Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails Read online

  Crawlerz

  Book 5

  “Off the Rails”

  R S Merritt

  Text Copyright © 2021 Randall Scott Merritt

  All Rights Reserved

  The Crawlerz series is dedicated to my beautiful wife and family.

  Cover Design By:

  Harry Lamb

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Slaughter, Rinse, Repeat

  Chapter 2: The Clock is Ticking

  Chapter 3: All Aboard!

  Chapter 4: Fight Fire with Fire

  Chapter 5: Won’t Back Down

  Chapter 6: Dodging Bullets

  Chapter 7: That Voodoo That You Do

  Chapter 8: The Trolls Under the Bridge

  Chapter 9: 99 Problems but a Witch ain’t One

  Chapter 10: Pass the Peace Pipe

  Chapter 11: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

  Chapter 12: Do or Do Not

  Chapter 13: The Law of Murphy

  Chapter 14: Grenades are Such a Blast

  Chapter 15: Pass the Morphine

  Chapter 16: The Ones Who Tried to Kill Us?

  Chapter 17: Stupid is as Stupid does

  Chapter 18: Regroup in the Street or in Hell

  Chapter 19: Ridden Hard and Put Away Wet

  Chapter 20: Blue Collar Gangsters

  Chapter 21: That Ship has Sailed

  Chapter 22: When You Hear the Beep!

  Chapter 23: Food Fight!

  Chapter 24: Run and Gun

  Chapter 25: A Hard Day’s Night

  Chapter 26: We Gotta Get Out of This Place

  Chapter 27: Sucker Punch

  Chapter 28: Tomorrow is Only a Day Away

  Chapter 29: Enjoy the Little Things

  Chapter 30: Striking a Deal with the Devil

  Chapter 31: Getting Down to Business

  Chapter 32: The Reward for Success is More Hard Work

  Chapter 33: The Knoxville Nightmare

  Chapter 34: A Whole Lot of Weird

  Chapter 35: Rested and Ready

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by RS Merritt

  Chapter 1: Slaughter, Rinse, Repeat

  The cameras they’d positioned around the train helped speed up the process of exiting every morning. Being able to see everything outside before hopping out made it a lot less stressful. You no longer had to worry a surger might be standing there with a few friends just waiting for you to poke your nose out. They put down ramps to exit the cars now. At some point they wanted to make easily retractable steel walls they could slide down around the train. That would help block any crawlerz lurking underneath the train from trying to Hungry Hungry Hippo anybody.

  They’d come up with numerous enhancements to the operation in the last month on the tracks. Improvising, overcoming and adapting is built into the military ethos. All three attributes were sorely needed in a fight against an enemy with supernatural speed who outnumbered you ten thousand to one. It didn’t help that the infected kept getting stronger. The men and women charged with destroying them just kept getting more exhausted and lower on supplies.

  Yue stayed in her bunk. She didn’t see any reason to subject herself to the first few minutes of the morning. Despite telling herself not to, she ended up staring up at the monitors anyway. It was an all hands on deck kind of situation every morning. The only exception being Yue and her guards who were all staying behind. She knew that’d make Lindsey and Harley happy. They were constantly concerned that she might be the unlucky one to catch a crawler’s final lunge.

  Yue wasn’t skipping because of Lindsey and Harley fretting over her. If she did what people wanted her to do then she’d be sitting back at Weathertop buffing her nails. Jeff had been absolutely adamant he didn’t want her going on this cross country murder extravaganza. Yue wondered now if she’d insisted on going more out of obstinance than because she thought it was the right thing to do. So far, her extra sensitive psychic self hadn’t really accomplished anything useful. Her disappointment in herself was reflected in the eyes of Lindsey who was in command of this mission. They’d both had pretty high expectations for the value Yue could bring by being in the field.

  Yue watched the standard morning scenario play out on the monitor. It concerned her some that she didn’t really get upset anymore watching the cold blooded slaughter of the infected. The warehouse entrance and the courtyard adjacent to it were full of the bloody remains of the infected. They’d managed to set the explosives correctly to kill most of the ones who showed up to the party the night before. Body parts were scattered around like water bottles after an outdoor concert. The gory remains of hundreds of crawlerz were laid out in all their HD glory on the monitors. There’d been a debate between some of the techie types if it was 4K or HD. Yue still didn’t understand why the hell it mattered. Did they really need to see the corpses in greater detail?

  Yue watched on the monitor as the suicide squad lined up to police the dead and dismembered. It occurred to her that this step probably wasn’t even necessary in the grand scheme of things. The idea behind validating all the crawlerz laid out in the concrete were really dead had been part of the original planning sessions. They were trying to come up with a process that was repeatable that’d result in the maximum number of crawler casualties with the least risk. They were currently slaughtering between two and four hundred crawlerz per night. If they had another dozen crews going that’d get them up to over a million and half dead crawlerz a year. At that rate it’d only take them about a hundred years to make the country safe again.

