The Mountains Are Calling
Author: R.S. Merritt
Date: 2021-02-26 05:00:00+00:00
Description: The nights grow longer with winter's coming. With more time to roam the infectious menace of the crawlerz continues to spread to every corner of the continent. It won't be long until nowhere is really safe. With their strange powers and superhuman strength growing daily the crawlerz are poised to completely annihilate the human race. If not in this lifetime then certainly in the dwindling of future generations. Huddled in wretched little holes. Terrified to venture out into the world once the sun sets. Picking away at the slowly shrinking mountains of MREs and canned spam humanity will eventua

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 Yue.

“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 underneath 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.

The big man got off the bike. He took the time to rack a shell into the chamber of his tactical shotgun.  He strode towards the truck with his intimidation factor dialed up to a thousand.  Yue scrambled out of the sleeper section and over on top of Jeff.  She hit the button to roll down the passenger window and stuck her head out of it.

“Hey Harley!”  She yelled at the super-sized terminator walking towards them.  Jeff looked completely confused.  Just because the man was riding a motorcycle didn’t mean Yue could just call him Harley, right?  Down on the ground Harley cracked a big smile at the sound of Yue’s voice.

“Hey!  How’s it been?  Drew and LeBron with you?”  Harley yelled back.

“Hey man.  I’m here.  Drew’s in the truck behind us.  We sure are doing a lot of yelling out here on the road.”  LeBron yelled just loudly enough for Harley to hear him.  Jeff was squirming around uncomfortably.  Yue and LeBron were both squeezing in with him in the passenger seat to yell out the window.  At LeBron’s reminder on the need for silence Harley walked over to talk to them.  He stopped and stared at the cage trying to figure out how to get into the truck.

“Friend of yours?”  Jeff asked while Yue was busy whispering out instructions for Harley to climb up so he could talk to them.  Before LeBron could answer Harley had squeezed himself through the access hatchway and was having a whispered conversation with Yue.

LeBron and Jeff listened while Yue filled in Harley on the fate of the faux Gypsy band that he’d been a part of.  Harley’s face melted into a sorrowful expression before he buried his face in his hands. The people in that gypsy band had been his family.  Yue weaved her way through the rest of their journey since Harley had roared out of the compound on the same bike he was riding now.  Finding out Charani had lost her life on the carrier set Harley’s massive shoulders to heaving with unsuppressed sobs.

Harley pulled himself together after a minute of unconstrained grief and asked them where they were headed.  Jeff jumped in before Yue had a chance to answer.  He explained who he was and told Harley that they were transporting refugees to a safe area.  Then he volleyed the same question back at Harley.

“Why are you headed towards the warehouse?”  Jeff asked curiously.  He suspected he knew the answer but didn’t want to make any assumptions.

“I ran into these guys after that idiot Leander sent us all out to die.  They were squatting in the back of a run-down Target living off whatever they could scavenge.  They started off with a way bigger group but now these guys and their families are all that’s left.  We were headed over to see about getting our share of the supplies in the warehouse.  That’s what it’s there for right?”  Harley asked with sarcasm dripping all over his words.

Jeff kept his face neutral, but he was cringing on the inside.  This was the reason the bases needed to be kept secret.  Once a steady stream of people showed up looking for a handout the crawlerz wouldn’t be far behind.  It’s not like people were going to watch their kids starve to death. Not if there were someplace that they might be able to beg some food from.

“It was.  Now it’s filled with crawlerz and corpses.  No way to get at the supplies.”  Jeff answered.

“Where are you taking the refugees?”  Harley asked.

“We have another place that should be safe.  I don’t know that we can add any more people to the party.  We may already have too many honestly.  I know other places though.”  Jeff answered.  He was working through all the locations in his head.  He needed to take the time to document what he could remember each base having instead of trying to rely on his admittedly poor memory.  Shuttling refugees to different bases with different capacities to support them was going to get real complicated real fast.

“Yeah.  Considering how secure the warehouse turned out to be I’m not too sure we’d want to go with you anyway.  Where are these other places?”  Harley asked.

“Can’t tell you where they are.  Once we take you there you won’t be allowed to leave.”  Jeff said evenly.  Harley didn’t seem too concerned about that.  Of course, he’d shown up here riding the electric bike he’d ‘borrowed’ from the warehouse that he wasn’t supposed to be allowed to leave.

“The place we’re going is heavily defended.  I’m going to be calling out who we are as we drive up.  They’ll either let us in, send us away or start shooting at us.  If we show up with too many people, they’re definitely going to turn us away.  They might not let us leave.  They’ll be worried we’re going to show back up demanding food or something.  Kind of like you’re doing right now.”  Jeff explained to Harley.

Harley’s face went through a range of emotions during Jeff’s explanation.  Pretty much the entire spectrum from righteous anger to pissed off to acceptance.  LeBron found his own stress level dropping considerably once Harley had moved into the acceptance stage.

“The group with you now get to go to a nice secure base.  We’re not allowed to come along.  What do you expect us to do?  We’ve got women and children with us too.”  Harley kept his head in the window.  He wasn’t leaving until he got an acceptable answer.

“How many of you are there in total?”  Jeff asked.

Jeff and Harley went back and forth on the logistics of it.  The gist of it was that they’d get the current refugees situated then come back for Harley and his crew.  The only reason Harley was even entertaining the idea was because LeBron and Yue were willing to vouch for Jeff.  After the back-and-forth Harley climbed down and got back on his bike. They followed him up the road to where the rest of his group was waiting.  Part of the discussion had been around leaving them with enough supplies to tide them over a few days. They wanted to keep them from having to go out and forage while they waited for Jeff and his team to come back for them.

The convoy got moving up the twisty road with Harley leading the pack.  No surgers showed up which was a great sign.  The sooner they only had to worry about the crawlerz the better.  If they could move around freely during the day that’d afford them somewhat of an opportunity to live a better life.  Harley turned off the main road into a cemetery.

“This is an interesting choice.”  Jeff remarked as they drove up the narrow road past the decrepit looking groundskeeper’s sheds.

The grounds might have been well maintained at one time but now everything was one big patch of weeds.  Harley parked his bike in front of a large mausoleum.  The men in the pickup truck jumped down and spread out to secure the perimeter.  Everyone piled out of the cab of the lead truck.  They met up with Harley and walked with him around to the trailer.  Once they had the trailer open, they pulled out a crate of MREs and some big cans of drinking water.  LeBron still thought it was weird that water could be stored in cans.

Drew came out to join them as well.  Everyone else was keeping their distance.  Once the supplies were unloaded, they went with Harley to meet the rest of the group staying in the cemetery.  The group was living in a couple of large above ground mausoleums.  A pile of coffins about thirty yards away showed where the former residents had been evicted to.  The thick concrete walls of the above ground crypts looked seriously crawler proof.

A handful of kids stared up at the newcomers sullenly.  The children were obviously malnourished and overly pale.  Their eyes were doing that sunken hungry child thing like the kids in a Sally Struthers infomercial.  One of the ones where she guilts people by saying that instead of buying a cup of coffee every day, they could be feeding an entire village.  The women in the mausoleum were all as well armed as the males they’d seen in the truck.  They looked very comfortable with their weapons.

“When did you guys get this all set up?”  Jeff asked Harley.

“We put it together yesterday.  This is something these guys have been doing since the beginning.  It’s gotten a lot more practical now though since the surgers are clearing out.  Being in a protected place at night that you can leave during the day is freakin wonderful.  How long before you come back?”  Harley answered.  He was losing a big chunk of his intimidation factor by holding up one kid on his shoulder while letting another one ride around on his leg.

“We’ll hopefully get there by tomorrow night.  We’ll turn around the next day to come back so maybe three or four days.  Assuming nothing happens, which is always a big assumption.”  Jeff answered honestly.

“You’re not thinking about ambushing us and taking all our stuff, are you?”  Drew’s question came out of the blue.  Everyone turned to stare at him.  He’d once again proven he was about as subtle as an out-of-control manure truck flying down a mountain road with no brakes that’s also on fire.  From the look on his face, he didn’t care if his question offended anybody.  Harley broke into a big grin.

“Way too close to it being a fair fight.  Fair fights are for losers.  I trust you to do the right thing.  There aren’t very many people I’d say that about.  Don’t make me look like a mark.”  Harley said seriously.

“You’re going to be their hero with all this canned water.”  LeBron tried to bust up the tension.  It came out awkward and weird.  Drew must be rubbing off on him.  Yue was shifting her eyes between the two of them trying to figure out which of her brothers was the biggest idiot.  Everyone had shifted their attention over to LeBron when he spoke out.  Once they figured out that he didn’t have anything to add to the conversation beyond expressing his fascination with canned water they went back to ignoring him.

“So, you guys just like roll up into these dead guy houses with axes and a bunch of Febreze and go to town?”  Drew asked curiously.  Yue rolled her eyes at the insensitive question.  It wasn’t like moving some coffins around was any worse than anything the rest of them did to survive on a daily basis.

“Pretty much.”  Harley said shoving some weapons and ammunition into a green military issue backpack.

Drew nodded and continued poking around inside the mausoleum asking some of the people inside questions about how they secured it at night.  LeBron and Yue both appreciated Drew’s curiosity.  He was trying to learn how they could do something similar if needed.  They both hoped they’d never have to sleep in a tomb though.  No matter how practical it was.  Even considering the state of the world they all lived in now this place still rated pretty high on the creepy scale.

“I bet the crawlerz start using them to sleep in at night when they leave.”  LeBron whispered to Yue.  Yue glanced over at her overly serious brother.

“So what?”  She asked him in an annoyed whisper.  He’d obviously had some kind of critical insight he was dying to share.  She braced herself for the useless trivia coming her way.

“Bloodthirsty crawlerz with amped up adrenaline systems camped out in crypts coming out only at night.  Remind you of anything?”  LeBron whispered back.

Yue made the connection and found herself rolling her eyes at her other brother this time.  She was going to get a migraine with all this eye rolling in such a short period of time.  The crawlerz were the stuff of every nightmare.  The virus had been around for at least a couple of millennia.  They were dealing with the same sorts of horrors their very distant ancestors may have dealt with.  Horrors that’d evidently made their way into folklore and legend.  That didn’t really help them much now did it?  She didn’t think loading up on garlic and crucifixes was going to solve all of their problems.

Sidetracked by the conversation with LeBron Yue completely missed everyone saying their goodbyes.  She saw Harley and a pretty woman walking hand in hand towards the open door of one of the trailers. They had two kids in tow.  Harley casually hopped up into the open trailer. He turned around and helped the woman load in the two kids before extending a hand to help her in as well.

“I guess he’s tagging along after all.”  Jeff watched Harley’s little family disappear into the trailer. There was a mixture of annoyance and amusement warring in his eyes. Drew walked back to the truck Mikey was driving and climbed up into the cab.  Deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to fight about it Jeff shrugged and worked his way up into the cab of their truck.

“He’s a good one to have along.  Even if he turned out not to trust us as much as he said he did.”  LeBron said with a grin.

The brother and sister pair worked their way into the cab after Jeff.  LeBron was wondering why Jeff hadn’t let them go in first.  That mystery was solved when Yue held a quick make out session with Jeff right in front of him.  LeBron left wondering if Jeff had actually planned to climb in first to snag that quick bit of intimacy.  Yue had probably arranged it all somehow being the master manipulator that she was.  Like most of the things she made happen he couldn’t quite figure out how she’d done it.

When LeBron stopped halfway through climbing into the sleeper section for his kiss and hug from Jeff all he got was a shove towards the back.

Chapter 3:  ‘Dammed’ if You Do

The trucks bounced over the debris on the small two-lane road before finally merging onto a larger highway.  Jeff steadfastly refusing to give them any clues as to where they were headed.  Gus was turning on roads as ordered with only a vague idea of their final destination.  Jeff guided them with an atlas in his hand and a hard look on his face.  He was once again responsible for people’s lives.  He was determined to get them to safety.  Yue remembered him saying that the base they were headed to was heavily guarded. They may shoot at them rather than letting them in.  Jeff looked ready and willing to shoot back if he thought it’d help the kids in the back.  She loved him for that.

What she didn’t love was how dark it was getting.  They were heading into winter. The sun was getting lazier every day.  It was falling out of the sky way too early for her liking.  Jeff had also noticed the encroaching darkness.  He started working with Gus to find a good place to pull over.  They certainly weren’t going to be welcomed by the people at whatever top secret hideout Jeff was taking them to if they showed up after dark leading a parade of crawlerz.  Between the scavenging at the warehouse and the unplanned detour to drop off supplies for Harley’s people they were running way behind schedule.

