Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  “Now what do we do?” Yue asked. She was in pain from being tossed around like a rag doll. That pain meant nothing to her. Not when she considered the heaps of the dead she was going to see once they raised their heads up and over the concrete barrier they were cowering behind.

  “I’m pretty good with hiding here for a couple of weeks.” Drew said.

  “I like that plan.” Lisa said sliding closer to her man.

  “I’ll take a look. You all look like you just fell out of an ambulance.” Harley said.

  Harley slid closer to the concrete barrier. Putting both of his hands up on the thick wall he pulled himself up to take a look at the disaster in front of him. It was bad. Rubble was strewn across everything. Concrete dust filled the air obscuring most of his view. The areas he could see were covered in cracked concrete and broken bodies. Telling everyone to wait where they were he took a deep breath and hopped the barrier.

  Making his way over the piles of shifting rubble he headed towards the train platform. Halfway there he was sidetracked by someone trying to pull themselves out of a pile of broken concrete and rebar. Harley stopped and helped pull the half-buried soldier out of the debris. The man was white from concrete dust. The blood dripping off his forehead a sharp contrast to the rest of him. It looked like someone had squirted ketchup into a tray full of flour. The man said thank you and immediately began poking around in the rubble searching for other survivors.

  Harley had taken a few more steps towards the trains when the soldier he’d just rescued called out to him asking for his help. Harley went and helped the man pull yet another person from the rubble. This time it was a woman. The Harley Quinn patch on her left shoulder announced her a member of Harley’s own unit. She was alive but unconscious. Drew and Jeff showed up at about that time to help out.

  “You guys were supposed to wait for me.” Harley said appreciatively.

  People began coming down out of the train cars to help out. Of the seven cars that’d been sitting on the tracks two had suffered direct hits. One had been the car the wounded had been loaded into. Captain Lindsey had perished inside that train. Most of the doctors and nurses trying to help them had also died. The other car that’d been hit had been relatively empty. At least as far as Drew could see once he got the nerve up to peek inside the twisted metal wreckage.

  Most of their leaders had survived. They’d been sitting in one of the undamaged cars putting together a plan for the following day when the rockets had hit. Where many of them looked shell-shocked the President looked livid. Shaun came raging out of the car. His eyes were flashing fire. Jeff understood that rage. They were trying to put a world back together again. The good old USA may be on life support but there was no reason not to be civilized. Zombies were roaming the streets of a decimated countryside and this biker gang wanted to start a turf war?

  To his credit Shaun went from rage to compassion when he saw the hellacious scene outside. He immediately turned and yelled for everyone to get out of the car and help sift through the rubble to look for survivors. Jeff was a little surprised the detail assigned to guard the President would actually let him wander around in the open after the attack that’d just happened. Then Jeff got to thinking that maybe the President didn’t have too much of a protection team actually left alive.

  With everyone searching a few more survivors were pulled out of the piles of wreckage. That was it. Of the hundreds of people who’d been milling around the train platform less than fifty had survived the attack. There was no longer going to be an issue with overcrowding on the remaining train cars. Everyone began somberly finding their places for the evening. The sun was starting to ride low in the sky.

  Jeff walked with them over to the leadership car. It was going to end up being the most packed car after all. A wounded Marine was sitting on the stairs leading up into the car. He had a pistol gripped in his hand. He was backed up by another soldier standing on top of the train. The man on the top of the train was eyeing everyone like they might be the enemy. By now the raiders who’d attacked them were most likely halfway home. Otherwise they wouldn’t make it back before dark.

  Seeing Jeff and the others boarding the train Shaun ordered some of the guards and lower level bureaucrats to go find another place to sleep. Once they’d had time to drop off their gear Shaun asked them what the hell was going on. He used some really imaginative combinations of words depicting anatomical parts of the human body that shouldn’t connect the way he emphasized theirs would if they didn’t start talking. As far as impassioned rhetoric went it was up there with anything the drill sergeant from that Full Metal Jacket movie had ever said.

  Momentarily stunned by the full frontal assault Jeff took a mental step back from the situation. For all Shaun knew this was entirely Jeff’s fault. To be honest it kind of was all his fault. He’d known the plan to get the bikers to join them could very likely blow up in their faces. He’d thought that would just impact him and his team though. Never in a million years had he expected it to boil over like this. He decided he was too tired for subterfuge.

  “We screwed up sir. SECDEF came up with a plan that I think was more about getting rid of me than anything else. Out of arrogance I took it and ran with it. I actually thought I might be able to pull it off. My team and I went through hell to make it back here. We were trying to get back in time to warn you. It just didn’t happen. This whole thing is retribution. I say we put a stop to it sir. We give them Pennsylvania.” Jeff paused and waited to be ripped a new one.

  “I shot SECDEF sir. Not Jeff.” Yue added from the bunk she was sitting up in. Nobody, including Yue herself, trusted her to try and stand on her own. Shaun’s entire demeanor changed when he addressed Yue. It was obvious he didn’t lump her in with the imbeciles she chose to hang around with.

