Crawlerz: Book 5: Off the Rails Read online

  “Yes sir. There’s no way for us to know if that’s exactly what’ll happen, but it appears to be a real possibility.” Jeff answered. The small group of men in the mahogany covered conference room were at a loss for words. All except for the man who’d been bumped up to be the new secretary of defense. He was one of the admirals who’d evacuated the Ford along with Shaun’s uncle. His predecessor had been eaten alive by a group of the infected about forty feet from the room they were currently sitting in.

  “We do have the other option Mr. President.” SECDEF said quietly. Despite the informal dress code most people had adopted the secretary was in a suit and tie. He was a stickler for decorum. Being rescued by the suicide squad had given him some major heartburn. Facial tattoos and personalized bludgeoning gear didn’t mesh with his idea of what a professional fighting unit should look like. He couldn’t really say anything to the team that’d risked their lives to rescue everyone stuck in Weathertop though. He’d been feeling more forgiving of them since most of them had left on the train the month before. Out of sight and out of mind was sometimes a good thing.

  “I thought the other option could backfire on us?” Shaun asked.

  “Not if we plan it out and do it right. It doesn’t sound like we have a ton of time if the infected are getting smarter. This whistle stop strategy was already going to take an ungodly amount of time to complete sir.” SECDEF answered.

  “Excuse me. What’s the other option?” Jeff asked when the President and the secretary of defense had stared quietly at one another for a little too long.

  “Is it a weaponized strain of anthrax?” LeBron guessed out of the blue when no one seemed to want to answer the question.

  “You told him sir?” SECDEF asked incredulously. He must’ve thought he was pretty special having his own little secrets with the President. The secretary was always pretty defensive since he knew that Jeff hadn’t gotten along with the former administration. Shaun kept the old admiral around because even if he was a sanctimonious prick, he was still extremely knowledgeable.

  “I think you just did actually.” Shaun said with a bemused grin. LeBron echoed the smile then quickly wiped it away. No reason to piss off the guy in charge of all the people with guns. Well at least not any more of an enemy than he already was. The secretary noticed all the smiling and instead of getting upset he let out a self-deprecating chuckle. Maybe there was hope for the guy after all.

  “I guess that explains why I joined the Navy instead of the CIA.” The secretary joked. Jeff could relate since he also had a horrible poker face. He’d been told that many times by people whom he trusted. As was his habit he opened his mouth and started talking to help get his thoughts in order.

  “Mr. Secretary an anthrax attack was one of the scenarios my department had written up contingency plans for. If we were attacked with the aerosol bombs over major cities, we were looking at a pretty high rate of infection. We had plenty of the treatment stored in the strategic national stockpile. It would’ve been a matter of distributing that as quickly as possible while moving people out of the impacted areas. We had plenty of drills around those scenarios. It was up in our top five most likely man made mass casualty events. Are you saying we should deploy it against the infected?” Jeff said.

  “The infected don’t have access to a treatment center. We deploy the spores on the cities they’re in we’ll wipe out seventy to ninety percent of them in a few weeks.” The secretary answered. Shaun moved his chair forward and coughed to get everyone’s attention.

  “If we wipe them out with bioweapons then once the spores clear out, we’ll still have access to all the infrastructure. My understanding is it would take about five years for the cities to be safe again. I was thinking we start with the least populated cities on the West Coast and go from there. We hold out in a few strongholds on the East Coast for a few years then migrate to California and setup a tent on the East Coast to fumigate this side.” Shaun explained how he saw this playing out. The image of a large tent over the East Coast for crawler bombing was spot on. The way he said it made it sound like it was a done deal.

  “Are you sure that infecting the entire country is the best way to deal with an enemy that exists because of an infection? Will it even work on them? What happens if we sprinkle anthrax spores everywhere? What if they all get blown from the West Coast over to us? How do we get uninfected people to leave the cities? You realize this will kill all the animals as well, right?” LeBron had done that thing where he started asking questions without really considering who his audience was. Realizing he was getting overly aggressive in his questioning he shut up and waited to see if he got any answers back. Half expecting to be asked to stand in the hallway while the grownups finished talking, he was thrilled when SECDEF started seriously answering his questions.

  “We’ve tested it on the infected. We set it off in a building about a hundred of them were in. Which worked out good for math purposes.” SECDEF stopped to smile at that. When no one else seemed amused he carried on. “Of the hundred in the building we were able to verify a mortality of seventy percent. We’re assuming others died as well and we just didn’t find the bodies. They could’ve made it hundreds of miles in the weeks after we sprayed their building down.”

  “You’ve been spraying buildings down with anthrax?” LeBron asked with a horrified expression on his face. This time several people around the table did shoot him annoyed looks. LeBron ignored them. It was easy to sit in an underground base with ventilated air and talk about hosing down the countryside with anthrax. It wouldn’t be so easy if you were a small group of survivors who happened to wander into a site that’d been contaminated.