  There was a reason no one was focusing too much on the math. It was depressing. Another part of that military can do attitude was that it didn’t matter how strong the enemy was there had to be a way to defeat them. The fighting men and women of the suicide squad embodied that ethos. They’d consistently been thrown into impossible situations. They’d managed to complete those missions time after time. Some of them were starting to believe in their own invincibility. Facial tattoos and bravado didn’t count for much when a blood craving crawler caught up with you when you weren’t ready.

  Yue was musing about facial tattoos and wondering why they were bothering with this policing action when one of her guards nudged her. The man was one of the ones with a jailhouse joker grin tattooed on his face. He was going to have serious issues getting a regular job if they happened to kill all the crawlerz and restore civilization ahead of schedule.

  “Yes?” Yue asked trying to remember the guy’s name. She kept getting stuck on wanting to ask him why he’d done that to his face and then forgot his name. She felt bad not being able to remember since all of her guards were sworn to die to protect her. She decided she’d ask Harley later what the dude’s name was. She definitely wasn’t asking “Mr. Permagrin” when he’d told her a dozen times already.

  “Lindsey wants you to come out just to make sure you don’t see anything before they start the mercy killing.” Mr. Permagrin replied.

  “Tell her we’ll be out in a minute.” Yue said grumpily. Lindsey had specifically told her she’d prefer it if Yue avoided things like the mercy killing morning routine. Not that anything should ever be considered routine when you were talking about what they did for a living. Yue slipped on her boots and headed for the door. Her hands were automatically checking to make sure all of her weapons were in place and ready to go. Making sure you had a loaded gun had taken the place of brushing your teeth as a morning ritual. Gingivitis no longer being the number one concern when you first woke up.

  “Morning sunshine.” Harley said greeting her at the door. He was in charge of the detachment responsible for safeguarding her person. Yue couldn’t think of too many other people
she’d feel comfortable having in that role.

  “Good morning. Where’s her royal highness the Capitan of the crazed?” Yue asked dramatically. She accepted Harley’s hand and let him help her down to the ground. There was no train platform or anything here. They were only moving about a hundred yards down the track every day before setting up for the next night. They’d move on when they thinned the crawlerz in the city out substantially. So far that hadn’t happened.

  Harley turned and started walking towards the warehouse by the side of the tracks. As soon as Yue went around the side of the train, she was overwhelmed by the visions hitting her. She hadn’t been expecting anything since she hadn’t felt their hum in her head when she first got out. Harley and the other men guarding her stopped and stared at her with concern.

  “Yeah. Wow. There’s a bunch of them over in that warehouse. I’m feeling them in the other buildings around here too.” Yue said after taking a minute to get herself under control.

  “Anything we need to be worried about right now?” Harley asked when Yue looked like she’d gotten herself back together.

  “Yeah. We should probably be asking ourselves why there are so many of them in the surrounding buildings. Why didn’t they come on down and get blown up last night?” Yue asked in a curious tone. She was afraid she knew the answer. They continued walking at a fast clip towards where the captain was hanging out. Lindsey and her crew were surveilling the tapestry of death laid out in front of them. She nodded to Yue as she approached.

  “Hey. I know I asked you to stay inside, but something feels off.” Lindsey said to Yue in lieu of a typical good morning greeting.

  “Yeah. I agree. We need to pack it up and move on to the next city.” Yue said. She was thinking through some seriously disturbing scenarios in her head. Scenarios that could have a significant impact on their mission.

  “Care to go into a little more detail?” Lindsey asked. Everyone was now looking at Yue curiously to see why she was saying they needed to leave. A few of them were looking around nervously as if Yue’s words were intended to warn of an imminent attack. Yue didn’t consider what she did to be anything close to magical. Everyone continued to regard her abilities as some sort of witchy spell casting thing no matter how hard Yue worked to dispel them of that notion.

  “I can see what we did last night flashing in their minds.” Yue said as if that should explain everything.

  “In the minds of the ones watching?” Lindsey asked. Yue could see the captain was attempting to put together what Yue was trying to tell her.

  “I think if we stay in one place too long, they’re going to stop falling for it. The images flashing though their heads work kind of like our memories do. Expect for them memory is how they communicate. They just have what they’ve seen and what they’re seeing. They’re starting to equate a stopped train with getting blown apart. They’re figuring out they don’t have a chance at getting to us.” Yue said. Lindsey nodded as if that made total sense.

  “So after we clear this area then we go ahead and hit the next town?” Lindsey asked. It sucked that they couldn’t just keep doing the hundred yard jaunts. That had been a great way to save on diesel. It also gave them plenty of time during the day to get everything set up.

