Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails

by R. S. Merritt

  The crawler pack increased their pace. The long loping strides turning into a frenzied sprint. The weird way they ran with their hands touching the ground giving way to a more conventional upright sprint as they barreled into the big vehicle. There was no subtlety to the way most of the pack reacted to the sight of the large vehicle. They ran into it. They ripped at the windows and the walls. They stepped back and hammered into it again and again. Some of them leapt on the roof looking for a way in.

  The family inside the RV were awake. Their thoughts were a psychic beacon to the crawlerz. One or two people inside the camper wouldn’t have been so easily detectable. The stench of fear emanating from the interior of the vehicle was so strong that the demonic attackers knew there must be a group of the hated humans inside. The crawlerz redoubled their efforts. The windshield was shattered by an obese crawler who put all his weight into the attack. That success was instantaneously broadcast to the other infected trying to break in.

  Drew slithered through the shattered windshield with the others. The ones who’d been ripping the door handles back and forth abandoned that effort to go through the windshield instead. Two of the pack hung back. They were the ones the soldiers in the suicide squad would have called lurkers if they’d seen them. Crawlerz who’d developed a higher order of hunting capabilities. They didn’t just charge in randomly like the rest of their brethren. They exuded patience and a calculating evilness. Like the way a mouse feels when it looks into the eyes of a cat that’s toying with it.

  Pellets and slugs from a couple of shotguns ripped the first of the infected apart before they made it down the hallway. Pain was nothing to the infected. The ones who were shot kept right on moving forward until blood loss stopped them. The ones behind would step on their dying brethren to get closer to the prey. Death didn’t matter. All that mattered was satiating the intense hunger. The burning desire to bring everyone into the groupthink.

  A man with a bushy white beard stepped out of the dark recesses of the RV with a shotgun held in his hands as if it were a baseball hat. He swung the weapon by the barrel connecting with an infected woman’s head. Her ear was smashed into her skull. She took a step sideways before launching into the man teeth first. Her mouth ending up on his stomach as he battered away at her with the empty weapon. She bit deeply into the small poof of hairy beer belly above the defender’s belt.

  The psychic pulse from that first bite into warm living flesh radiated out with all the strength of a nuclear blast. The others in the pack were driven into a hyper frenzy. Even the lurkers lost their cool and stampeded out of the brush to scramble into the vehicle. More shots rang out and the back door flew open. A half dozen regular humans made a run for the lake. They might have been attempting to reach the canoes sitting by the water. If they were able to shove off and get deep enough fast enough, they might escape.

  The lurkers veered from their course to head straight for the people making the last ditch effort to stay alive. Those people had slammed the door to the RV behind them. That door was blown off its hinges by the infected ramming it from the inside. The fleeing family members were picked apart as they ran. Dragged down one by one to be savaged by their attackers. Only two of them got anywhere near the boats. A middle aged woman and her teenage son pushed the canoe out into the water. The son looked back in horror to see his mom being dragged to the beach by one of the infected. The large naked beast was chewing on the side of his mom’s face as he dragged her away.

  Rather than continue trying to escape the boy made the mistake of trying to rescue his mom. He’d only taken a couple of steps back towards the beach before two of the infected were sinking their teeth into him. Large chunks of flesh missing he floated in the lake water as the two crawlerz continued to feast on his back. At the very least he was saved the indignity of being turned as his neck was ripped apart by one of the lurkers who showed up in time to bite deep into his jugular.

  On the beach the boy’s mom turned. She stood up and looked around wildly. Her eyes gliding over the vision of her dead son floating in the bloody water. Without a second thought she took off running into the forest looking for fresh prey.

  Drew sat up shaking. The nightmare had been so vivid that he knew it had to have been a shared vision of something that’d actually happened. The crawlerz slamming into the trailer he was sleeping in were going to have a much harder time breaking in here. This was no rusty old Winnebago. The entire trailer had an extra layer of sheet metal added to it. The metal was strengthened by the addition of a two by four brace every couple of feet. There was also the fact that if the infected did manage to get in they’d be met by a well-armed and highly trained cadre of soldiers who’d be highly motivated to send them straight to hell.

  The only way Drew saw them losing as badly as the people he’d just seen in his vision would be if there were hundreds of the infected outside. A quick glance at the cameras showed there was more like twenty of the monsters currently trying to figure out how many bites to get to the gooey center. Not even enough for them to waste the claymores they’d setup outside before turning in for the night. They’d have to carefully collect the mines in the morning to set out again the next night.

  Each of the trailers was stocked with crates of the aimable explosives. The idea was that if you were surrounded by a large mob of the infected then you should use the mines to kill as many as possible. This would help clear the infected faster as well as keeping the trailer you were in from possibly being ripped apart by an army of the undead. There were sheet metal reinforced walls and all of that, but a few hundred determined assailants may still be able to beat their way in.