  “We’ve been conducting multiple operations to try and determine the best way to rid the country of the threat. A bioweapon seems the most feasible option. I know your team has gone all in on riding around in trains blowing up a few hundred every night. I don’t think that’s scalable. Not to the kind of numbers we need to retake the country within our lifetimes.” SECDEF answered tersely.

  “I think LeBron brought up some really good points. Do we really want to poison the country to take it back? Killing the infected the conventional way may not be as efficient, but it seems a hell of a lot safer to me in the long run.” Jeff argued. SECDEF looked like he had a retort ready to fire off when a young air force officer walked into the room and handed the President a single piece of paper. Shaun scanned the transcript of the communique with Major Tom in Fayetteville before addressing the room.

  “It’s been confirmed that the crawlerz still don’t use that one building to hide in during the day.” Shaun provided the news in a straightforward way. The news giving further credence to what Yue had reported back to them. The infected were capable of learning and adapting. That was not welcome news to anyone in the room. SECDEF being the single exception since it validated his point.

  “That proves we don’t have any time to lose. We strike now and kill as many as we can as fast as we can, or we’re doomed. Mr. President the time for conventional warfare against this enemy is over. We have to take this to the next level if this country has any hope of surviving.” SECDEF was leaning forward with an excited look on his face. He had a weapon to wipe out the infected. He was ready to strike.

  “Even if we go the bioweapon route it won’t be fast. We have to evacuate the uninfected from the cities we’re going to be clearing. That’s going to be a job all by itself. We’ll have to convince people that the government wants them to leave so we can protect them. Most of the people who still want to give the government a chance already came over.” Jeff continued to caution the President. SECDEF snorted loudly.

  “This from the man who told the government to abandon the people in the first place? The reason the survivors don’t trust us is because of your original plan is it not?” SECDEF said derisively.

  “That was necessary so that the government could survive.” Jeff said loudly. He was starting to lose his temper with SECDEF. H
aving the man throw those initial decisions back in his face was painful. What really sucked was that the man wasn’t wrong. It had been Jeff’s plan that the government had followed in the beginning which included abandoning almost everyone. To leave them to fend for themselves when they needed them more than ever.

  “How’s that working out?” SECDEF responded. The tone of his voice reminded everyone at the table that the old man in front of them wasn’t a fragile creature. Most of his adult life had been spent on the bridges of warships conducting operations in hot zones all over the globe. He was no coward.

  “Ok. We don’t have to decide tonight. We’ll be living with this decision for a long time. We need to make sure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease. We’ll talk more tomorrow. You’re all dismissed.” Shaun walked briskly out of the room after the abrupt close to the meeting. He was attempting to avoid either Jeff or SECDEF cornering him to try and sway him to their point of view. Smart move since both men had been planning to do exactly that.

  SECDEF left immediately after the President. Everyone else filtered out within the next few minutes except for Jeff and LeBron. LeBron wasn’t sure why they were still sitting there. He was thinking that maybe Jeff was feeling emotional from what SECDEF had brought up. Being known as the man who talked the government into abandoning its people wasn’t really something anyone could feel good about it. No matter how rational the response had been at the time.

  “I was hoping more people would stay behind to talk to us. Looks like we’re on our own.” Jeff said finally. LeBron nodded. That also made sense he supposed.

  “What do we do?” LeBron asked. This wasn’t a logistical problem with a logical answer. This was the messy subject of politics. This was Yue stuff. LeBron wasn’t as bad when it came to navigating these kinds of issues as his brother Drew. He recognized he was nowhere near the level needed to navigate this mess though. Not for the first time he wished he had Drew and Yue back here with him. He’d even be ok with hopping in a truck and driving out to meet them wherever they were currently camped out at. Whatever it took for him to tell them what was going on and get some advice on how to handle it.

  “What we don’t do is spray poison all over a bunch of survivors just because our leadership is looking for an easy way out.” Jeff said. He was nodding his head as he spoke. LeBron thought that sounded great. He just didn’t see how they stopped it from happening.

  “Not to keep hitting a sore spot but you’re a prime example of the government not caring about the people. Not if it comes down to saving the government or saving themselves. We both know they’ll rationalize the anthrax and never look back. Someone will start throwing around the whole ‘big picture’ thing and that’ll be the end of it.” LeBron said after thinking about it for a few seconds.

  “If we can’t convince them not to do it then we’ll have to go another route. I’m not going to be part of killing the people who managed to survive this long. We justified it back then by saying we’d come back for the survivors and help them get through it. I’m not letting the new and improved government launch poison bombs at them.” Jeff said emotionally.

  LeBron didn’t bother arguing with him. LeBron had no intention of putting his finger anywhere near the poison bomb trigger either. In their current positions they could sway the President away from doing it. If they committed treason and ended up in cells or dead, then they wouldn’t be able to help anybody. Jeff got up and left the room. LeBron trailed behind him. Thinking through the arguments he was going to use to keep Jeff from assassinating SECDEF and making the whole situation even worse he trailed Jeff down the hall towards their sleeping quarters.