They pulled off the highway into a small travel plaza.  Like most places it’d been thoroughly looted.  There were two moldering corpses lying in plain sight on the pavement.  The windows of the storefront were smashed in and glass and trash were scattered around everywhere.  No surgers came stumbling out to ask if they needed a fill up though so that was good.  No doubt there were probably a few crawlerz eyeballing them from the dark depths of the ruined buildings.  LeBron could sense them watching.  He didn’t bother asking if anyone else could feel it too.  The answer was always a vague yes.  No one really wanted to think too much about it.  The crawlerz were physically terrifying enough without having the ability to worm into your brain and screw with you psychically too.

The three trucks lined up in the parking lot.  A few Marines got out to do a perimeter sweep.  It was getting dark fast.  The Marines kept their distance from the broken storefronts.  The darker it got the more likely one of those things would leap out from the dark and grab one of them. It was like tip toeing through a nest of slumbering rattlesnakes. You wanted to be in a protected place before it was dark enough for them to come out without the sun making them loopy.  If they ever had the time and some crawler volunteers maybe they could figure out exactly when that sweet spot was.  For now, they just all got more cautious the darker it got.

With no major issues spotted by the Marines the trucks were turned off for the night.  Everyone piled into the trailers for a restless night of their crazed pursuers banging away on the trailer like it was a gigantic steel drum.  Nothing more relaxing than trying to sleep with one eye open while you waited to see if this was the night the walls finally gave way.  Reinforced with sheet metal or not the crawlerz were giving the trucks a serious pounding on a nightly basis.  Eventually some seam or bolt was going to give.  When that happened, the monsters would rip open the trailer like a giant lunch pail.

Jeff climbed up into the trailer ready to rest after a long day.  It was immediately apparent that chilling out in a secluded corner wasn’t going to be on the agenda for a little bit.  Amita and Carl were waiting to welcome them with a zillion questions.  They were plainly upset by the earlier detour to supply the refugees at the cemetery.  Amita was ticked the cemetery refugees had been given the supplies they considered theirs.  Jeff waited until the doors had been secured to address the two of them.  All the while wishing he’d walked back to a different trailer to spend the night in.  Harley would’ve been much more fun to talk to than these two princesses.

“First of all.  The supplies in these trucks don’t belong to you.  They’re the property of the government department that I’m in charge of.  I have no idea what made you think you owned any of this.  You guys are refugees just like the people at the graveyard.  We’re going to help other people we find along the way.  That’s our mandate.  You need to get on board with that.  Any questions?”  Jeff asked sternly.  He was hoping that little speech would shut them up, he was sorely mistaken.

“How do we buy our way onto this base if we give away all the supplies before we get there?  They’re not going to be thrilled to have a few dozen more mouths to feed dumped on them.  I’m guessing they don’t have a giant mountain of supplies like the warehouse you talked about did.”  Carl said.  He was borderline upset.  The supplies Jeff had given away may have been the currency needed to purchase his granddaughter’s safety.  It was a solid reason to be upset and Jeff could respect it.  He could respect it, but his job required him to rise above it and look at the bigger picture.

“We shouldn’t have to buy our way into any of the bases.  I handled the logistics for every single one of them.  I know what they have and how many people they can support.  If you wouldn’t fit, then we wouldn’t be going there.  As long as we can get an audience with the man in charge of the base everything will be fine.  If not, we’ll have to look at other options.”  Jeff replied.

“We sure feel privileged and everything to be riding around with the only man on the planet who can offer us options.  Can you maybe fill us in on what those are?”  Amita asked snarkily.  To her way of thinking if the government really had their act together, they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.  She was having a hard time following along blindly as Jeff told them to trust him.  Especially after he’d identified himself as the face of one of those large faceless government bureaucracies. He was the head of a bureaucracy that’d failed to protect the people from this catastrophe to begin with.

“For security reasons I can’t tell you anything.  You can ask me the same question a million times, but my answer isn’t going to change.  If there weren’t any issues with security, we could’ve just loaded up the people back at the cemetery into a trailer and brought them along with us. Now we have to go back and collect them after we drop you all off.”  Jeff said.  He was getting more than a little exasperated.  It’d been a really long day and this power play by the two heads of the fancy pants mansions on the beach HOA was grating on his nerves.

“Do you think you could figure out a way to charge these motorcycles in the truck?  Harley was riding his around, so he must’ve figured out some way to charge it.”  LeBron jumped into the conversation before Jeff got stuck going another meaningless round.

“He probably found a house with solar or maybe a Tesla solar charging station.  You could trickle charge these things using just a single solar cell if you had to.  I can look at it if you have the adapters and cables and everything they use.  Assuming the supreme overlord of the bureaucracy which shall not be named is ok with it.”  Amita said casting an angry look at Jeff.  Jeff faked a smile and gave her a vaguely patronizing thumbs up.

“Maybe Carl could take a look at the walls in here. It’d be awesome to see if there’s some way we could reinforce them.”  Yue said.  She was jumping on the bandwagon with LeBron to give these two something useful to focus on.  Otherwise, they were just going to keep on rehashing the same arguments all night.

“What are we reinforcing them for?”  Carl asked looking around the trailer. The walls had already been reinforced with extra sheets of metal and two by fours.  As if on cue a crawler slammed into the outside of the trailer.  Everyone could see the wall ripple where it was struck.  No one bothered answering Carl’s question. It was obvious to everyone now why they needed to reinforce the walls.

With the crawlerz performing their nightly ritual it became too loud in the trailer for them to hold a conversation.  Jeff found himself in the odd position of being thankful for the attack on the trailer.  The cranked-up nightmares might break down the walls and kill them all but at least he didn’t have to talk to Amita or Carl for the rest of the night.  Those two were a lot to deal with.  He hoped they’d calm down by dawn. If not, maybe they’d have at least worked out the solutions to the two problems they’d been presented with.  He was thankful to Yue and LeBron for giving the two a couple of projects to occupy them.  He’d much rather Amita and Carl have something useful to do than have them sit around whining at him all day.

Falling asleep next to Yue with a crawler lullaby playing in his ears Jeff was oddly content.  There was so much more that could go wrong but at least things were moving in the right direction for a change.  That contentment didn’t stop him from waking up in the middle of the night screaming and striking out at Yue.

He’d had a nightmare that a blood covered arm had come through the wall and grabbed him.  It took Yue and LeBron a few minutes to get him calmed down.  Once he did, he sat back down hurriedly and apologized profusely.  He was completely embarrassed even though he knew the same thing happened to the others all the time.  A combination of the very real terror of their situation mixed with the psychic terror those things were generating.

It wasn’t until the next morning that he saw he’d bloodied Yue’s lip and blackened one of her eyes.  At least LeBron had seen what happened so no one could call him a woman beater.  Yue didn’t seem to give a crap and LeBron thought it was funny once he made sure Yue was ok.  Jeff felt horrible about it.  He wanted to go loot a Hallmark store.  Finding a card for this particular situation may be a stretch but he was willing to give it a try.  Maybe a little creative editing from something in the domestic violence section?

Amita and Carl appeared in front of him like a couple of annoying genies.  Jeff hadn’t even had a chance to figure out if anyone had made coffee yet.  He was sniffing the air and looking around like a crack addict.  If night terrors and an addiction to coffee were the two worst traits her new beau possessed, then Yue felt like was doing pretty good.  Gingerly poking at her swollen lip with her pointer finger she thought she may have to make him wear boxing gloves to bed if this became a regular thing.  She was glad that LeBron had seen what’d happened.  If Drew thought Jeff had slapped her around then Jeff would be in danger of some serious bodily harm.  In a world where everyone walked around with automatic weapons hanging off of them things could escalate fast.

Amita wanted to let them know that charging the bikes was going to be easy as long as the truck was running.  If they did it with the truck turned off it’d kill the battery eventually.  Carl wanted to hit up a Home Depot or some other hardware store to get metal brackets and more two by fours.

“What would we have done last night if part of the wall started caving in?”  Carl asked a coffee craving distracted Jeff.  Picturing that scenario was enough to make Jeff pause and pay attention.

“Stick a rifle in the hole and hope we had enough ammunition to last all night?”  Jeff responded.  He’d actually given it some thought.  It was hard not to when you were sleeping in a giant coffin with monsters from your nightmares trying to break in the entire night.

“That’s a great plan if you’re trying to get everybody killed.  What I’d like to do is draw up a design to reinforce the insides of these trailers.  We should be able to do it without adding too much weight or losing storage space for supplies.  I’m assuming fuel efficiency is going to keep getting more and more important as time goes on.”  Carl said.

“Yes please.  If you two can write up what you need and give me a copy, we can work on scavenging everything needed the next time we send out a team to loot.  Keep in mind we may have to do it without your help.  I don’t plan on returning to the place we’re taking you guys to very often.  Every time we go there, we risk leading the crawlerz there.”  Jeff stood up and started walking towards the smell of recently ground java beans.  He left Yue and LeBron to work with Carl and Amita on getting their ideas down on paper.

Coffee in hand Jeff got on the radio and ordered the first patrol out.  The first patrol consisted of Mikey, Drew and a few other Marines from the middle truck in the convoy.  They’d clear the area to make sure it was safe to send the drivers to the cabs.  Now that surgers were becoming more and more rare the job had become much safer.  Like with any task in the new normal complacency was the enemy.  Drew and crew kept that in mind every time they hit the dirt.  Being able to maintain that ever vigilant mindset was one of the reasons they were still alive when so many weren’t.

Even with that attitude and the professionalism of the team there were still going to be casualties.  This morning proved that sometimes being alive was more a matter of luck than skill.  Drew was walking along the side of the third truck in the parking lot with one of the older Marines when there was a sudden blur of motion.  A crawler driven mad with rage streaked out from behind the last set of tires and body checked the officer at full speed.  The crawler rode the struggling man down the grassy median like an inexperienced surfer riding a body board down the face of a twenty-foot rogue wave.

By the bottom of the median the officers throat was ripped completely out.  That was one victim who wasn’t going to be coming back as a surger.  Drew was standing at the top of the gentle slope staring down at the blood covered crawler when Mikey trotted over to join him.

“Should we shoot it?”  Mikey asked.  The monster was lying there in the early morning sunlight like it was hypnotized.  It’s body covered in blood by the severed neck it’d been viciously ripping into seconds before.  Shooting it might attract more surgers. Not to mention the gunshot could alert the people Jeff had them dropping in on later that they were coming.

“Maybe we just beat it to death or stab it?  We can’t just leave it there.  This is exactly the kind of a problem that could come back and bite us later.”  Drew said.  His heart had finally stopped beating a mile a minute.  It could so easily have been him lying down there with his face slowly becoming more and more pale as his heart pumped out its last bit of blood.  He could be the one stuck staring up into the clear blue sky with sightless eyes.  His head barely even attached to his body.

“You’re pretty hard core, aren’t you?  Let me go see what we have we can beat this thing to death with.  It’s getting pretty bad when they’re so dirty you can’t tell the males from the females anymore.”  Mikey said before heading back towards the truck to find some sort of kill stick.  Drew stayed on the side of the road with his rifle to his shoulder ready to pull the trigger if the thing down there so much as twitched.  He’d seen how lightning fast it could move.  He wasn’t planning on taking any chances.  He’d pull the trigger and they could deal with the consequences later.

Mikey showed back up with a wooden canoe paddle and a resolute look on his face.  He walked carefully down the embankment before stopping to stand beside the very dead Marine and the androgynous infected.  He wound up and began wailing on the crawler’s cranium with the paddle.  He whacked away until the lifeless corpse of the crawler was intertwined with that of the nearly headless Marine.  A gallon of gas and a match later they felt like they’d done the bare minimum to honor the fallen Marine without having to touch him too much.  Drew got on the radio and gave the ‘all clear’ for the drivers to transition with their escorts to the cabs.

Drew and MIkey climbed into the cab with Harley.  Mikey taking the time to let everyone know about the Marine they’d just lost.  They offered up a moment of silence for his sacrifice before starting up the big rigs and rolling out of the parking lot.  The smoke from the impromptu burial the only funeral marker the Marine was going to get.  Once the fire died down, he’d be just another pile of bones at the bottom of a ditch.

The road they were on began zigzagging around a huge lake as they approached the mountains.  Up in the lead truck LeBron stared out at the picturesque body of water.  It suddenly dawned on him where they must be going.

“Which dam are we headed to?”  He asked Jeff.  Jeff looked back at him with a guilty half-smile playing around on his lips.

“What are you talking about?”  He asked.

“When you were looking for places to put people preserving the power grid must have been a big part of that.  I’m seeing a big lake that I’m thinking is man-made.  It’d make sense from a power supply and water supply point of view.  A big concrete building would also be a great place to stay relatively safe from the crawlerz.”  LeBron said watching Jeff’s face to see if he was hitting the mark.