  The sheet metal built into the trailers had a couple of other purposes as well. In theory it was supposed to shield them from the psychic phenomena of the infected sharing their depraved thoughts with everyone trying to sleep inside the trailer. Metal had originally done a decent job of that. Either the infected were getting stronger or the uninfected were getting more susceptible. The other reason for the sheet metal was to stop any random ball bearings from the claymores. They spent a lot of time ensuring the devices were pointing in safe directions but with a mob of monsters crawling around outside you never knew when one might get moved around.

  Drew sat up in his bunk with the recent nightmare slowly receding back into the rest of his horror show riddled memory banks. Feeling the push and pull of more groupthink tugging at his subconscious he decided to get out of bed rather than risk experiencing another shared memory from the pack of depraved cannibals roaming around outside. Walking to the front of the trailer he saw a few people sitting around the tables by the coffee pot. The eerie red light bathing them in a pool of glowing blood.

  Seeing the noob soldier he’d been paired up with sitting at one of the tables Drew went and sat beside him. He had to search his mind for a second to come up with the guy’s name.

  “Yo Steve how’s it going?” Drew asked once he’d dredged up the guy’s name from his memory. He was feeling pretty good about remembering the guy’s name. He was normally horrible at that sort of thing.

  “Hey Drew. My name’s Scott. You’ll get it eventually. I thought the Valium was supposed to keep those things out of our heads?” Scott got right to the point. He’d been up for the last few hours thanks to the same sort of shared nightmare that’d just dragged Drew out of bed.

  Drew sipped on the bitter cup of steaming hot coffee he’d poured himself. He didn’t really want it. He just wanted something to do with his hands. An excuse to be out of bed. Glancing up at the monitor he happened to notice one of the monsters sniffing around the trailer was an older man with a bushy white beard. He’d bet anything if the man would face the camera at the right angle that you’d be able to tell he was missing a bite sized chunk of his beer gut. On a whim Drew pointed at the monitor. Scott looked up and gasped.

  “Happen to have seen that guy recently?” Drew asked.

  “How do you deal with this crap? I’ve been off the ship f
or a day and I’m ready to go back. We might not have had any food left but I think I’d rather take my chances with fishing. I’ve never even imagined being this freaked out by anything before.” Scott had gotten super serious. He was looking to Drew for advice. Unfortunately Drew didn’t have any advice. At least not any good advice. Despite having no idea what words were going to tumble out of his lips Drew opened his mouth and answered anyway.

  “You either deal with it or you die. I guess I’ve been around it so long that I’m just used to the constant fear. Lots of people do drugs. That half a Valium you took probably wasn’t enough. Try a whole one tomorrow night. If that doesn’t work, try a whole one and a shot of tequila.” Drew answered. On hearing the advice he was giving he felt pretty pleased with himself. That was some decent advice if he did say so himself. He wondered if he should add that overdosing and rampant alcoholism often resulted from following the path he was laying out. He decided to save that for the next lesson or for the intervention if Scott happened to live long enough to develop a serious addiction.

  They sat in silence after that watching the monitors as the infected outside the trailer did their best to get in. A couple of them had tried pulling on the latch on the back. The modified trailer they were in was fully secured from the inside so there was minimal chance of the infected blundering in that way. It was scary to think that if they ever forgot to lock the back doors, they could wake up to a very unwelcome nuzzling session. Drew tucked the idea for a checklist away in the back of his head. It’d be like a pre-flight check list for taking off in a plane. He decided he’d call it a pre-night checklist. Lost in adding tasks to his imaginary checklist it took Drew a second to realize Scott was asking him a question.

  “Do you think there’s a chance my family might have survived?” Scott repeated when he saw Drew’s deer in the headlights look. It was the question Scott had been waiting to ask ever since he’d found out on the ship that the infection was real. He didn’t have a wife and kids or anything. He was worried about his sisters and parents.

  “There’s always a chance. We’re picking up refugees every day and moving them to safe places. A lot more people survived than I thought would’ve made it.” Drew answered. Missing the question the first time had forced him to actually think before he responded when Scott repeated it. Which was a good thing since his knee jerk response was to say they were most likely either dead or walking around naked eating people.

  It looked like Scott had a follow-up question but before he could ask it there was a commotion in the middle of the trailer. A screaming man climbed out of his bunk and ran straight into the bunk on the other side of the aisle. A couple of guys came out of their bunks to subdue the screamer. When he fought back, they beat him to the ground before tossing him back into this bunk. Scott watched the whole interaction in complete shock.

  “Dude should’ve taken a whole Valium. He’s going to be hurting in the morning.” Drew said taking another sip of his bitter hot brew.

  Chapter 34: A Whole Lot of Weird

  Exhausted from yet another restless night Drew yawned as he took his seat in the back of the Humvee. Jeff and Scott climbed in a few seconds later looking just as miserable as Drew felt. Harley took the driver’s seat and started the engine. It took him a minute to notice everyone was staring at him. His red eyes, staggering walk to the Humvee and issues with opening the door were not subtle signs of his current condition. When he got the door open and climbed inside the whole vehicle instantly smelled like someone had tipped over a barrel of Kentucky’s finest. That verified for all of them that Harley had kept the party going all night long in his bunk.

