Crawlerz: Book 3: The Mountains Are Calling Read online

  Crawlerz

  Book 3

  “The Mountains are Calling”

  R S Merritt

  Text Copyright © 2021 Randall Scott Merritt

  All Rights Reserved

  This series is dedicated to my beautiful wife and family.

  Cover Design By:

  Harry Lamb

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Fool Me Once

  Chapter 2: More Mouths to Feed

  Chapter 3: ‘Dammed’ if You Do

  Chapter 4: ‘Dammed’ if You Don’t

  Chapter 5: Fontana Standoff

  Chapter 6: Happy Trails

  Chapter 7: The Roach Motel

  Chapter 8: Snow Blind

  Chapter 9: Desperate Measures

  Chapter 10: Silent Night

  Chapter 11: Fresh Powder

  Chapter 12: Can’t Fix Stupid

  Chapter 13: That Whole Robin Hood Rebellion Thing

  Chapter 14: The Whole Truth

  Chapter 15: The Journal

  Chapter 16: Riding the Avalanche

  Chapter 17: Pass the Mac

  Chapter 18: Bullets, Blood, and a Blizzard

  Chapter 19: It’s a Horrible Day to Die

  Chapter 20: Against All Odds

  Chapter 21: For the Children

  Chapter 22: The Trailer Comes Off?

  Chapter 23: The Not-So-Secret Secret Base

  Chapter 24: Checking in the Hard Way

  Chapter 25: It’s Not the Fall That Kills You

  Chapter 26: Requesting an Upgrade

  Chapter 27: Wake Up Call

  Chapter 28: Fool Me Twice

  Chapter 29: Shame on Me

  Chapter 30: Awkward…

  Chapter 31: The Never-Ending Night

  Chapter 32: Wake up Sunshine!

  Chapter 33: Is this the Secret Base?

  Chapter 34: The Brady Brig

  Chapter 35: The First Daughter Didn’t Make it

  Chapter 36: The Wrong Side of the Tracks

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by RS Merritt

  Chapter 1: Fool Me Once

  Jeff was coming to terms with the fact that he was no longer leading a group conditioned to following orders without question. The thirty civilians they had along for the ride weren’t the order taking type. They flatly refused to blindly follow along with whatever plan Jeff came up with. Jeff had been the one who convinced them to come along to the warehouse in the first place. He’d impressed upon them how safe it was going to be there. He’d told them how full of food and other supplies it was. Unfortunately, the supplies couldn’t be reached due to the crawlerz who’d taken over the supposedly secure fortress.

  The safe and well stocked destination they’d been promised was a total bust. The group was understandably reluctant to trust Jeff a second time. They didn’t have many options since their houses had been destroyed by a massive hurricane though. It’d been the same storm that washed the carrier aground that Jeff had been commanding. A vessel which had also supposedly been safe. That thought spurred Yue to help out her new boyfriend. Amita and Carl were putting Jeff through the wringer. The two HOA board members had become the de facto spokespeople for the refugees.

  “No where’s safe. There’s just the possibility that the new place Jeff’s proposing is less dangerous than other places. It’s not like we have a ton of options, right? I guess we could drop you back off where we picked you up at. You could try and live in the ruins of your old houses. Jeff’s trying to help you guys out. It does nothing for him to have you tag along. At the end of the day, you’re thirty more mouths he has to figure out how to feed.” Yue said. She felt like the petty arguing had gone on long enough.

  “I like to think of us more as sixty extra hands to help.” Amita responded with a tense smile. “We’ll consume supplies, but we can also help gather, disperse and defend those supplies. Our problem isn’t with helping out. We’re more worried about how reliable your information is. This warehouse was supposed to be safe. The ship you all were on should’ve been safe. We have our children with us. We’re already running low on supplies. If the next place is a bust, we’re going to have a serious problem.” Amita tried to explain the refugees position to Yue.

  “Where do you want to go then?” Yue asked. It was a simple question with no easy answer. Yue did her best to make it sound non-confrontational.

  “We were hoping this place would pan out. It didn’t. What makes you think the next place is any better?” Amita challenged her.

  “Where is this place? Is it somewhere we’ve heard of?” Carl asked. He was trying to defuse the volatile situation that was forming. Yue and Amita were both strong personalities. Jeff looked sheepish about whatever he was about to say. Everyone stared at him waiting to hear what it was. This was their lives. This was the lives of their children, spouses, and grandchildren.

  “I can’t tell you where it is. I can’t risk having the location out there in the wild.” Jeff said quickly. The words jumbled together such that no one was instantly ticked off at what he said. It was more of a delayed disappointment followed by righteous incredulity.

  “Seriously?” Amita said huffily. Even Yue looked lost as to how to respond to that. She turned to look at Jeff along with everyone else. She totally had his back, but he needed to give her something to work with.