“You should never play poker.”  Yue commented watching Jeff give everything away with his facial expressions.

“You’re too smart for your own good.  Fontana dam.  We should be there in a couple of hours.  Assuming the roads are all still in one piece.  It’ll be interesting to see if they let us drive up or if they start shooting at us when we get close.”  Jeff answered.  He didn’t seem overly concerned one way or the other.  There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it until he got the chance to talk to them.

Chapter 4:  ‘Dammed’ if You Don’t

The dam was in the middle of a massive forest.  They drove down narrow tree lined roads for what felt like forever.  The trees slowly closing in on them the closer they got to their destination.  It was a sunny, cold day in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  Any other time they’d have found the scenery beautiful.  The problem was Jeff freaking them all out by staring out the windshield waiting for them to be ambushed.  He took every opportunity to remind them that they could be attacked at any time.  There was a tiny bit of desperation evident in his voice as he repeatedly used the radio to try and raise the commander of the base.

When they finally got a response to Jeff’s repeated transmissions it wasn’t the heartfelt welcome they’d been hoping for.  The radio crackled to life and a man’s voice informed them that they were approaching a military installation in an unauthorized manner. They were ordered to turn around and go back the way they had come.  Jeff responded by telling them who he was and the purpose of them approaching the dam.  The man on the radio came back and told him they had no space or supplies for refugees.

“Fontana actual this is convoy actual we are transporting needed supplies and resources to the dam.  Resources include engineering resources to ensure the dam remains in good working order as well as engineers to assist in power redistribution efforts.  Resources being transported with their families.”  Jeff transmitted.

Yue liked the way Jeff was spinning it like he was doing the men at the dam a favor.  It was a last-ditch effort since they’d already said they wouldn’t take any refugees from a humanitarian standpoint. They’d also danced around accepting that Jeff had the authority he said he had.  It hadn’t helped when Jeff couldn’t remember the name of the commander he’d appointed for the base.  You lost your credibility when you said you’d been intimately involved in setting up the base but couldn’t remember anyone’s name who’d been stationed there.

“Do you think that’ll work?  Between Amita and Carl I bet they can pull off doing the engineering stuff.  We just need to let them know they’re supposed to be able to do it.”  Yue said.

“Convoy actual this is Fontana actual proceed to the gate and put your vehicles in park.  We’ll come out to meet and discuss.  Any aggressive action from you will be met with overwhelming firepower from us.”  That response from the commander of the men responsible for the dam was slightly less discouraging than the previous responses had been.

“He’s having us stop at a certain point on the road and park there. That’s pretty much him telling us where to go for the ambush.  All they’d need to do is deploy some claymores and we’re toast.”  Gus commented. That made sense to everyone seated up in the cab.  Especially after the pessimistic doom and gloom Jeff had been marinating them in all morning.

“That’d be too loud.  They’re bound to be trying pretty hard to keep the crawlerz from showing up.  They’re not going to set off explosives that close to their base.”  LeBron said into the silence.  They’d find out soon enough which of them was right.  Turning a corner, they came to a standard metal gate with a rusty chain and padlock holding it closed.  It had an orange sign hanging off it saying the area was off limits to visitors by order of the national park service.  Trespassers would either be shot or prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  LeBron wondered if they got to choose the option they preferred.  He was cool with being prosecuted.

Nowhere on the sign did it mention having your body ripped apart by hundreds of C4 propelled steel balls.  Yue and LeBron both thought it was unlikely that they were being lured into an explosive ambush, but the heightened stress was still palpable.  In the front of the cab Jeff and Gus were in full on pucker mode.  Jeff was trying to keep his cool.  Gus was moving his lips in silent prayer and slouching down as low as he could get in his seat.  When the fully armed Marine in the front seat is making deals with god that’s a good time to turn the safeties off.

A couple of fit looking men showed up at the gate on mountain bikes.  Despite the chill  in the air both men were dressed casually in shorts and hoodies.  Rifles hung loosely from straps across their backs.  Other weapons were more than likely concealed under the thick hoodies.  The men leaned their expensive looking mountain bikes against the gate and nonchalantly walked over to the truck.  Gus and Jeff rolled down the two front windows as the men approached.

“What’s up with all this crap you’ve got welded onto the front of your rig?”  One of the men asked by way of saying hello.  The man was staring at the cage of metal rods that was bolted and welded onto the front of the truck.

“You guys not have cable up here?  World’s been overrun by infected killing machines that like jumping through windshields.  Not as big a deal back when insurance covered windshield replacements.  As a bonus if the crazy people who jump through the window survive, they try to eat you.”  Gus answered.

“This cage actually keeps those things off you?  That’s pretty slick.”  The other man said.  Jeff didn’t bother correcting him.  No way in hell would he let himself get caught sitting in in the cage at night.  He had zero confidence it would hold if a dozen determined crawlerz sensed an uninfected human hiding out in the cab.  It worked great during the day against the occasional group of surgers though.

“You guys here to open the gate?”  Jeff asked after the silence had stretched out an uncomfortably long period of time.

“Maybe.  Which one of you is Jeff?”  Jeff slowly raised his hand and the man continued speaking.  “We’re here to make sure you stay on this side of the gate until we verify you are who you say you are.  If you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the vehicle, we need to measure your height.  We also need your social.  The rest of you can stay where you are.  Try not to make any sudden moves or anything.  We’ve got guys in the woods watching.”

Despite his pessimism about the reception that they were going to receive Jeff didn’t hesitate to climb down out of the truck. One of the men used a tape measure to check his height.  He rattled off his social and waited patiently while they transmitted his measurements and social back to the base.  It wasn’t exactly biometrically scanning his retina to identify him, but it passed for fairly high tech in this new normal.  They waited a few minutes before the radio came back to life confirming he was who he said he was.

“Congratulations.  Turns out you’re you after all.”  One of their greeters joked.

“Nope.  Yue is up in the cab.”  Jeff tried to joke back.  A joke that was completely lost on the two men in shorts.  Up in the cab Yue was unsuccessfully trying to get her eye rolling habit under control while Gus and LeBron dutifully snickered at the lame joke.  They were told to drive through the gate and park in the lot beside the dam.  Jeff nodded and climbed back in.

Following the directions that they’d been given Gus drove them up the narrow road to where it widened out into a large parking lot overlooking a massive lake.  They’d caught glimpses of the lake through the woods as they drove.  They’d gotten to check it out from the bridges they’d gone over as well.  It was much more enjoyable taking in the view when you weren’t expecting to die at any second.  From their vantage point in the truck, they could just make out where the dam began.  There was a stack of shipping containers on the other side of the parking lot blocking the view of the dam itself.

“Full of MRES, tools, weapons and other supplies.  I was thinking they’d bring their families here to live with them.  My goal was to have enough stored here to use it as a smaller distribution depot.  We tried to build in redundancy after redundancy.  One of my men was a huge NASA nerd. He liked to talk about the safeguards NASA uses where every system has to be redundant.  It makes sense when you’re planning for what may be the end of the world.  We didn’t know what shape that may end up taking but assumed it was going to be violent and messy.  I don’t think any of us really thought it was going to end up like this though.”  Jeff said reflectively.  LeBron was listening with interest.  It was the most he’d really heard Jeff talk about his job from before everything went down.

“What were the more likely scenarios?”  LeBron asked with interest.  He was keeping it light. He hoped if he kept Jeff talking, he’d pick up on some more knowledge nuggets that could help them in the future.

“Sun flares were a common concern.  Asteroids, some sort of pandemic but nothing like this.  Maybe something more like Captain Trips from that Stephen King book.”  Jeff was snapping his fingers as he tried to come up with the name of the book that was on the tip of his tongue.

“Is it the one with the clown?”  Yue asked laughingly. She wasn’t a big reader, but she enjoyed going to the movies.

“The Stand, right?”  LeBron supplied the name of the book.  Jeff pointed at LeBron and smiled as the crinkles fell away from his forehead.

“That’s it!  Anyway, something like that.  We’re riding around on a big blob of dirt spinning through space at a zillion miles per hour.  It’s really pretty weird that we’ve survived this long when you think about it.  Our job was to spend every day thinking about ways we could all die and then coming up with ways to survive those eventualities if they occurred.  We created all kinds of plans that went straight into the politicians recycling bins.  Some of our stuff was used though.  Agencies like FEMA spent millions on our staging plans to have supplies staged near major population centers in the event of super storms or tsunamis.  We did all that work, but we never really thought anything like this would happen.”  Jeff stopped talking when he noticed the park service ruggedized electric golf cart zipping their way.

A man with short dark hair and a thick mustache was driving the cart.  If he switched out his khaki uniform for a Hawaiian shirt, he’d easily pass for Magnum PI.  He resonated that loose seventies vibe.  As he got closer, they could see the Magnum PI persona was built on top of a lot of muscle.

“There must be a ton of fish in those crates to feed all of the SEALs up here.”  Gus said.  Between the guys with the shorts and the roided up mustache walking over to greet them it hadn’t taken much to guess they were SEALs.  Those guys lived to work out.  They’d spend the morning exercising as a team then then hit the gym on their lunch break.

“You men can shut off the trucks and come on down now.  I’m Captain Sheridan of the United States Navy.  I’m the commanding officer for this installation.  I understand you’re in charge of this convoy?”  The captain walked over to talk to Jeff.

“That’s correct.  I’m the Secretary of the Department for the continuation of the United States government.  You can call me Jeff.”

“Well.  I just spoke with one of the assistants to the President. He told me you’ve been relieved of your authority.  I’m supposed to detain you until he has the opportunity to question you.  It sounds like you may have access to information that he needs.”  Captain Sheridan said.

“The President’s alive?  We’re talking about the former VP, right?”  Jeff asked.  He’d been caught completely flat footed by the news.  He hadn’t quite processed yet that the captain was going to be taking him into custody.

Everyone else in the small group had caught the incarceration comment.  They were all busily processing the President being alive as well.

“This is the same VP who flew off the Ford and left the whole crew to die?  He left us without even trying to send back the helicopter to help us get off?  That’s the dirtbag you’re taking orders from?  The guy who ordered Marines to risk their lives to drag his dead wife out of the ship?”  Yue asked angrily.  Sheridan dismissed Yue’s comments with a shrug.

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.  I thought the Ford and the other carriers had probably been pressed into service to help with all of this.  Makes sense.  I don’t know any of you though.  I do know my commander in chief has ordered me to place Jeff here under arrest.  That’s going to happen now.  My men will show the rest of you down to the powerhouse and get you squared away down there.  You’re all our guests until we figure out what to do with you.”  Sheridan said.  He didn’t look thrilled at the prospect of having to deal with them.

Sheridan was even less excited when he saw the number of kids sitting in the back of the trucks.  A few of the Marine officers tried to get preferential treatment or at least get their ranks acknowledged.  They were told that they were also just going to be guests for now.  The parking lot had rapidly filled up with men from the base with guns who were trying to boss around the men from the trucks who also had guns.

“This isn’t going to end well.”  Drew said as he casually disengaged the safety on his rifle.

Yue turned to see Harley, Mikey and Drew had all walked up to see what was going on.  A few of the SEALS from the dam were forming a loose circle around them.  These weren’t the pleasant short shorts wearing men from the gate.  These were hard faced killers wearing full on battle rattle.

“They want to arrest Jeff.”  Yue hissed.

“Who wants to arrest Jeff?  Why?”  Drew was confused.  Confusion made him tighten his grip on his rifle.

“The President ordered him to be arrested.”  Yue said.

“He’s alive?”  Harley asked.  Drew had told him the President had died back at the warehouse.

“We thought he was dead.  His helicopter was sitting outside the warehouse with nobody in it.”  Yue answered.  Drew looked like a monkey with a hammer trying to figure out a calculus problem.

“He must’ve flown to the base then had them rollout a plane to take him somewhere else.  The base could’ve fallen after he left.”  LeBron had been chewing on the question of how the President could still be alive since Sheridan had mentioned it.  It made perfect sense that the warehouse wasn’t the President’s final destination.  They were finding out slowly but surely that there were a lot of these little secret spots sprinkled around the country courtesy of taxpayer money and Jeff’s foresight.

Yue gasped and rushed towards Jeff.  No one had noticed that he’d been ushered to the side.  He’d been in a conversation with Sheridan and now a SEAL was putting zip ties around his wrists.  That may have been forgivable but one of the other SEALs moved aggressively to confront Yue before she could reach Jeff.  Captain Sheridan didn’t seem concerned by Yue approaching him at all.  He did appear concerned a second later when multiple weapons were drawn and pointed in his direction.  The SEALs belatedly pulled their own weapons and aimed them back at the newcomers.  Yue stopped in her tracks staring over at a restrained Jeff.

