.

  It took a few hours, but they finally found themselves approaching the small town that the train station was located in. Drew was proud of himself for not saying anything, but pushing Lisa had started to feel like he was pushing a wheel barrel full of rocks. His arms and back were killing him from stooping over to push her along the road this far. Looking over at Jeff he could only imagine his overly tall friend was feeling the same sort of pain. Jeff was seriously stooping over to push Yue along. It didn’t help that both of them had been beaten up pretty extensively over the last two days.

  The fields on either side of the road began giving way to buildings. The buildings gradually growing into the small city where the Amtrak station was. Drew was incredibly thankful he’d been able to find another pair of boots back at the base. If he’d had to undertake this death march in the footwear that he’d stripped off the dead guy back on the roof of the parking garage he didn’t think he’d have made it. Even with the thick socks he’d pulled on after giving himself a quick sponge bath his jungle boots were rubbing his feet raw.

  Once they made it to the overcrowded station, they immediately set about attempting to find LeBron. They ran into the President. Shaun seemed a bit bewildered that Jeff had walked instead of using his rank to get a ride. Especially considering it was pretty obvious Yue and Lisa qualified for a ride. The motor pool had been reduced to the truck they’d stolen from the Living Zombies and two Humvees. The two Humvees were the only ones that hadn’t had their dashboards raked with automatic weapon fire. All of the other vehicles had been parked in the warehouse. They’d all been destroyed by the fire.

  Shaun told them it looked like there’d be room for everyone on the trains tonight. He was planning on getting an engineer to get them hooked up and moving towards Fayetteville once everyone arrived. Fayetteville was setup with the gear to communicate out to the ships at sea and to the other bases. The men based in Fayetteville had been working on building additional places for refugees to stay when they showed up. It should be a good place for them to reset and figure out their next steps.

  They went towards where the people who needed assistance were being dropped off. LeBron was sitting on a bench waiting for them to show up. Drew, Yue, LeBron, Jeff, Lisa and Harley all gathered around to bask in the fact that they were all still alive. They were alive and they were together again. Weathertop may be a pile of smoking rubble that’d be full of the infected by tomorrow morning but that didn’t really matter. Home was wherever they were gathered together.

  “Which one should we try our luck in?” Drew asked. He was looking around the depot at the various train cars. There were a few that’d been reinforced and should be safe from the inevitable assault from the crawlerz once night fell. Each of the cars could hold up to fifty people assuming those people didn’t have a lot of hang-ups around personal boundaries.

  “Captain Lindsey is in that one over there. I watched her get loaded up. I think they’re putting most of the injured in that one. Since we have Jeff as part of our posse maybe we should head towards the command train. That’s the one Shaun will be in. It’s pretty much guaranteed to have the best food and the most legroom.” LeBron had been mulling over their options while he sat on the bench waiting for them to show up.

  “Sounds good to me.” Jeff said standing up. There was still a ton of people milling around outside the trains. Everyone was trying to work out what it was they were supposed to be doing. The trains were obviously going to be a tight fit. No one really wanted to start the sardine packing process any earlier than need be. There was still plenty of daylight left after all.

  The first explosion rocked the train yard knocking Drew and crew to the ground. The small group immediately began crawling for cover. There was a low concrete wall behind the bench LeBron had been plopped down on. If they could hop that and lay in the weeds, they might get some protection.

  Harley picked up Yue and hopped over the fence cradling her. Jeff was right behind him. Drew dragged Lisa over while LeBron awkwardly hopped to the fence and toppled over it at full hobbling speed. They’d moved so fast they’d barely even noticed the body parts raining down on them from the first round of explosions.

  Chapter 27: Sucker Punch

  They kept their heads down as three more massive explosions rocked the train yard. Body p
arts and debris continued to rain down on them. Billy got nailed in the leg by a chunk of concrete that’d been blown a hundred feet up in the air. It hit him right as he was shifting around to try and get under cover better. The pain made him scream out into the sudden silence at the end of the last blast.

  Billy wasn’t the only one screaming in pain. There were plenty of people calling out for either a medic or their moms. People were laying on the ground thankful to be alive before noticing they were missing body parts. People who screamed until the blood loss took their pain away. It was a twisted, disgusting bloody mess. It was one last middle finger from the Living Zombies. In case there was any doubt who’d done this they could clearly hear a group of motorcycles starting up a few blocks away. The engine noise gradually fading as the triumphant raiders rode away.

  “I thought there was going to be a perimeter?” Drew asked.

  “With what men? We’ve got maybe two hundred fighting men total. That’s not enough to secure a city. Not when you have no vehicles anyway. Most of them were trudging along the road with us.” Jeff answered. His voice was broken up by his harsh breathing. Everyone there had been through plenty of crawler fighting action. They’d even come under small arms fire before. The rockets they’d just been hit with had ripped the world apart around them though. Only Billy had been through action like that before and that’d been back in the old world in a battle in another country.