  “Hey Drew. You want to drive?” Jeff asked.

  “Sure.” Drew answered a little sulkily. What he’d wanted to do was nap the rest of the way to the mystery mansion in the mountains Jeff had them headed for. Instead he switched places with an inebriated Harley. At least Harley was self-aware enough not to try and say he was fine to drive. Honestly it was pretty impressive he’d made it over to the correct Humvee without help.

  No one bothered reprimanding him. There was no rehab center they could send him to. He’d either walk the twelve steps on his own or end up dead. If he really wasn’t able to hack it anymore, they’d ship him off to one of the refugee camps where they cared for those who’d lost their minds. It was an easy thing to lose now a days. They’d all hoped the responsibilities of command would help him straighten up. It looked like it might have done the opposite.

  Jeff asked Drew to get on the radio and give the order to move out. Harley had already passed out in the back seat. A sketched out looking Scott was sitting back there hoping the foul smelling goliath in charge of his unit didn’t end up puking all over him. Every time Harley shifted his body weight around Scott expected to be showered in bourbon scented chunkiness. Sucked to be him Drew thought as he rolled down his window and got them moving behind the lead car.

  The convoy drove up the winding road into the Appalachian foothills. The highway they were on was beginning to show the effects of not being maintained. Potholes and debris were the norm. There were times when they had to stop the convoy so that trees, broken down vehicles, and fallen rocks could be moved off the road. The deeper they got into the mountains the worse it became. Jeff was thinking they needed to send a crew to ensure at least one of the passes through the mountains was kept well maintained. They were going to need a way to move supplies and troops across the country efficiently.

  The pass should’ve been maintained by the men they were on their way to check on. Jeff remembered them being the same group of men he‘d been worried were hunting them back when Shaun’s uncle had served his brief stint as President and wanted them dead. In his role as the owner of the plan to ensure the continuity of the United States government Jeff had assumed the responsibility of allocating supplies and resources to each of the different bases they’d established. He’d done it based on each installations need to support refugees, last without assistance for up to five years and the need to be able to bring the fight to the enemy or defend themselves.

  The road up to the base started as a non-descript dirt road hidden behind an out of business general store that looked like it’d been there since the seventies at least. The radio chatter turned to panic as the drivers of the trucks wanted to opt out of anything to do with driving up the side of a mountain on a ridiculously narrow dirt road. The men driving the trucks had only been ‘truck drivers’ for a few months. There’d been like a day’s worth of training then they’d been told to go forth and drive the incredibly complex machines all over the place while crazy people with superhuman strength tried to eat them.

  What no one other than Jeff knew was that once they went past the first curve on the dirt road it opened up into a respectable two lane road. The wide asphalt road lasted for the rest of the drive up the mountain. The small dirt road was just to throw off the locals. Of course the paved road was still scary as hell if you weren’t used to driving in the mountains. There was always the possibility it was washed out somewhere along the route. Rather than risk losing any of the trucks Jeff decided to have them split up.

  The bulk of the convoy was left under Harley’s blurry eyed supervision at the run down service station. Jeff took Drew and the men in the first five Humvees to go up the mountain. Hoping nothing happened which required someone to actually be in charge at their new base station Jeff gave the order to proceed up the dirt road. Before they got to the first turn they had to get out and open up a gate. The gate had an official looking sign warning them that they were trespassing on government property and would be thrown in prison, pay fines, etcetera….

  There were scattered bodies decaying on the road around the gate. No one paid them much attention since decaying bodies were par for the course in the present day. A set of bolt cutters later they were through the rusty gate and driving up the paved road towards the top of the mountain. Looking at the steep drops on either side of the crazily winding
road Jeff was glad they hadn’t made the drivers make the journey up. The Humvees powerful engines growled as they powered up the ridiculously steep inclines.

  After about thirty minutes of driving they hit a flat spot where the road was blocked by a gate. There was a fifteen foot fence topped with barbed wire running in both directions out from the gate. A guard shack stood beside the gate. The guardhouse was empty. The gate was closed tight.

  “There should be a guard.” Jeff muttered under his breath. The fact that they hadn’t been challenged yet was bothering him. It didn’t bode well for the state of what they were going to find on the other side of the gate.

  After figuring out how to manually open the gate they drove through it into the large courtyard. The pave courtyard was surrounded by different buildings. Everything was laid out similarly to the way it was on the hundreds of US military bases across the globe. Due to the specific mountainous geography some accommodations had been made. Much more noteworthy than the mundane architecture of the base were the scattered piles of brass and bodies lying around the courtyard.

  It was even more disturbing when a few of the bodies got up and began stumbling towards them. There was a brief delay while men scrambled up into the turrets. Jeff was on the verge of giving the order to fire when Drew asked why the surgers coming at them were moving so slow. Now that Jeff was looking closely it was odd that they were dressed also. Most of the infected shed their clothes at some point in the chaotic lives they led. Jeff continued looking closely as he gave the order to stand by.