“I told you this wasn’t going to end well.”  Drew said with his rifle up and ready.

Chapter 5:  Fontana Standoff

“I need you all to lower your weapons immediately!”  Captain Sheridan barked out the command with his pistol aimed somewhere between Yue and LeBron.

“How about you lower yours first captain?”  Mikey piped up.  He had his AR-15 heavy barreled rifle aimed right at the captain’s face.

LeBron was shaking like a leaf.  Fighting the crawlerz was one thing but this was ridiculous.  Every man here was a hugely valuable resource in rebuilding civilization.  Killing each other was a huge waste.  He couldn’t stop staring at the barrels of the men facing them.  His heart was racing at the thought of the bullets that might start ripping through him at any second.  His shaking body made his rifle sway a little side to side, but it stayed up and aimed.  He may be scared out of his mind, but these scumbags had threatened his sister.  He tried to think of some way out of this situation, but the analytical part of his mind didn’t want to kick in.

“There’s little kids here you freakin morons!”  A red-faced Carl had popped out of nowhere to let them all have it.

“They started it.”  Drew deadpanned.

“All of you idiots put your damned guns down right now!”  Carl huffed standing between the two groups with his arms crossed and shooting Drew a dirty look.  The old man standing there like that could’ve ended in bullets and blood.  Instead, it did what Carl had wanted it to do.  The situation rapidly deescalated.  Captain Sheridan lowered his weapon and the rest of his men followed suit.  As soon as those weapons went down the other side dropped theirs as well.  Trying to control his harsh breathing LeBron lowered his own weapon. He allowed himself to be cautiously optimistic he might survive the next few minutes.

“Alright let’s start over.  I’m the commanding officer for this outpost.  I’ve been charged with maintaining and protecting this facility until such time as relieved of that duty.  You’re a bunch of refugees following a man the President of the United States just ordered me to lock up.  Your turn.”  Sheridan stood his ground calmly waiting for one of them to speak up.  You’d never know by looking at him that he’d just narrowly avoided eating a whole lot of lead.

Yue was still standing a little in front of everyone from where she’d started to approach Jeff to defend him.  That’s why it took her a moment to realize everyone was waiting for her to respond.  Everyone except Mikey and LeBron.  They were alternately looking at Yue to respond then shifting their attention back to Drew to signal him to keep his mouth shut.  So far, he was doing a good job of not saying anything, but Yue really needed to start talking soon.  She finally felt all the eyes boring into her back and realized no one else was going to say anything.

“Thank you, captain.  We appreciate your willingness to talk.  Jeff’s the man who architected the plan you’re following right now to guard this dam.  He coordinated which outposts were supplied and set up as depots or whatever.  We were all on board the Ford when the infection got loose there.  The President was turned, and the Vice President became the President.  The Ford ran aground and long story short we’ve been collecting refugees and trying to get them where they’ll be safe.  Jeff’s focused on trying to save what’s left of the country while the new President is focused on consolidating his power.”  Yue tried to phrase everything in a way that wouldn’t offend the group of overly armed killers facing them.

“You understand we have to take him into custody, right?  We’ll all go down to the powerhouse and get situated then figure out what comes next.  We’re going to keep Jeff here restrained like we’ve been ordered to do.  You have my word that nothing will happen to him until we have this all figured out.  Is that acceptable?”  The captain asked.  He was speaking in a firm yet understanding tone.  Yue pictured the smug pretty boy reading the instructions for dealing with armed refugees out of the SEAL handbook in between doing one armed pushups.

“That works for me.  Let’s get inside before the crawlerz show up.  I’m looking forward to chatting with the President.  Would love to hear why he left us and all those sailors and Marines to die after we rescued him.”  Jeff said.  He could see that Yue was having a hard time agreeing to any deal that left him with his hands tied behind his back.

“No hurry.  We actually haven’t seen any of the infected out here yet.  We were deployed here before the infection made it out of Texas.  Hopefully they didn’t follow you guys in.  That’s one of the key reasons no one was supposed to know we were out here.”  Sheridan said shooting Jeff a pissed off look.

The next thirty minutes were spent moving children down paths that were intended more for mountain goats than rambunctious tweens.  Most of the kids ended up getting carried because no one could stomach watching them walk so close to the sheer drops down to the river far below.  The powerhouse was located near the bottom of the dam. It was well lit via thick dirty glass inset between massive steel and concrete beams.  This was the building where the generators were housed to harness the power of the water flowing through the dam.  Massive power lines ran from the dam out to substations where the power was then distributed on the grid.

The building had been retrofitted to support the SEALs and the technicians responsible for keeping the dam in working order along with their immediate family.  Oversized bunk beds had been built along the sides of the powerhouse.  In places they ran all the way to the ceiling of the cavernous room.  Massive ladders in between each section were the primary means of access.  It must suck having to get a kid up and down if you got stuck in one of the top bunks.  LeBron supposed the millions of families that’d been infected or devoured by the crawlerz would’ve been happy to only have to worry about falling off high bunks.  They wouldn’t have minded having to climb a ladder to get there.

“How come there are so many extra beds?”  Drew asked Mikey as they were being shown around the massive space.  One of the SEALs that’d guided them down to the trailer overheard the question and filled them in.

“Some of the people who were ordered to come never showed up.  We were only allowed immediate family like spouses and kids.  In some cases, maybe the wives refused to leave their moms, so those people never showed up.  Mostly stuff like that mixed in with how they seriously overdid the construction of beds in here.  Another bucket of money for some senator’s cousin.”  The SEAL answered.  He was one of the guys wearing shorts despite the chill in the air.

They were all assigned bunks.  The ‘beds’ were each about a hundred square feet of living space where families could store their gear and have a little room to move around.  Many of the bunks even had privacy screens with a door and everything.  Others had rigged up sheets to provide them with some limited privacy.  This meant that the newcomers were getting the bunks that required the longest climbs and had the least amount of privacy.

It was a safe warm place for the refugees from Charleston to start over.  They’d be guarded around the clock by a team of highly motivated SEALs.  After all the SEALs families were living in the same compound.  There was an infinite supply of fresh drinking water.  The lake was overflowing with fish and the woods were teeming with deer and wild turkeys.  They had virtually unlimited electricity to do with as they wished.  Of course, they couldn’t stop complaining about the living conditions.

Not all of them were complaining.  Amita and Carl were both appreciative.  Carl especially as his granddaughter scurried up and down the ladder to their designated bunk about ten times per minute.  He couldn’t stop smiling.  Amita was loving the concept of living inside a clean energy producing structure.  She was already huddled in the corner with the chief engineer extracting every bit of knowledge the poor man had about how the dam worked.  Other families were similarly content to explore the space and arrange their meager possessions in their assigned bunks

A very vocal minority was loudly proclaiming the conditions were intolerable, and they didn’t expect to be made to stay.  These were the scions of wealth and privilege.  Old money that could trace their roots back to storied families in the old country.  They’d been able to adjust to living in their large estates in Charleston.  Even as the ‘help’ left them to rejoin their families.  They’d each had stock rooms full of provisions to last them at least the next six months.  Many of them also had at least partial electricity provided by the solar panels on their roofs.  The builder had made experimental solar roofing an option and many of them had taken advantage of it.  A tax credit that lowered your electricity bill and let you act like you were ‘woke’ at cocktail parties.  Why wouldn’t you check that box?

“Somebody needs to smack them around some.”  Drew said indicating the shrill voice of the lady currently asking the SEAL at the foot of their ladder why she had to share a bunk with her children. Drew was sitting on the side of their assigned bunk with his legs dangling out over thirty feet of nothing.  They’d managed to win the prize for being handed the highest possible bunk in the place.  Yue was still annoyed she was being made to sleep with her brothers.  There were completely empty bunks scattered all around them.  She was happy she’d kept her mouth shut now as she witnessed how unappreciative the lady below looked.

“You notice her husband isn’t in his face.  That SEAL would mop the floor with him.”  LeBron said scooting over to look down over the edge.

“Pretty manly to be letting his wife go down there and do all the yelling.”  Yue commented.

“We’ve got a group of rich people from an isolated island.  We’ve got a base run by a bunch of muscle heads who haven’t had the pleasure of fighting the crawlerz yet.  We’re combining them all in a musty smelling room with bunk beds out of a Harry Potter movie.”  LeBron responded to her.

“What’s your point dude?”  Drew asked.

“I really don’t know.  Just how messed up this whole situation is, I guess.  That woman’s being an idiot but at least she’s being allowed to be an idiot.  I’d hate this whole mess a lot more if that guy just reached out and threw her on the ground or something.  I love that there’s at least a semblance of civilization here.”  LeBron said.  They watched as the woman continued to complain about everything possible.  The SEAL remained unflappable while she asked him loudly how he liked living in a building that smelled like a giant used urinal cake.

“That’s actually pretty dead on as far as how this place smells.”  Drew noted.  Neither Yue nor LeBron could disagree with him on that point.  No matter how good the filtration system was in here it was still humid as hell.

“Why does Jeff get his own bunk?  I guess I should’ve pissed off the President.  Could’ve gotten some space to spread out at least.”  LeBron said looking across the room to a bottom bunk near the door.  It was one of the enclosed bunks. The SEALs had decided it could be used as a temporary holding cell since there was only one way in or out of it.

“It’s got to suck trying to sleep while you’re tie wrapped to a post or whatever though.”  Drew said.

“At least he doesn’t have to worry about waking up spooning his sister.”  LeBron joked.

“He totally wishes he could wake up spooning her!”  Drew barked out laughing.  Yue considered kicking him off the bunk but wasn’t sure he’d survive the thirty-foot fall.  If they’d been like two bunks further down the stack, she totally would’ve done it.

“You’re both idiots.”  Yue said putting her head back on the thin military issue pillow she’d dragged up the thirty feet of ladder to their bunk.

“Well, what do we do now?”  LeBron asked.

“We sit up here and relax.  Maybe find out if they have some PlayStations or something.  Take advantage of being surrounded by a gigantic dam guarded by trained men with automatic weapons.  See if we can’t find some single females with a different last name than ours.  That’d make this place pretty much perfect.  I love the fact that these guys haven’t even seen any crawlerz yet.”  Drew answered.

“What about Jeff?”  Yue asked.  She tried to ask it casually to dodge any additional teasing.  The teasing ended up being avoided more by the way the words caught in her throat.  Both of her brothers knew she was worried about her boyfriend.  Drew liked Jeff as well and LeBron was willing to trust their opinion.  He hadn’t known Jeff as long but from what he’d seen of him he was a stand-up guy.  You just couldn’t trust him to drive a boat.

“We’re not going to let anything happen to him.  These SEALs seem like pretty solid dudes too.  I don’t see them doing anything too stupid just because some politician orders them too.”  Drew said attempting to make Yue feel better.

“Except when the President ordered them to let like thirty-armed people on their base who might be leading the infected right to them.  They let us pull on in and deposit a bunch of unappreciative mouths to feed.  If that wasn’t stupid enough, then they immediately arrest Jeff right in front of us.  Seems like these guys love following orders regardless of the consequences.”  LeBron said.  His analytical mind finally caught up a few seconds of awkward silence later with the possibility that Drew had just been blowing smoke to try and make Yue feel better.

“Nice going man.  You get first watch.  Let us know if Jeff gets moved out of his private suite.”  Drew said over his shoulder while trying to figure out what he could say to make Yue feel better.  He found himself once again in a position where someone needed him, and he had absolutely no idea what to say.  He refused to just start trying to talk to her.  He knew something asinine would fly right out of his mouth and boomerang around to smack him in the face.  If he opened his mouth his lungs would expel air which would cause words to ooze out without any intervention from his brain whatsoever.  That was what he was trying to avoid when LeBron poked him in the shoulder.  Annoyed he turned around to see what he wanted.

“They’re taking him somewhere.”  LeBron said pointing down to where Jeff was being perp walked out of his enclosed bunk towards a door on the far end of the powerhouse.

Chapter 6:  Happy Trails

Yue checked to make sure her weapons were strapped on and rolled over to the top of the ladder.  Both her brothers scurried after her.  The three of them walked through the crowded floor space towards the door that Jeff had been marched out of.  Along the way they collected Mikey and a couple of the other Marines.  Yue threw the door open leading outside.  The heavily armed group walked out into the concrete garden separating the powerhouse from the maintenance tunnels fully intent on causing some havoc.

Jeff was being taken to the side where a trail wound up towards the top of the dam.  He didn’t appear to be in any particular distress.  He might have just been taking a stroll with the camouflage covered goons if it weren’t for having his hands secured behind him.

“Hey dirtbags!  Stop right there!”  Yue yelled loudly.  She hated yelling outside, but it was necessary to be heard over the noise generated by the dam.  The two men escorting Jeff turned around to see what she wanted.  Yue and the rest of them quickly caught up to Jeff and his escort.