  “There’s a few places we could go. The one I’m thinking of now is the closest. I think it may work out the best. I can’t tell you any more than that though. You’ll just have to trust me.” Jeff said.

  “If you could tell us more then we could make the decision if we wanted to go or not. You’re asking us to make a life-or-death decision without providing any of the information we need to make that decision.” Amita was about to go off on Jeff. He towered over her, but she was an intimidating woman. Her eyes were flashing with frustration. Jeff desperately wanted to be somewhere else.

  “I’m sorry. That’s not going to happen. You’re free to leave if you’d like. I’m even ok with taking you guys back to the island. We could see if any more of the crew was able to make it off the carrier. Once we get to this next base that freedom to leave goes away. If you’re not ok with that you need to let me know now.” Jeff said tersely.

  Amita swallowed her kneejerk response. The ease in which she transitioned into a calculated negotiating machine showed how she’d been able to be so successful in the male dominated world of high-tech startups. She asked Jeff for time to discuss with the other refugees. Jeff told them they could have an hour, but he needed a decision by then. He grabbed Yue and they bounced out of the trailer and up into the cab of a different truck. Yue hopped in the sleeper section with her laptop. She wanted to update the inventory spreadsheet of the supplies they had left in the trailers.

  “What do you think they’ll do?” Yue asked Jeff.

  “Whatever’s best for them and their families. They’re smart people. Not a lot of idiots still alive.” Jeff replied.

  While they waited Drew called them over the radio. He was requesting permission to go snag the motorcycles parked by the warehouse. Jeff told him to get as many as he could fit on the truck. He asked Drew to check the Chinook on the tarmac as well. He wanted to see if there were any extra weapons or ammunition on board. Minutes later Drew and a couple of Marines advanced slowly on the Chinook with weapons raised. It was a good thing there’d been plenty of extra weapons in the trailers. Most of their personal gear had been lost when they’d abandoned ship.

  They were watching the helicopter get looted when LeBron opened the door to the truck and slithered past Jeff to crawl into the sleeper with Yu
e.

  “Do you think they might still be down there?” LeBron asked. Yue and Jeff both looked over at him with confusion in their eyes.

  “Who’s they and where’s there?” Yue asked. She wasn’t really in the mood for her brother to act all mysterious. LeBron tended to be thinking a few steps ahead of everyone else. That was an extremely useful survival skill that could also be a tad bit annoying for the mere mortals around him. Especially when he spoke in vague pronouns and expected everyone to be on the same page as he was.

  “The guys in the warehouse. Leander and the others. At least the ones we didn’t just shoot.” LeBron said. He was looking at the two of them like they were idiots. Jeff looked thoughtful. He was reflecting on the fact that they’d just abandoned who knew how many sailors back on the Ford. Those men and women were doomed to slowly starve to death locked in secure areas deep in the ship.

  “Any ideas on how to get them out if they’re still alive down there?” Jeff finally asked. He didn’t want to drive away if there was something they could do. He also wasn’t willing to risk lives on a wild goose chase. Sending men deep into a dark complex full of crawlerz to rescue people who may still be alive didn’t sound like the best use of their extremely limited resources.

  “Nobody answered when we radioed in. The place is probably full of crawlerz. I don’t see how we go in and check. There’s probably not anything we can do. I just thought I’d bring it up in case anyone else had any ideas.” LeBron answered.

  “Why in the hell would you feel the need to bring that up? We’re already in the middle of an impossible situation. We’re already trying to save a bunch of people who don’t want us to save them. I’ve got no desire to run into a crawler stuffed hole in the ground to pull out our President and his team of morons. I’m not risking anyone here for that CIA guy who drugged you both for the hell of it either!” Jeff was done. There was just too much going on. The load on his shoulders was getting entirely too heavy. Judging by the anger flashing in Yue’s eyes she didn’t care. Tall, good looking, powerful and a great kisser didn’t give him the right to talk to her little brother like that.

  “You’d rather LeBron not bring up stuff that may be relevant?” Yue asked icily. Jeff and Yue had been holding hands. That’d ended immediately after Jeff finished yelling at her little brother. Jeff stared down at her unsure what to say.

  “I’m not trying to stir up anything. Something happened recently where I didn’t open my mouth and people died. I promised myself I’d open my mouth moving forward regardless of the consequences.” LeBron said. He was thinking of a couple of Marines who’d been killed in front of him in a laundry room because he hadn’t trusted his instincts. Mikey was still limping because LeBron had kept his mouth shut instead of immediately yelling out a warning. He wasn’t going to let something like that happen again. What Jeff chose to do with what he said was up to Jeff, but he wasn’t going to stand by and keep his mouth shut. Not when it could mean people dying.

  “You really think there’s people alive down there?” Yue asked him. She’d made a mental note to find out later what recent incident LeBron was talking about with the people dying. He hadn’t said anything to her about it. Not that they’d had a lot of alone time to talk since they’d been reunited.