  “I also think we should stop with policing the areas the next morning. On a good day it kind of feels like clubbing baby seals and on a bad day one of our guys gets bit by one of the ones that can still wiggle around. I say we just leave them to live or die on their own. If we can kill hundreds during the night, then the dozen or so who might survive the initial blasts are an acceptable margin of error as far as I’m concerned.” Yue said.

  “Alright then. Let’s round up the crews and head back to the trains. Works for me. Thanks Yue we’ll see you over there.” Lindsey said. Yue wasn’t offended at all by the abrupt dismissal. Yue turned and left with her small entourage. She was encouraged by how quickly Lindsey had seen the right thing to do and changed her tactics to accommodate. That kind of flexibility was going to be vital for winning this war.

  She ignored the chit chat of her guards as they walked back. She was busy evaluating what’d just happened. This was the kind of thing she was along for. No one else would’ve had that kind of insight because no one else was as attuned to the crawlerz groupthink. Maybe it hadn’t been a waste bringing her along after all. She couldn’t wait to tell Jeff about it. He’d get it as soon as she explained. That was one of the benefits of having a boyfriend who was also in charge of the whole revitalization of the country effort.

  The only problem was getting a chance to talk to him. It wasn’t like she could just grab her iPhone and FaceTime with him whenever she wanted. The couple of quick conversations they’d had were in the presence of radio operators and other engineering staff. Not to mention Lindsey and half her crew standing there staring at her. It was only due to his executive privilege that they even got that limited communication. It was basically enough of his voice to make her miss him even more.

  Based on what was happening she had a question she needed him to track down an answer to for her. It shouldn’t be too hard since all he’d have to do was reach out to Major Tom in Fayetteville. When they’d been in Fayetteville LeBron had found out that after a particular building was bombed the crawlerz didn’t use that building as a place to escape the sun any longer. Yue wanted to get Tom to go check that building again and see if the crawlerz were still avoiding it or not. She was hoping that’d give them a clue as to how long the crawlerz groupthink memory persisted.

  She found her car on the train and hopped in. Her mind was still going a mile a minute trying to reconcile the visions she’d received today with what they already knew about the infected. One thing she knew for sure was that no one wanted the two legged monstrosities to get any smarter. They were already dangerous enough fueled by the infection and the adrenaline spurts it let them shoot off at will. If the groupthink started to evolve into something like a hive mind that directed the actions of the individuals that’d be a whole other level of danger.

  It already kind of did by letting them share what they could see. Yue had hijacked that stream of consciousness a couple of times to lead the crawlerz on wild goose chases. That’d been how they escaped from a few of the impossible predicaments they’d managed to get into. If the infected groupthink started doing things a little more strategically that’d cause big problems. Yue suddenly realized that’s what was bothering her the most. It hadn’t been the visions of being seen by all the infected hiding in the buildings around them. It’d been the sense that those infected were being ‘told’ to stay in place and wait for a good time to attack.

  Ambush tactics were something they commonly saw with the infected they’d labeled ‘stalkers’ or ‘lurkers’. Yue could even remember a few times when they’d been silently hunted by more than one of the infected at a time. If larger groups of the infected started acting like that then it’d make them that much more difficult to eradicate. It’d make things a whole lot more difficult if they had to seek and destroy the enemy versus just sitting in their nice, armored trains with explosives they could set off via remote control. Seeking and destroying wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun against coordinated groups of the vicious cannibals.

  “You’re looking pretty serious. Does it have anything to do with us being sent back to the trains early?” Drew had come aboard with Lisa. He’d made a beeline over to where his sister was sitting the second that he saw the expression on her face. He wanted to see what she had to say about what’d happened that morning.

  Yue smiled up at her brother and let him know what she’d seen. His eyes lit up at all the right spots indicating he was following along. He might act like a dumb jock, but he had a decent head on his shoulders. As they considered what to do, they both wished LeBron was there. He’d have already formulated a detailed global strategy based on the new insight. Yue smiled thinking of the creases LeBron would get on his forehead when he heard this news. She
missed him.

  Chapter 2: The Clock is Ticking

  “So what do you think?” Shaun asked the group of trusted advisors sitting around the table with him. LeBron was proud to count himself among them. He kept quiet for now to hear what the others had to say. He had his own opinions but wasn’t sure on the politics of the whole thing. He was completely content to let someone else shove their foot in their mouth first.

  “It’s scary. If what Yue saw is something that becomes more widespread, then the groupthink phenomena is going to be something we need to factor into our operations. It basically changes everything.” Jeff said. He was in a rare mood. He was elated to have been able to talk to Yue and make sure she was ok. He was scared out of his mind by what she’d told them.

  “Let me get this straight. If the crawlerz are starting to develop this groupthink then the theory is that they’ll stop being lemmings and start utilizing more ambush style tactics? They’ll stop coming to the train stops and getting blown up? They’ll force us to track them down instead?” Shaun asked. He was wearing his chief executive hat now.