“We’re just taking him up to the communications building.  They’re setting up his call with the President.  We actually need to hurry.”  One of the men said.  He didn’t seem stressed by the armed band of misfits staring him down.  He did seem like he was worried about being on time for the call.  Once again Yue marveled at how fixated the military was on timeliness.  Jeff smiled at her.

“It’s ok.  They’re just taking me up to talk.  You guys can head back into the powerhouse if you want.  I should’ve had them tell you where they were taking me.  Didn’t mean to freak you out.”  Jeff said.  Yue stared at him to see if he really meant it or not.  Jeff was possibly the world’s worst poker player.  Yue read his face and forced herself not to start shooting right then and there.  By the look in his eyes Jeff thought there was a good chance he was being taken into the woods to be executed.  It made more sense than them taking him up to some secret bat cave to talk to the man who’d left them all to die back on the carrier.

“Yeah, so we’re going to come with you.”  Yue said.  She glared at one of the guards who didn’t seem to care one way or the other.  He just wanted to drag this tall goofy looking dude up the damned trail and be done with it.

“Cool but you may have to wait outside the door.  I don’t know if the captain’s going to want everybody hanging out in the room for the call.”  The guard responded.  He turned around and started hiking back up the trail without waiting to see if they followed or not.

“Do these guys even know how dangerous this is?  They’re basically doing everything wrong.  Why are we walking around outside talking like it’s no big deal?  Why don’t they have guards on the doors to keep them from being opened for no real reason?”  LeBron asked.  He said it loud enough so their escort could easily hear.

“They haven’t had to deal with the crawlerz yet.  Once those things show up this place will adapt or die.”  Drew answered.

“That sucks.  They’re lucky we showed up.  We’ll get them squared away.  I have no desire to wake up in my stupid tall deer stand bed and see everybody below me getting eaten alive.”  Mikey said.

Everyone was speaking loudly enough that the guards could catch what they were saying.  Another extremely bad habit to get into in today’s world.  The complete disregard for the things that could keep you alive in this new normal were eating at all of them.  Although it was less obvious to those who’d come from the ship. They hadn’t been exposed to living around the crawlerz much either.

At the top of the trail was a small clearing with a ranger station.  It was next to one of the towers with the massive cables on them used to distribute the power created by the dam.  The small concrete block building had been outfitted to serve as a communications hub by the SEAL team stationed here.  They came to a halt outside the door while the SEALs did their secret knock.  A brief conversation later they were joined by a couple of the SEALs who’d been inside the shack.  Captain Sheridan was left inside to get the President on the line with Jeff.  No one else was allowed inside.

“Do you think it’s the electricity or the water?”  LeBron asked Drew.  As cryptic as the question was it didn’t take long for Drew to figure out what his little brother was talking about.

“I guess it depends if you think that they track us by sound or if you think they depend more on their psychic powers.”  Drew answered thoughtfully.  They both stared back down the trail towards the dam.  They could just make it out through the densely packed trees separating them from the valley the massive dam was in.

Drew’s answer made a lot of sense.  It was something they’d constantly discussed since the early days of the infection.  If they could get a solid handle on how the crawlerz found their victims that’d tell them what not to do.  The idea that the massive electrical fields generated all around this place could be blocking the crawlerz from ‘observing’ them psychically was fueling all kinds of speculation.  Of course, the explanation for why the crawlerz hadn’t showed up could be much simpler than that.  They were in the middle of nowhere and the sound of the rushing water covered up most of the noise they were making.

Whether it was the background noise of the water or some sort of psychic power line induced force field this place seemed like it was safe for the moment.  Not that any of them would purposefully let their guard down.  Not when they’d seen a fully crewed aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean get taken down by the infection.  If it could happen there, then a dam in the middle of the woods wasn’t anywhere close to safe. The most logical reason for the garrison here to still be standing despite their lax attitude towards keeping quiet was the remote location.

The crawlerz wouldn’t come across the water.  They might not sense the men there psychically with all the other energies radiated into the air.  They might not even be able to hear them over the background noise.  Regardless of that, no one in the tight little group doubted that the dam would eventually be overrun.  If they ended up staying here, then they’d be campaigning for some major changes to the way operations were being conducted.

Jeff was in the room for forever.  Captain Sheridan eventually walked outside.   The captain shut the door behind him so that Jeff could have a private conversation with the President.  LeBron tried to have a quick sidebar with Sheridan about the state of the bases defenses but was quickly shut down.  The captain was obviously irritated about being kicked out of his own communications room.  Doubly so since the President had asked him to leave so he could discuss strategy with the man he’d ordered Sheridan to take into custody.

After what seemed like forever the door opened.  Jeff leaned out to invite Sheridan back in.  He shot Yue a wink before disappearing back inside with the captain.

“That seems promising.”  LeBron said.  Yue didn’t bother responding.  She often wondered how others missed the tell-tale signs in people’s faces.  Maybe it wasn’t that people like Jeff shouldn’t play poker.  Maybe it was more like Yue should absolutely be ponying up for the World Series of Poker.  If this Armageddon thing all turned out to be a long nightmare, she decided she’d turn in her apron at IHOP and invest in some of those cool glasses you need to play poker in the big leagues.

She wasn’t sure what she’d seen in her brief glimpse of Jeff, but he definitely wasn’t ok.  He’d heard something in that room that upset him.  He wasn’t going to mention it when he came out since it was classified intel, but she’d make sure to get it out of him at the earliest possible opportunity.  Not too much later they were all walking back down the trail towards the powerhouse.  One man had been left behind to stand watch in the communication’s shack.  Jeff was able to walk much more easily down the rough trailhead now that he had his hands freed.

“You a free man again?”  Drew asked Jeff as they trudged single file back down the path.  The sun was getting lower in the sky, but their guards didn’t seem concerned.  Everyone who’d just arrived at the dam was getting skittish though.  Being caught outside once the sun went down was normally a death sentence.  At some point the denizens of the dam were going to be in for a very rude awakening.

“As free as any of us are, I guess.  The President has temporarily reinstated me so at least now I can boss the captain around.  I plan on using my new power to make sure I get the nicest bunk box in the building.  Maybe one near a window I can open to get rid of the pee smell.”  Jeff replied without turning his head to look back at Drew.

“You get used to that.”  One of the SEALs chimed in.

“How are you securing the doors at night?”  Yue asked ignoring the renewed conversation around the pervasive urine odor.

“Shut and lock them.  Same as they’ve been secured since this place was built.  They’re vandal proof and built sturdy.  Should be able to keep out those crawlerz if they ever show up here.”  Sheridan answered quickly.

“Do we have time to go over to the other side of the dam and check out the trucks?”  Yue asked.

“How come?”  Sheridan was confused by the sudden turn in the conversation.  Why would they want to go look at the trucks?  Jeff however immediately got where Yue was going with that idea.

“Do you have a cart up by the communication shack we could take across the dam to the other side?”  Jeff asked.  When the captain nodded in the affirmative Jeff had the rest of the group keep going down the trail to the powerhouse.  Yue, Jeff, Sheridan and one of the other SEALs hiked back up the trail towards the communication shack.

Once they’d made it back up the trail to the shack Sheridan let the SEAL on watch know they were taking one of the carts for a joyride.  The bored looking SEAL tossed him the key and they were on their way.  They drove the cart out past a plaque that told the world the top of the Fontana Dam was also a section of the Appalachian Trail.

They drove across the top of the dam with Yue flashing back to time spent on the Appalachian Trail with her family growing up.  Her parents had loved being in the outdoors.  Her mom leaned more towards a cabin or tent camping right next to their parked car while their dad had loved to really get out to the middle of nowhere.  Normally their mom won out on what they’d be doing but every once in a while, they’d gone off on a ‘dadventure’.

The cart slid to a stop in the parking lot on the other side of the massive concrete dam.  A bemused Captain Sheridan got out and waited for Yue or Jeff to tell him what he was supposed to be looking at.  Ever the politician Yue kept her mouth shut and let Jeff take the lead.

“You see anything odd about the trucks?”  Jeff asked the two SEALs.  Both of them looked over at the parked trucks.

“You mean besides the big metal cages attached to the fronts of them?”  Captain Sheridan replied.

“Look closer.”  Jeff said.  The two muscular SEALs walked over to the trucks and stared at the cab of the first one.  They stood for a second before starting to walk beside the trailer to check out the next one.

“What the hell happened to these trailers anyway?”  the captain finally asked.  He was running his hand along the massive dents in the side of the first trailer.  Pulling his fingers back he cussed and threw a wad of something on the ground with a look of disgust on his face.

“Hair or blood?”  Yue asked walking over to where the two SEALs were closely examining the grime covered beat to hell side of the trailer.

“You’re saying crawlerz did this?”  Sheridan asked in awe.

“They can throw stuff now?”  The other SEAL asked confused.  He listened disbelievingly as Yue and Jeff described what it was like sleeping in one of these trailers out on the road.  It was hard to digest those massive divots were caused by humans hurling themselves at the walls.  Jeff even opened the back of the trailer so he could show Sheridan the extra sheet metal bolted to the frame on the inside.  He showed them all the places that sheet metal was bowed and bent and had been reinforced with more wood or by sliding heavy objects against it.

“Ok.  I get it.  These things will try and beat their way in if they find us.  We have windows all over the place.  That’s going to make life difficult. We have doors that don’t seem half as strong as I thought they were now that I’m seeing this.  Thank you.  This was a good wake up call.”  The captain said.

“We stopped about three hours from here at a gas station to spend the night.  Those things were rocking and rolling on the trailers the whole night.  They may not have made it here yet, but they’re getting pretty close.  You’ve got to be ready or this whole place will get wiped out.”  Yue reiterated what Jeff had already subtly emphasized.  She was determined to get the point to sink in with the captain.  There were lots of little kids in the powerhouse.  They’d be ripped apart in seconds if the crawlerz showed up.

“We brought an architect named Carl along with us.  He’s the brains behind having saved most of the community living on an island over by Charleston.  Let’s enlist him to get the powerhouse up to crawler code.”  Jeff said.

“Maybe we can have it done before you get back.  Or if he says we need supplies you could grab them or arrange for someone else to do it?”  Sheridan asked.  Yue did a mental doubletake.  What was the guy talking about with the returning from somewhere?  Judging by the crestfallen look on Jeff’s face he hadn’t wanted for the captain to bring that up either.  The oblivious captain stood by waiting for an answer.

“We need to get these trucks unloaded tomorrow.  It’s already too late tonight.  We’ll leave you any supplies we have.  I don’t think we’ll be coming back anytime soon.  No reason to drag the infected here if we don’t need to.  Hopefully you’ll put a lot of work into building out defenses that you never need.”  Jeff said.

They talked briefly about a few more things before hopping back into the cart and taking it back across the dam.  From there they raced down the trail to get back to the dam in the quickly receding daylight.  Yue nodded at the sentry standing watch in the  shack as they passed it.  Another building that needed to be shored up in a hurry.

Once back in the powerhouse Yue wasted no time in cornering Jeff to find out what the hell was going on.  A bit of hushed conversation in between the generators was enough to make her wish she‘d just gone to sleep and waited to talk to Jeff in the morning.  Instead of returning to her bunk with her brothers she slid into the bunk Jeff had claimed as his own to spend the night there.  Perched way up in their bunk on the wall Drew and LeBron watched Yue disappear into Jeff’s bunk.

“Oh Yue. What would mom think.”  LeBron said shaking his head.

“I guess now the worst thing that could happen is I wake up spooning you.”  Drew joked.  LeBron smiled and got comfortable.  He had a bad feeling about all of this.  If the biggest thing they really had to fear was who spooned who he’d be a very happy person.

Chapter 7:  The Roach Motel

“I don’t care what anybody says I’m never going to get used to the pee smell.”  LeBron said sitting up.  He’d been paranoid the whole night that he’d accidentally roll out of the bed.  A thirty-foot drop to the cold concrete floor below would be a horrible way to wake up.

“What smell?”  Drew asked straight faced.  LeBron ignored him.  He was busy looking down at the floor to see what was going on below.  He almost fell off the bunk after all.  Mikey suddenly popped his head up over the side letting loose an overzealous announcement of good morning.  He was big time amused that he’d almost startled LeBron into plummeting to his death.

“Do you have a reason for being this annoying this early?”  LeBron asked.  He was trying to not let the fear of falling show on his face.  He didn’t want to give Mikey the satisfaction.

“Your beautiful sister and the nerdy Sasquatch she’s busy making mistakes with asked me to get you.  Sounds like we may be going on a trip.  Grab your crap unless you want to have to climb back up here and get it later.  You’ve got time.  Not like we’re rolling out right now.  Unless they want to roll out right now.  I don’t really freakin know.”  Mikey said as he disappeared from view back down the ladder.