  “You’re good Yue. The main pointed a loaded gun at you and you shot him. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with your boyfriend here taking it on himself to start this whole mess. He even admits it was out of arrogance. His arrogance buried our base. His arrogance buried all these people!” Shaun went from gently addressing Yue to growing steadily louder as he turned his attention once more on Jeff. Spit was flying out of his mouth as he vented.

  Shaun had changed from that night on the roof when Jeff and his team had saved his life. He’d grown into the role of President. He’d been steadily building out a plan to retake the country. He’d built up a team of people around him who were smart and loyal. Now a lot of those people were buried outside under tons of concrete. One of his main advisors was responsible for it all. Shaun just wasn’t sure if it was the dead SECDEF or the living Jeff who was the most culpable. Since SECDEF was well beyond caring about a dressing down though Shaun focused his ire on Jeff.

  “Fighting the Living Zombies would be a waste of resources. I’m with Jeff.” LeBron piped up. That only served to make Shaun even angrier.

  “You want us to surrender an entire state to a bunch of motorcycle riding morons calling themselves the Living Zombies? What does that even mean? We have satellite guided missiles at our disposal. We will retaliate for what they just did.” Shaun looked like his eyes might bug out of his head. All it took was remembering the nightmare landscape outside the train car and no one could blame him.

  “We should just focus on getting to Fayetteville. One step at a time sir.” Jeff said in a subdued voice. He could care less about getting yelled out. It just sucked that this attack really was mostly his fault. He’d never thought Tommy would go to these lengths to strike back at them.

  “We did shoot a missile at them first.” Drew said without thinking. Lisa stepped on his foot as Shaun’s head snapped around. The President’s gaze locked in on Drew next. Looking around the room at the small group of people he suspected were to blame for the day’s disaster Shaun realized he needed some time.

  “Get out! All of you need to go find somewhere else to sleep tonight. I need to think. Every time I see any of you, I just get pissed. L
isa and Yue can stay here but the rest of you need to leave. That includes you LeBron. You should’ve been able to keep us out of this. We all know you probably saw it coming. If you don’t speak up, then people die. Hobble your ass out of here unless you have something else that you’d like to share.” Shaun started rubbing his temples with his pointer fingers. Not expecting a response he was taken aback when LeBron stood his ground to reply.

  “If the rockets damaged the tracks, we might not be going anywhere for a few days while we fix those.” LeBron rattled off. He was already thinking ahead to their next steps. He had taken to heart what Shaun had said about being sure to open his mouth when he had something.

  “Great. Anything else?” Shaun asked. He needed a large bottle of tequila and a quiet corner to pass out in.

  “They might send out scouts tomorrow to see if we’re still here. If we’re still here I wouldn’t put it past them to get a few snipers working us.” LeBron said. The President’s head was tilted to the side waiting to hear if there was any other thoughts LeBron wanted to share. When LeBron just nervously stared back Shaun ordered them all to get the hell off his train.

  “Isn’t he too young to be President anyway?” Drew asked.

  “You’re a constitutional lawyer now?” LeBron asked. Drew absorbed that then fired off a question on the real topic that was bugging him.

  “Why’d Yue and Lisa get to stay?” Drew asked.

  “Because the only doctor still alive is in the car with the President. The best food and all the medical equipment are also in that car. Good luck prying the girls out of there to come stay with us in whatever mold covered nastiness we end up in for the night.” LeBron answered.

  “The real question here is how come I got kicked out. I didn’t have anything to do with pissing off those Pennsylvanians.” Harley said sulkily. The woman who’d ordered him to guard Yue with his life was dead. That only made Harley even more passionate about doing his job. Being ordered to leave her in a train car by herself in the middle of a place that’d just gotten bombed to hell wasn’t sitting right with him at all.

  They walked along to the first car they could find that was still structurally sound. Walking around it they verified that getting these trains moving was going to require a whole lot of manual labor. If the tracks underneath all the rubble were bent, then it might not even be possible. LeBron wasn’t even sure if there was still someone alive who knew how to drive the train. Drew gave LeBron a little bit of crap about that as they circled the train yard before deciding to venture into one of the cars to make their beds for the night.

  Jeff didn’t join in on any of the back and forth. He was quiet as they explored the train yard. His eyes sliding over the powder covered corpses visible in the rubble. They looked like marble statues that’d been caught up in a rockslide. Jeff’s thoughts kept going to back to what the President had screamed at him. This was all his fault. He could’ve stopped all of this by just putting his foot down and doing the right thing. Jeff vowed to stop playing politics. He wasn’t good at it. Whenever he tried people died.

  Wrapping himself in a musty smelling wool blanket for the night Jeff vowed to never again be on the wrong side of a decision. He’d only do what he thought was right. He’d let other people play politics. The ones who were good at it like Yue and Shaun. He’d just focus on the logistics of what was needed to resuscitate the country.