  Chapter 3: All Aboard!

  “The infected still don’t go in that warehouse in Fayetteville you asked about.” Lindsey announced plopping herself down on the couch next to Yue. Knowing they were going to be spending a lot of time stuck in the train they’d scrounged around to provide themselves some creature comforts. Expensive leather couches were one of those comforts. If you were ordered to go toe to toe with all the demons of hell, why wouldn’t you snag a ten thousand dollar sofa to sit on in between bouts?

  Yue nodded. “I didn’t think they would. I think they’re getting more intelligent. At least when they’re in groups.”

  “Individually they’re still morons though, right?” Drew asked. He was sitting on a nearby couch with Lisa. They’d been watching the DVD version of some Matthew McConaughey rom-com involving pirates and planes. The advent of the apocalypse had made DVDs popular again. Trying to find something to watch in random truck stop discounted movie bins had made everyone really miss streaming services. The pandemic had put a screeching halt to binge watching shows. Now it was a serious gamble to get interested in a series because there was the very real possibility of never being able to find parts six through nine or whatever.

  “Yes. I think that’s how it works anyway. Their intelligence is contained in the web of images they build up in a network between themselves. A crawler walking around by itself just has its base knowledge. When it joins up with other infected, they all share a common set of memories that begins building on itself. Does that make sense?” Yue asked. She was trying to describe a concept that sounded more like the plot to an alien movie than something that should be impacting them in real life.

  “Sure. One crawler walking around might try to beat a door down if it sees you go in. Say there’s a thousand crawlerz though. If one of them has seen a doorknob open a door before then they can share that image and open the door?” Harley asked. He’d been listening in as well. The conversation was gathering a lot of listeners. Knowledge on how the crawlerz operated was critical to surviving in this new normal. The warrior members of the suicide squad understood instinctively that Yue was onto something big. This could be a game changer.

  “Kind of. Not really but I think you get it?” Yue answered. She didn’t really understand herself what she’d ‘seen’ when she’d been part of that crawler groupthink earlier. She just knew it wasn’t good. They were much better off not giving the infected killing machines any additional advantages. Spending too long in the area doing the same thing over and over again was just asking for trouble. It’d be like they were training the infected on how to beat them. For all she knew Harley was right about the doorknob example. Given enough time maybe the crawlerz would figure out how to open the door. Once they did then maybe that did become part of the groupthink images that they passed between one another.

  Captain Lindsey got up off the couch. Before she went anywhere, she addressed the small group that’d crowded around while they’d been talking. “I guess we can put a pin in that then. Thanks for the explanation Yue. I’m going to snag a nap. I suggest everyone else does the same. We’ll be in Charlottesville before you know it. I’d expected us to be able to spend a month there blasting away at the demons. Based on this new intel it doesn’t sound like that’s the smart move anymore. Which means I want one really good night at least. Rest up cause when we get there we’re wiring up as much of that city as we can.”

  That pretty much ended the impromptu pow wow. Everyone wandered off to try to grab some sleep. Harley washed down a couple of pills with whatever was in the flask he pulled out. Noticing Yue watching him self-medicate he shot her a wink before collapsing into his oversized bottom bunk and almost instantaneously falling asleep. Yue opened her mouth to tell Drew and Lisa they should try and get some rest then decided not to bother. Those two would happily watch lame movies all day then bitch about being sleepy all night. Nothing she said would influence the two teen lovebirds to do the smart thing.

  Yue told them to enjoy the movie and stood up to go climb into her own bunk. She was looking forward to resting if she were able to. She wasn’t picking up any hint of the crawler net in the air currently. That normally indicated her best chance of a sleep unspoiled by the nightmares brought on by being exposed to the psychic intrusions of the infected. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t be haunted
by her regular nightmares. She was used to that now though. If she didn’t have to wake up in a few hours she’d have slammed some sleeping pills and a Valium. She thought of that little pill packet as her sanity sack. Drugs were bad but so was never sleeping.

  Hoping the gods of sleep would be kind to her she did some deep breathing exercises to clear her mind. When that didn’t help her drift off, she tried counting sheep. When counting sheep got lame, she switched over to worrying about her family. She was scared they were all going to die before they got the train turned around and headed back towards Weathertop. At some point her worried mind let go and she drifted into a world of nightmares and darkness. A world that was a stripped down reflection of the reality she faced on a daily basis.

  A hand nudged her awake in the middle of a dream she was having about burying her mom. She kept trying to push her mom’s plastic bag wrapped body down into a hole, but her mom kept climbing back out. The bag got more and more ripped with each try. The person waking her up spared her from having to see what her mom looked like underneath that cheap plastic shroud.