“We just got here.”  Drew said sadly gathering his gear together on his side of the bed.  He grabbed his rucksack and started shoving everything into it.  Occasionally he’d smell test something and throw it to the side.  Most of his bag was filled with bullets, food and water anyway so it didn’t take him too long to pack.

He helped LeBron lever himself over the edge with his equally hefty pack then followed him down to the floor below.  It wasn’t a climb you wanted to make multiple times a day if you could avoid it.  Especially not if you were lugging all your gear around with you.  Looking around the crowded floor they spotted Yue talking to Harley over by the bunks on the other side of the room.  They headed that way.

“Good luck guys.”  Harley said with a wave as he walked quickly past them on his way to wherever he was going.

“What’s up with him?”  Drew asked Yue when he got close enough to talk using his inside voice.

“Why do we need luck?  I mean at least more than usual.”  LeBron asked.

“Why do you look so sleepy?”  Drew added the third question while waggling his eyebrows in a mildly obscene manner that he thought was hilarious.

“I was up all-night planning with Jeff.”  Yue answered with a yawn and an annoyed look at the eyebrow acrobatics.

“Is planning like a code word?  If you just want to talk to Drew about it, you could spell out what you were doing so us children wouldn’t know.”  LeBron said.

“Nope.  I got a beautiful young woman to climb into my private oasis and all we did was make plans until we both fell asleep.”  Jeff said from behind them.  LeBron and Drew both turned around guiltily wondering how long he’d been standing there.  Before Drew could make any smartass comments about Jeff’s manliness Yue started explaining what was going on.

“The President reinstated Jeff which I think you both already know.  What you didn’t know was he ordered him to put together a force to gather all the supplies in the various depots.  He’s supposed to load up the trucks and then bring everything to a centralized point for redistribution.”  Yue said.

“Why not just leave the stuff where it’s at and distribute it from there?  That’s why they put it in multiple places to begin with I thought.”  LeBron said.  He was busy trying to read between the lines.  If Yue and Jeff had really spent the whole night planning, there must be more to it than she was letting on.

“We can talk about the details later.  Right now, the important thing is to get out there and start gathering the supplies.”  Jeff said loudly.  He was talking way louder than needed to communicate with them.  LeBron and Drew both got the hint.  It wasn’t safe to talk until they got out of this place.

“Ok.  Who’s going with us?”  Drew asked.  He was looking all around to see who Jeff was trying to fool with the loud talking.  Yue stepped on his foot to get his attention.  Between Jeff yelling like an idiot and Drew craning his neck trying to search the room the subtle approach wasn’t working out great.  Although, it was actually working out a little bit better than she’d expected.  When it came to Drew and Jeff acting like nothing was going on, she had very low expectations for their abilities.  They were doing their best to meet those low expectations.

“Not Harley I’m guessing.”  LeBron said.  They’d noticed when they all went after Jeff outside the day before that Harley hadn’t joined them.  Drew started making whipping noises.

“Correct.  Harley’s staying behind.  He’s got a girl now.  She came with two kids that he’s taking care of.  We’re not taking any kids with us and we’re probably not coming back here.  That eliminates anyone with a family from coming. It’s basically going to be us plus the jarheads.  He came over to tell me he couldn’t go and remind me we need to pick up the people we left at that graveyard.”  Jeff answered.

“Why do we have to go?”  LeBron asked.

“Jeff’s going so I’m going.  If I’m going, I know both of you are going to want to go.  Besides I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving you guys here.  Between you, me and the pee smell I don’t give this place a very high rating on the long-term survivability scale.  They’ve gotten lucky so far.  I don’t want to be here when that luck runs out.”  Yue said.

“Then how do we leave all these kids here?”  Drew asked.  Nothing could ever be easy.  The leading cause of death in the apocalypse was empathy.  If you let yourself care too much for other people you were doomed.

“They’ve got as good a chance here as they do with us.  Better even.  Our first mission is to gather the gear out of the warehouse we just left.  The warehouse full of crawlerz.”  Jeff said.  LeBron nodded his head as understanding as it finally him.  They were being sent on a suicide mission.  Drew still didn’t get it.

“Plus, we showed Sheridan the trailers so he got to see how hard the crawlerz can hit.  We have Carl working on ways to strengthen the place up.  It’s actually already pretty secure.”  Yue said.

“Except for the windows everywhere and the way they don’t mind cracking the doors open to help air the place out.  I think we can all agree this place is a death trap.  The morons still have most of their supplies sitting up in the parking lot.”  Drew hissed.  He could care less about the grown men walking around in the stinky cavern.  Every time he heard the giggle of a little kid though he got more upset.

“Have you not met Harley?  He will get these people –“  Yue was cut off by the muffled sound of gunshots outside.  Weapons appeared as if by magic in each of their hands.  Doors were slammed shut and men started calling out what they could see happening outside.  Those men were being yelled at by the people actually experienced with dealing with the crawlerz.  They were being informed in no uncertain terms to shut their damned mouths.

The SEALs lined up on the door closest to where the shots were coming from.  Captain Sheridan was leading them.  Drew and LeBron jogged over to make sure they got the door shut and locked once the GI Joes ran out to get themselves killed.  Looking at the captain’s determined face Drew knew it was useless to try and stop him.  Maybe he wouldn’t get his whole team killed.  Maybe there was just a couple of surgers running around outside.  It’d be good for these guys to get some trigger time and see how fast the enemy really was.  The captain took his team out the door.  Drew made sure it was locked up tight after them.

A few more muffled shots then silence.  The people watching from their bunks out the grime covered windows could just make out the SEAL time fire squad disappearing up the trail to the guard shack.  Jeff decided this would be a good time for them to leave.  He quietly passed the order around for everyone to grab their gear and assemble by the other side of the powerhouse.  Before they could slip away the doors opened back up on the far side of the powerhouse to readmit the SEAL team.  Jeff ordered his team to stay where they were and went to talk to Sheridan.

Jeff and Sheridan came back over a few minutes later.  The captain walked around to shake each of their hands and wish them luck.  He let them know he appreciated their advice and was going to begin acting on it immediately.  To emphasize that he was serious about acting on it immediately he left to go meet up with Carl.

“Out the door and up the hill.  Do it by the numbers and stay silent.  Crawlerz turned the guard in the communication’s shack sometime last night.  His relief got turned this morning when he went up there to take over the watch.  He managed to shoot the original guy and then the rest of his team took him out.  Now they’ve got two dead men and no clue where the crawlerz are that turned them.”  Jeff filled in the team.

A wild-eyed Harley ran over to them as they were about to head out the door.  He pulled Jeff to the side and held a heated conversation.  Jeff was shaking his head and Harley was looking like he was about to lose it.  Their noses were about two inches apart.  The brunt of it was that Harley had changed his mind and wanted to leave the base with his girl and kids.  Jeff was telling him that wasn’t going to happen.  They weren’t going to bring kids with them on the mission they were on.  On top of that they couldn’t afford to let a group of refugees know about the dam.  The whole point of it being a secret was to keep it from being overrun.

Harley rammed Jeff into the wall and screamed that he was taking them.  Gus smashed the butt of his M-16 into the side of the big man’s head.  A dazed looking Harley turned to fight off the Marine.  Gus swung the butt of his rifle again and Harley fell to his knees.  Jeff brought his knee up hard into the center of Harley’s face.  Mikey helped by grabbing a shoulder and shoving Harley down to the ground.  The rest of them stood by helplessly while Harley was beat to the ground.  Breathing hard Gus kicked Harley hard in the stomach to make sure he stayed down.

A gun went off and Gus fell over backwards.  Drew pulled Yue to the ground and screamed for LeBron to get down.  Looking up from the floor he saw the woman Harley was with standing stock still with a stricken look on her face.  The pistol she’d shot Gus with was still held out in a two-handed grip in front of her.  Blood blossomed on the front of her thick white sweater as multiple Marines put rounds into her.  She dropped the pistol and fell to the floor.  Harley was on his hands and knees crawling over towards her.  This time it was Mikey who stepped forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of the man’s head.  Harley collapsed to the ground with sightless eyes staring off to the side.

Marines and SEALs moved in.  They quickly stripped Harley of the dozen blades and pistols he had hidden on his body.  Then they dragged him over to the jail bunk Jeff had recently vacated.  The blood soaked body of the woman on the ground had two sobbing children lying on top of her in a big heap.  Sheridan came forward with his mouth hanging open in shock.  He looked at Jeff to see if he had any ideas on dealing with all of this.  Jeff shook his head and ordered his team to get up and prepare to move out.

“What do I do about Harley?”  Sheridan asked.  It was a fair question since Jeff’s group had been the one to bring Harley along.  Now Jeff was walking out leaving the corpse of a young mother on the ground with her orphaned children crying on top of her.  A gigantic madman was tied up in a bunk not twenty feet away from them.

“When he wakes up and chills out let him bury their mom.  Then make sure he knows these two kids’ lives depend on him.  He’s a great asset to this place.  Utilize him.”  Jeff answered.

“Yeah.  A great asset alright.”  Sheridan said staring down at the grief-stricken kids covered in their dead mother’s blood.

Yue took in the image of the children trying to wake up their dead mom.  A couple of women had come forward to pry the children away.  The SEALs and other men were standing around uselessly.  The Marines who’d shot the woman were looking everywhere but at the corpse.  Gus was being helped to his feet.  His body armor had stopped the bullet from doing anything more than bruising him.  He’d gotten in a shot at his assailant after being hit.  These were the images that stuck in Yue’s head.  The ones she knew she’d see again in her dreams.

They made it up to the trucks without any other issues.  Sheridan had requested they leave one of the electric Harleys up in the lot.  Jeff helped roll out two of them.  He left the cords needed to charge them coiled up in the lot by the bikes.  At some point it started snowing.  Lightly at first then really coming down.

The convoy pulled out of the parking lot and headed back down the small road through the massive forest.  Each of the cabs was silent as the occupants watched the white flakes hit the windshield.  Most of them reliving the shooting of the mother back in the powerhouse.  They were Marines.  Training had taken over when the woman pulled a gun and shot at them.  Shame still blanketed them like the snow starting to cover the ground.  They drove on in silence.

Chapter 8:  Snow Blind

“We need to stop and put chains on the tires.”  Mikey’s voice sounded abruptly from the walkie talkie. Those were the first words spoken since they’d left the dam.  The snow was coming down in blinding white sheets now.  It wasn’t the typical first little flurry of the season.  This was a straight up blizzard.

LeBron and Yue had grown up in the south. It took a minute for the strange phrase to make sense to them.  He was talking about chains for the tires.  She had no idea how they worked or how to put them on.  Gus tapped gently on the brakes to bring them to a controlled stop.

Gus opened his door and slithered down through the access hatch to get out of the metal cage.  LeBron followed him to help.  He was curious how the whole chain thing worked.  Yue stayed up in the cab.  She was more than happy to have some private time with Jeff.  He hadn’t shown any interest at all in the chain conversation.  He just sat there staring out the window at the winter wonderland swirling around them.

On the ground outside the truck LeBron marveled at how deep the snow had already gotten.  He stomped through the thick white layer of coldness behind Gus. They walked back towards the truck Mikey was climbing out of.  Drew emerged from the other side right as they got there.  They met in a small group waiting for the driver of the third truck to wander up.  Once he did all eyes shifted over to Mikey.  He was the only one of them with the experience needed for this sort of thing.

“There should be chains hanging off the back of each of the trucks.”  Mikey said.  He was happy for the distraction.  Anything beat his mind replaying the shooting of that woman over and over again as he drove through the snow in silence.

He recalled vividly how he’d automatically brought up his weapon to engage the woman who shot Gus.  He couldn’t blame his actions completely on his training though.  His training had taught him to analyze the threat before shooting.  There’d been a split second when he knew what was going on.  He’d still pulled the trigger. He’d been able to tell the woman was freaked out over shooting Gus.  She may not have pulled the trigger again.  He’d put her down anyway.  Put her down in front of her kids.  All he could think of now were those two blood covered kids. Because of him they’d be forced to live in this messed up reality without their mom.

“You know how to put them on?”  Gus asked.

“Absolutely.  It’s going to suck doing it for three trucks in the snow, but I’ve done it before.  The big question is do we have enough chains for each of the trucks.”  Mikey answered.  He then climbed up onto the back of the lead truck to start poking around.  A few minutes later they were helping him unload about two hundred pounds worth of chains from the back of the truck.  It didn’t look like they’d ever been used before.