  It’d been an uphill battle so far. They were getting knocked five steps backwards for every step forward. Tomorrow was a new day though.

  Chapter 28: Tomorrow’s Only a Day Away

  Attracted by the rocket blasts earlier in the day the crawlerz started slamming into the side of the train cars within a few minutes of the sun setting. The car Jeff had randomly picked for them wasn’t hooked up to the engine. That meant they didn’t have the ability to power the cameras and the monitors to see what it looked like outside. They were taking a pretty ferocious pounding though. It was loud enough to make talking almost impossible. Huddled together in the back of the train they tried anyway. There was a whole lot for the tight knit group to unpack.

  The general consensus was that by morning Shaun would’ve decided they’d ditch the trains and head for Fayetteville in the motley assortment of vehicles they did have. Once they got to Fayetteville, they’d send enough vehicles back to pick everyone else up. They might even be able to come up with a bus or something to transport all of them at once. It wasn’t the first part of that plan they were having issues with. It was the part they thought may come after.

  “We can’t fight on two fronts right now. We can’t exterminate the infected while we have paramilitary bikers sneak attacking us. We have to make a truce with them.” LeBron said. He’d been mulling it over all day. As much as he’d love to drop a nuke on Pennsylvania and be done with it, he didn’t see that as a viable course of action. They could bring in troops from the ships and islands to fight the bikers but why? Those troops would be better served clearing out crawlerz instead.

  There wasn’t really as much to talk about as they all felt like there should be. No one was surprised that the course of action LeBron had been suggesting from the beginning was the one that made the most sense. Once you got past the desire for vengeance anyway. Hopefully Shaun would get over his need to strike back before he got in front of a communications station in Fayetteville. It sucked that he’d kicked them out of his train car for tonight.

  Yue and Lisa were both on-board with the truce plan. They were both still on the train with Shaun. Drew found it a little annoying that Yue had gotten to stay even though she’d shot SECEDEF. If anyone could figure out a way to talk Shaun into the best course of action it was going to be her though. Drew had asked early on who’d get the privilege of going back and telling the biker bastards they wanted a truce. As soon as the words tumbled from his lips he’d known as well as the rest of them who the President would most likely see fit to send.

  “I’m not really in a huge hurry to face off with Tommy again.” LeBron said.

  “I think Harley should go. He’ll fit right in with the psychos. No offense Harley.” Drew said. Drew was also in the club that didn’t want anything to do with Tommy ever again. He was the president of that club. He’d gladly coordinate bake sales to help pay for a trip that went anywhere that wasn’t Pennsylvania.

  Lulled into a nightmare laced slumber by the thumping of bodies breaking themselves against the metal walls the small team fell into a fitful sleep. The depraved thoughts of the infected slipping into their subconscious like a finger sliding into a rotten piece of fruit. In their dreams they feasted on the carcasses in the gravel. The cold dead flesh was nowhere near as satisfying. The act of ripping it off the bone did provide a visceral thrill. After a long night of people randomly sitting up to scream an annoyingly perky alarm trumpeted the arrival of morning.

  “I think maybe we should start sleeping during the day and fighting at night. Sleeping with those things around sucks.” Drew said irritably. His eyes were red. He yawned hugely as he stood up to go find a place to take a leak.

  No one could argue with that. That’d been another huge advantage of Weathertop. It’s massive concrete walls buried underneath tons of dirt had kept the crawlerz psychic attacks at bay. Those attacks could be just as damaging as the physical ones. Calls to the suicide hotline were going unanswered nowadays. For many people the crushing depression coupled with the psychic onslaught ended with a handful of pills washed down with whatever liquor they could stand at room temperature.

  Without Weathertop they’d be subjected once again to the crawlerz groupthink backwash each and every night. That wouldn’t be a big deal for the people used to operating in the field. They’d grown used to the misery. Kind of like if you knew you had to go see the dentist every day as soon as the sun went down for a root canal with no Novocain. It was that level of dread. You knew you’d live through it, but it was going to suck.

  The ones who’d really get hit the hardest were t
he people who’d been hiding out in Weathertop ever since Shaun moved back in. Many of them had come in straight off a ship. They’d gone inside the ridiculously large base and never bothered coming back out. In some cases they’d never even seen a crawler in real life. Some of the analysts and technicians had been stationed on the ships since before the infection ever even spread to North America. They’d been in for a seriously rude awakening when the Living Zombie gang decided to drop a bunch of bombs and break the roof.

  The agoraphobic technicians and analysts had made out pretty well in the bombing. They were scared out of their minds to be out in the open. Therefore as soon as they’d arrived at the train yard, they’d made a beeline for the train cars and hadn’t come back out. They’d survived for the most part. The night had sorely tested their will to live though. If you weren’t used to constantly dreaming about ripping people apart then you just weren’t getting any kind of decent beauty sleep.