  “There’s a lot of places to hide and plenty of supplies. It makes sense a few of them would’ve found somewhere to hole up.” LeBron said hesitantly. He was starting to question the wisdom of having brought his theory to Jeff. All it really did was make everything a little bit harder. At the end of the day, they were probably just going to end up driving away. It didn’t make much sense sending anyone down into that dark hole of death. All LeBron had really accomplished by bringing it up was to make everyone feel bad about it.

  “Thanks for bringing this to me LeBron. Please let me know anytime you think of something like this. Especially on the life-or-death stuff. I don’t realistically see how we can help anyone trapped down there though. The best thing we may be able to do for them is leave so we don’t attract any more crawlerz into the area. We don’t have the manpower or ammunition to go in on a search and rescue mission.” Jeff couldn’t justify risking the lives of his few remaining Marines on the hunch of a kid who couldn’t legally vote yet.

  All of them were bummed that they may be leaving people stuck in dark holes waiting to die again. The three of them watched in silence as the Marines continued to drag supplies over to the trucks. The main place they were pulling stuff from was the shelter beside the hangar. There was a row there of the electric powered Harleys sitting under tarps. There were boxes of spare parts and riding gear that they were grabbing as well. They’d also found a pile of containers to fill up with gasoline. One of the Marines was pumping diesel into those. A couple of the Marines were walking around with rifles up taking out the occasional surger.

  “Let’s go see what the people in the back decided.” Jeff said checking his watch. Drew and team were wrapping up outside. Amita and Carl had been given plenty of time to talk over what they should do. Asking them to decide the fate of themselves and their children with limited information in under an hour was the best Jeff could do for them. He was almost hoping they’d decided to leave. They were proving to be a serious pain in the ass. He didn’t like the way they made him seem incompetent for not knowing the base here had fallen. What secret satellite network smart phone crystal ball did they think he was getting his news from?

  Amita surprised him by immediately apologizing once he climbed up into the trailer. She’d finally realized they were all in this together. Another part of her sudden epiphany was that even if Jeff did have some bad intelligence, he was still probably the most knowledgeable person on the continent as to where they should go for the best chance at survival. He had after all been the principal architect behind the plan that’d been followed to try and position the USA to be able to rise back up once this was over. The uprising part may be in doubt, but he still knew where all the nuts had been stashed.

  “We’re good to go where you want to lead. The situation could always change but for now we all want the same thing. We’re putting a lot of faith in you.” Carl said worriedly. His granddaughter was running around with another little kid behind them as they talked. The more energy they ran off during the day the better they slept at night. That was especially important when sleeping in a trailer that’d be under crawler attack as soon as the sun went down.

  “Once we get where we’re going your right to change your mind gets permanently revoked. Some of these places aren’t going to be happy when we pull up anyway. If I didn’t think this was the best option, I’d be letting you know that. I can’t really think of anything else you could be doing that’d give you a better chance of saving your families.” Jeff answered. He needed to make sure they understood changing their minds wasn’t an option once they knew where the base was located.

  Back up in the front of the truck LeBron and Yue spread out in the sleeper section. They waited for Gus to finish standing overwatch and come back to the truck. Jeff was feeling better now that Amita and Carl had given him their vote of confidence. Even if it did add to the overall pressure that he was under. He kept picturing what’d happen to those kids if the crawlerz managed to get in the trailers. Gus almost go this head shot off when he suddenly popped up outside the driver’s window with no warning.

  “Where to boss?” Gus asked settling into his seat. He was seemingly unaware of how close he’d just come to joining the piles of the dead spread out on the ground all around them.

  Jeff held up a page in the atlas he was shielding from everyone else’s view. He’d used a sharpie to trace the path to where they were headed. Yue and LeBron both craned their necks trying to get a better look at the piece of paper. Gus just glanced at it to see the first couple of turns and nodded. The trio of trucks slowly rolled out of the underground warehouse turned graveyard. They were all lamenting the loss of life as well as the loss of the valuable supplies buried u
nderneath them. The supplies now watched over by hundreds of flesh-eating freaks.

  Chapter 2: More Mouths to Feed

  They’d barely begun their journey when Gus hit the brakes. He’d just driven around one of the sharp twists in the little country road they were on. LeBron looked out over the center console to see what was going on. He’d expected to see a couple of surgers in the street or a car blocking the road or something like that. He hadn’t expected to see a huge man dressed like someone out of the Matrix straddling one of the ruggedized electric Harleys from the warehouse staring up at them. Running into him again sitting on a Harley was pretty spot on. Sitting behind the WrestleMania sized man was a battered looking green pickup overflowing with armed men. They appeared as surprised to see the trucks as the people in the trucks were surprised to see them.