“Should we make sure all the trucks have chains before we do this one?”  LeBron asked.  Mikey shrugged and they all marched back to inspect the other two trucks.  Both trucks did indeed have the chains hanging off the back of them.

Starting with the lead truck they worked on getting the chains on the tires.  Mikey was right about it sucking to do it in the snow.  A few missing fingernails later they had the first truck done in only an hour.  They had to keep taking turns jumping up in the cab to warm up.  Parts of their bodies were threatening to get frostbit from squatting in the snow for too long.  None of them were dressed warmly enough for what they were doing.  They needed snowsuits and insulated gloves instead of the jeans and truck stop mittens half of them were wearing.

It was late afternoon by the time they got the chains on all three trucks.  Late afternoon and they were all exhausted.  The physical labor coupled with the mind-numbing cold had been a welcome distraction from the events of the morning.  Yue had even talked Jeff into getting out and helping.  She’d opted to stay in the nice warm cab herself.  She was fine with letting the boys handle putting chains on the tires in the freezing cold mess outside.  To make herself useful she kept an active lookout to make sure no surgers came stumbling out of the snow.  Not that she would’ve seen them before it was too late anyway.

Yue went back into the sleeper compartment as Gus, LeBron and Jeff all climbed back into the cab.  She almost felt guilty seeing how miserable they all looked.  She slid over so LeBron could join her in the sleeper compartment.  He grabbed a blanket and wrapped himself up in it.  His chattering teeth telling her all she needed to know about how cold it was outside.  The temperature had dropped ridiculously low in no time flat.  The last time she’d looked at the outside temperature displayed on the dashboard it’d indicated it was eight degrees outside.

“We better get moving.”  Yue announced as soon as Gus was in his seat.  Gus looked way more interested in the heater vents than he did in getting the truck moving anytime soon.

“What’s the rush?”  Jeff asked.  He’d removed his gloves and was holding his hands up to the heater vents.  Yue was actually getting uncomfortably warm but decided it was probably best not to complain.

“If we’re stuck out here when the sun goes down, we’ll need to spend the night in the trailer.”  Yue said.

“We’re going to have to spend the night in the trailer pretty much no matter where we end up tonight.”  Jeff said looking at her in a confused way.  He got that it was going to be cold here, but it was going to be cold a few miles down the road as well.  They had sleeping bags and other gear in the back. They shouldn’t freeze to death if that’s what she was worried about.

“I’m more worried about getting stuck out here in the middle of nowhere in a massive snowstorm.”  Yue said.  She realized her concerns must sound pretty weak.  It was the middle of nowhere now even if you were standing in the middle of Times Square.

Gus put the truck in gear and drove slowly through the steadily deepening snow.  Another issue had popped up that no one had considered before either.  Thanks to the heavy snow it was almost impossible to see the road.  Gus was keeping the truck in the middle of the open space between the trees.  Thanks to the lack of visibility, they were in no danger of exceeding the recommended thirty miles per hour for driving with chains on.

“We need to stop and get in the back right now.”  LeBron suddenly blurted out.  He’d been staring out the window like everyone else when a buzzing sound penetrated his thoughts.  It came on so slowly he almost didn’t place it.  Then he did.

“How come?  It’s not officially night for a few more hours.”  Jeff said turning his head to look back at LeBron.

“I don’t think the crawlerz care what time it is.  All they care about is not getting caught out in the sun.  You guys don’t hear them?”  LeBron asked.  The buzzing inside his head felt like a roach had crawled in through his ear.  A vibrating roach that was taking a tour of the inside of his cranium.  He had no idea how the others weren’t feeling it.

“We’re in a snowstorm in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere.  You sure you hear something?”  Gus said in a slightly patronizing tone of voice.

Wham!  Out of nowhere a crawler slammed into the cage in front of Gus.  Gus reacted by turning the wheel way too hard and slamming on the brakes.  His fear and adrenaline overriding his admittedly very limited training on driving the eighteen-wheeler.  The big rig jackknifed into the snow-covered ditch on the side of the road.

Yue watched it all happen in slow motion.  The truck dipping down into the deep snow on the side of the road.  The trailers momentum causing it to continue forward jerking them along with it.  The crawler struggling to rip its way through the bars and get at them.  Then everything returned to normal speed.  She realized she was still yelling for Gus to look out.  Gus had a nosebleed where he’d bounced his face off the steering wheel.  At least the airbags hadn’t deployed.  Those things suck when they hit you.

They were fortunate to have only been going about twenty miles per hour.  It limited the damage to them and to the truck.  Although the truck might as well be totaled as useful as it was going to be to them at this point.  There wasn’t a local roadside service to dispatch a tow truck to pull the big machine out of the ditch.  Good thing they had two more tractor trailers with them to use.  Mikey must’ve been able to avoid slamming into them.  Not a given even with their slow speed considering the lack of visibility.

“Convoy two this is convoy actual over.”  Jeff transmitted the message on the walkie talkies they were using to communicate between the trucks.

“Convoy actual convoy two here.  You all ok?”  Drew’s concerned voice boomed out the tiny speakers on the Motorola walkie talkie.

“That’s affirmative.  We’re going to go ahead and stop here for the night.  Be aware there are crawlerz in the snow.  One’s currently trying to rip the cage off our truck.  I’m thinking you park so that the end of your trailer is parallel to us.  You exit your truck and kill the crawler on our windshield. Once its dead we can all pile into your trailer.  We’ll bail and meet you in there along with convoy three.  How do you copy over?”  Jeff transmitted his orders and waited for confirmation.  If someone had a better idea, he was all ears.  He wasn’t super excited about climbing out of the ditch they were stuck in.  Especially not with the crawlerz on the prowl.

“Convoy two copy.  Moving forward now to park with the end of the trailer next to you.”  Drew’s voice came back.

“Convoy three copy.  Parking behind convoy two and waiting on orders to move up to the convoy two trailer for the night.”  The convoy three driver transmitted.  Jeff considered that and decided he’d have the convoy three crew move before them.  It should be easier and quicker for them to get in the trailer.  Now that he thought about it, he should have them go before Drew and Mikey.

“Convoy three this is convoy actual we’re going to have you move to convoy two trailer and pop it open before convoy two exits their cab.  Then you’ll provide cover as they come around.  How copy?”  Jeff once again waited to hear either an affirmative or to be given a better idea.

“Convoy actual convoy three copy.  Moving into position now.  Over.”  The voice of the driver from the third truck sounded over the radio.

“Convoy two copies.  Standing by for orders to move once convoy three has the back secured.”  Drew’s voice boomed out of the little speakers.  Yue thought Drew sounded a little silly using the radio lingo.  She could pretty much picture Mikey coaching him along on it.  She loved that he was learning it though.  Those were the kinds of skills they needed to learn to survive in this world.

“Convoy actual to convoy three proceed when ready.  Be aware there’s a tango on the windshield of convoy one.”  Jeff transmitted.

The crawler was staring at them though the windshield with hate filled eyes.  It was a woman wearing what appeared to be the remains of a thick onesie.  It was hard to tell for sure since it was stained to the max and covered in snow.  The woman’s hair was frozen in patches and her face was bright red from the cold.  Despite her skin freezing off her body she still moved with a terrifyingly fluid grace.  She pulled on the bars again looking for a way to get at them.  Not finding any way to squirm in she suddenly disappeared completely from view.  Her disappearance coincided with convoy three pulling up next to them.

“Convoy three this is convoy actual please be advised we no longer have eyes on the tango.”  Jeff broadcast the warning quickly.  He needed to make sure they heard it before they left the relative safety of their cab.

“Convoy actual this is convoy two we have a tango crawling up our cage now.  Big guy with a pair of nasty looking boxers on.  He’s wearing a hoodie as well.  He’s beating the hell out of our cage.”  Drew reported in.  That wasn’t good if more crawlerz were starting to show up.  The cages were well built but nowhere near as safe as the trailers themselves.  The cages would provide protection against the random surger or two but a group of crawlerz would eventually rip it to pieces.

“We can’t just stay in here all night.”  Yue said.  She was starting to freak out.  The longer they stayed the more crawlerz would show up.  The more crawlerz showed up the less chance they had of making it into one of the trailers.  They needed to make a run for it.  Jeff nodded.  They were all on the same page.

“Convoy three and two prepare to dismount and proceed towards the back of convoy two trailer on my mark.  Convoy three to dismount and proceed first.  Convoy three execute now.”  Jeff ordered.

“Convoy three executing.”  Came the terse reply.  They all knew they had no choice but to move forward with the plan as quickly as possible.  The guys in the third truck had the easiest route to the back of the second truck’s trailer.  That meant they’d been handed the short straw.  They had to leave the safety of their cage and secure the entry to the trailer.  They got to go first.  They were the bait to see how many crawlerz were out there waiting in the snow.

The four Marines exited the cab through the passenger and driver’s side doors.  One Marine covered while his battle buddy exited through the access hatch to post up below.  They then waited for the other person to come down through the access hatch.  Once all their boots were on the ground, they proceeded towards the back of the trailer directly in front of them.

Heads on swivels they were all looking in every direction at once waiting for the inevitable assault.  When it came, they weren’t ready for the angle it came from.  Crawlerz had climbed on top of the trucks.  A few of the amped up infected jumped into the sky from each truck. The silent monsters came down on the small group of Marines like a flock of oversized vultures.  The Marines barely even got any shots off before they were on the ground being ripped apart by the rabid mob.

Jeff saw it all.  He’d been staring out his window through the thick snow flurries watching the Marines move forward.  Seeing the confidence of their movement he’d held up hope they were going to make it.  When no crawlerz immediately challenged them, he took that as a sign they might actually survive.  Seeing the flock of demons descend down on the doomed men from out of nowhere emphasized to him how hopeless their situation was.

Suddenly unable to breathe Jeff leaned back in his seat gasping for air.  By the time he looked back towards the men the crawlerz had all disappeared again.  They left behind the mangled bloody meat of the brave men who’d left the safety of their truck on his command.  Jeff could barely make out the lumps in the snow that were all that was left of the men from convoy three.

“Convoy actual this is convoy two should we proceed over?”  Drew’s voice coming out of the radio freaked Yue out.  She’d been watching Jeff stare out the window. She correctly interpreted the way he looked to mean the men from convoy three hadn’t made it.  That didn’t say a lot for their chances.

“Convoy actual can you read me over?”  Drew asked after a minute passed with no response.  Jeff was frozen.  He didn’t know what to do next.  Yue reached down and gently took the walkie talkie out of his hand.

“Hey guys.  It’s Yue.  Convoy three didn’t make it.  They got swarmed before they even got to the back of your trailer.  No way we’ll make it.  What do you think over?”  Yue asked.

“I think we’re screwed.  Mikey confirms.  Over.”  Drew and Mikey had summed it up pretty nicely.  It was an accurate assessment of their situation.  Not extremely useful from a planning perspective though.  Although there was a certain amount of freedom that came from having nothing left to lose.

Chapter 9:  Desperate Measures

“There’s more of them!”  Drew said sliding back in his seat.  Mikey looked equally horrified even if he was keeping it together a little better than Drew.

Mikey shifted the truck into gear and started driving forward.

“What are you doing!  We can’t leave the others!”  Drew yelled.

“It doesn’t make sense for all of us to die.”  Mikey said somberly as he slowly accelerated down the snow-covered road.

“Stop then and let me out.”  Drew said loudly.  When Mikey ignored him and kept going Drew put his gun barrel on the side of Mikey’s face.

“You really want to die out here!  Get the hell out!”  Mikey screeched in a complete panic.  He slammed on the brakes.  The crawlerz hanging on to the cage swayed around violently at the sudden change in momentum.

Drew holstered his pistol and pulled up the walkie talkie.  He transmitted that he was coming to join them then dropped the little radio in his pocket.  He’d clicked it off before they could ask any awkward questions.  He put his hand on the door handle and Mikey smacked him in the back of his head.  Drew spun around ready to fight.  He had his pistol back out again before he noticed Mikey was just sitting in his seat with a resolute look on his face.

“What the hell man?”  Drew asked confused.  Without saying a word Mikey just put the big rig in reverse and backed them back up to where they’d started from.  The back of the trailer even with the truck Drew’s sister and brother were stuck in.  There were crawlerz swarming all over the cage covering the cab of their truck.  Drew clicked back on his radio to get a status.

“Convoy actual this is convoy two what’s your status over?”  Drew broadcast.

“What does it look like our status is?  We’re screwed bro.  Thought you and Mikey were taking off.  That’s actually a really good idea.  If you can get out of here, go for it.  We’ll meet you at the end of the road.”  LeBron’s voice came back across the airwaves.  He didn’t sound scared at all.  He sounded resigned.

Drew glanced up at Mikey who just snorted.  Drew looked back down at the radio in his hand.  He looked out the window at the crawlerz trying to rip the cage off the truck.  He looked down at his rifle.  Finally, he looked back over at Mikey.

“Turn the heater up some.  It’s going to get chilly in here.”  Drew said before raising his pistol and sighting in on one of the shadowy crawlers trying to rip its way into the cab.  From this distance headshots were pretty much guaranteed.  He aimed carefully.  They had a ton of ammunition, but he had a feeling they were going to need every last bullet.  He let his breath out slowly as he squeezed the trigger.  A hole appeared in the windshield and the crawler fell backwards off the cage.

“Convoy two this is oh whatever.  Drew are you ok?  What’s going on?”  Yue’s voice came over the radio.  Rather than LeBron’s stony indifference Yue’s voice was was dripping with concern.

“Shoot them.  They can’t rip the cage off the cab if they’re dead.  Just be careful not to hit the big metal bars.  Take your time and make your shots count.”  Drew said sighting in on another one of the crawlerz.  This one was climbing up on the passenger side right outside his window.

“Dude roll the freakin window down.  You don’t have to destroy the whole truck.”  Mikey yelled over at him.

In the other truck Gus got into the shooting gallery sprit.  He cranked out shot after shot until the crawlerz started forming the foundation for a big bloody snow fort.  It was freezing inside the cab with the windows all shot out but none of them felt the cold.  Their adrenaline was as amped up as the psychos attacking them at this point.

The crawlerz were relentless in their silent attack.  They continued to pummel the cage bars with their mostly frozen flesh.  Occasionally a moan or a screech would escape them but for the most part they tried to beat their way through the hardened steel barricade in eerie silence.  Everyone in the cab was temporarily deaf anyway.  The constant volleys of gunfire were taking their toll.  There was no lull in the combat.  As soon as one crawler fell another appeared to take it’s place.

Their windows were gone.  Just shattered remnants of cracked safety glass jutting out here and there.  One of the windshield wipers dangled uselessly in the air.  It kept getting in the way until Gus reached up and twisted it off.  The heavy smell of gunpowder permeated the now open cab.  They’d jacked up the heater at some point, so the cold wasn’t really getting to them.  The heater was melting the snow as soon as it drifted in.  That was starting to create puddles in the truck.  The fear of catching the sniffles was heavily outweighed by the need to slaughter the insane cannibals with super strength doing their best to get in the cab and eat them.

“Turn on your high beams!”  The words were shouted multiple times by Drew over the radio before Jeff finally heard him.  He looked up the road and saw the glow of the bright lights from the front of the truck Drew was in.  He waited for Gus to empty his latest magazine and grabbed him by the shoulder.  Gus nodded at the light idea and flicked them on.  The trucks had some pretty heavy-duty high beams that included a row of lights along the top.  They were intended to be used in places where the power may have been blown away by natural disasters, so they were pretty powerful lights.

Other than creating a bunch of demonic shadow puppets across the field of snow in front of them the lights didn’t help a lot at first glance.  LeBron wondered why Drew had felt compelled to offer them the advice.  He wouldn’t have taken time away from trying to kill those things if it wasn’t something that he thought was a good idea.  Drew and Mikey didn’t have two people spread out in the sleeper section busily reloading their weapons for them.  Every second he spent with the radio in his hand was a second he wasn’t reloading or shooting.

Watching the crawlerz coming at them she finally saw what Drew must’ve noticed earlier.  It clicked for her when LeBron pointed at the new ones showing up.  His analytical mind having already deduced what the advantage of the lights was.  If they weren’t all practically deaf from the repetitive noise of the guns going off right next to them, she was sure she’d be getting treated to a lecture from LeBron right about now.  She smiled thinking of what their dad would’ve had to say about them not wearing hearing protection. He’d been a major stickler about it every time they went to the range.

The bright lights made the newcomers hesitate.  Before they’d flicked on the high beams the crawlerz had just been rushing right in once they arrived.  Now they were slowing down at the edge of the light.  It didn’t send them scurrying into hiding like the sun would, but it unquestionably slowed them down.  For a few of them the bright light appeared to throw them off their game.  Yue saw one crawler standing back in the woods in a trance staring at the bright lights.  With its long hair it looked like a tripping hippie from the seventies staring at a sparkler.

On top of the other tactical advantages the lights were providing they also gave them the ability to see what they were shooting at.  Yue wondered if Drew had really just meant for them to turn on the lights so they could see.  Drew may have just thought they were idiots.  He may have been sitting in his truck wondering what the hell they were doing with their lights off.  Yue didn’t know either.  Right before all the slipping and sliding Gus had been talking about how you didn’t turn the lights on in snow or fog for some weird reason.  Yue vaguely remembered something about that from driver’s ed.  It hadn’t made much sense then either.

The snow was really pouring down on them.  The later it got the deeper the snow drifts got.  Whether that was the reason the river of crawlerz slowed to a trickle or not Yue was just happy the onslaught seemed to be ebbing.  The rest of the night was spent in a daze.  There were spans of time when they weren’t being attacked.  These intervals of solitude grew longer and longer as the night wore on.  The cold and the exhaustion warring with their ability to maintain the vigilance needed to survive until dawn.

An hour before dawn when the world was starting to become a little less dark a gigantic crawler came hurdling out of nowhere. The beast of a man slammed into the side of the cage directly next to Jeff.  Bolts popped and stressed metal bent under the vicious assault.  Jeff popped off several shots into the mass of flesh heaving at the metal bars beside him.  The sumo sized crawler finally went down.  It took a large section of the bars making up the cage with it.

They rearranged inside the cab of the truck to compensate for their new weak spot.  Jeff slid over to sit up on the console.  He angled himself so that he could aim a rifle out the open window.  They’d decided a rifle was a better idea than a pistol in the event of another sumo sized crawler trying to come through.  Now that the cage wasn’t going to stop them anymore, they may need to put up a wall of bullets instead.  Jeff waited with the M-16 flipped to full auto mode.  LeBron was ready to hand him a fresh rifle as soon as the one he was firing went dry.  Gus focused on covering the other sections of the cage and hoped nothing got past Jeff to rip into him from the side.

A very slight hint of movement outside was all it took for Jeff to empty almost his entire magazine through the window.  The bullets ripped hunks of the scalp off a tween crawler trying to come in low.  She stood straight up outside on the running boards after being shot.  The bloody lines through her scalp looking like the slasher movie version of a truly hideous combover.  Jeff punched the rest of the bullets in the magazine straight into the psychotic monster’s face.  As she fell out of the window frame Jeff and LeBron juggled rifles around to make sure Jeff was immediately ready to shoot again.

Breathing raggedly Jeff slammed the butt of the rifle into this shoulder and waited for the next target.  It never came.  An hour or so later the sun came up revealing the blizzard was taking a smoke break.  It was gray and dreary outside but there was now enough light to keep the crawlerz at bay.  Surgers could still be a problem.  It’d be odd if there weren’t at least a few of the recently infected stomping their way through the snow to investigate all the ruckus.  The other scary issue was going to be walking through the deep snow.

The snow looked like someone had drizzled bright red Kool-Aid on white tile then sprinkled a layer of flour over it all to cover it up around the truck.  The blood-stained snow was still very visible in places.  The odd lumps surrounding the truck had been formed by what looked like at least fifty dead crawlerz.  It may be three times that amount for all any of them knew.  It wasn’t like they’d been using a clicker to keep count of the infected foot traffic to their location.

“Convoy actual this is convoy two.  What’s your situation over?”  Drew asked over the radio.

“Convoy two this is convoy actual.  We’re five by five down here.  We’re evaluating how we’re going to get out of the ditch and up to the road.  We’re worried there could be crawler land mines in the snow.”  Jeff responded.  The crawlerz would have no problem digging into the snow to spend the day.  Assuming they didn’t freeze to death they’d be happy to take a bite out of any feet placed conveniently near them.

“Yeah, a new and even more exciting thing to be horrified of.  Digging in hides them from the sun and keeps them warm.  As long as they can still breathe, they’re way better off under the snow than on top of it.”  Drew said.  He’d opted to say to hell with radio etiquette.  Yue for one was right there with him.  She only knew what ‘five-by-five’ meant because she’d heard it on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Half of the other stuff they said over the radio made exactly zero sense to her.

They tossed some ideas back and forth for how they could safely traverse the snow.  Short of wasting all their ammunition and making a ton of noise by shooting a path through it they had nothing.  Poking a stick into the snow ahead of them as they walked seemed like a good way to let a crawler know a snack was on the way.  Sledding up the incline wasn’t going to work even if they could figure out something to use for a sled.  Snowshoes seemed like a great idea, but Amazon Prime wasn’t going to be dropping off a pair anytime soon.

Drew and Mikey dropped out of the conversation as the people in the cab debated the best way to get out and up.  They were still debating when Drew’s voice shot out of the radio telling them to hold their fire.  They looked around wondering what they weren’t supposed to shoot. Drew took the final couple of steps and climbed up through the missing section of cage to say hi.  Even with his warning about holding their fire he still almost got shot.  He just hadn’t been able to resist seeing their faces.

The reason he didn’t get shot was because Jeff had stuck his rifle slightly out the window when told to hold his fire.  He’d gradually leaned out even further looking for the reason not to shoot.  When Drew popped up out of nowhere, he whipped his rifle around to aim at the assumed threat.  The barrel of his rifle whacked Drew hard on the side of the head knocking him off balance.  Drew wobbled but didn’t fall off the running board.  He just stood there smiling and simultaneously rubbing the side of his head.  Jeff immediately began cussing him out.

Once Jeff ran out of creative ways to call Drew an idiot, he asked him how he’d managed to get safely through the deep snow.  With a straight face Drew had answered back that he’d walked.  Jeff’s facial expression clearly showed that he thought these must be the kind of zombies who were after brains.  That was the easiest explanation for why Drew had been able to safely stroll on over.  No one else in the cab disagreed.  Sticking his head up in the window like that was a pretty good way to get it shot off.

“You guys were going to talk about how to walk through this death drift for the next three hours.  We’ve got stuff to do.  I poked around in front of me with my rifle and nothing tried to attack me.  Grab your gear and we can walk back up the same way I walked down.  Just don’t trip.”  Drew said.

“Where’s Mikey?”  Yue asked.

“He got the rough job.  He’s digging through what’s left of the men from convoy three to try to find the keys for that truck.”  Drew answered.  That sobered them all back up pretty quickly.  It could just have easily been them turned into a lumpy pile of shredded pork sitting in the middle of this god forsaken country road.

“There should be a spare in the glove box.  There were extra ones added in case the person with the key got attacked.  I doubt he’s spending a ton of time digging through dead bodies.  Especially since the guy with the keys may have turned and took off into the woods or whatever.”  Gus said.

“Another thing to add to the why Mikey’s an asshole list.”  Drew muttered shaking his head with respect.

One by one they climbed out of the truck into the ditch.  The ground felt odd at first until they realized they were walking across the backs of the crawlerz they’d killed the night before.  They each kept their weapons aimed low ready to blast away if the snow shifted or they felt something odd.  Yue was positive she was going to feel a frozen hand clasp onto her ankle before she made it out of the ditch.

LeBron attempted to kill a rabbit that freaked him out by appearing out of nowhere. The fluffy white bunny hopped right through the middle of their stretched-out conga line.  LeBron hosed down the snow around the panic-stricken hare with half a magazine before he got control of himself.  He looked up to see everyone staring at him.  Gus had been in front of him in line. He didn’t look happy at all.  Probably because of the bullet holes in the snow all around him.

“I already got shot yesterday alright?”  Gus said.  He meant it as a joke to lighten the mood, but it just reminded everyone they’d shot and killed Harley’s girl the day before.  The sight of those two blood covered kids trying to wake their mommy up still seared into their collective memories.  They all watched as the badly traumatized rabbit hopped it’s bunny tail into the forest at light speed.  Following that moment of reflection, they resumed their trek up the incline in silence.

”That was the longest thirty feet ever.”  Gus commented while helping LeBron up onto the road.  LeBron nodded distractedly.  He’d already moved past the accidental discharge and was busy thinking through their next moves.

“How badly do you think being down a truck is going to impact us getting those supplies back to the central warehouse?  Are you thinking we can get another truck out of the base if we take it over?  It wouldn’t surprise me if those Seabees had been able to get a few more fixed up with the cages.  How much stuff are we actually supposed to transport to this other place?”  LeBron asked.  He had about a thousand other logistical questions he’d been mulling over, but he felt like those were a good start.

“We’ll be fine with just the two trucks.  I have no intention of following our orders.”  Jeff said.  He didn’t scream it out loud or anything, but the words resonated strongly with everyone.  Jeff found himself in the center of a circle of people staring at him questioningly.  All except for Yue who already knew what he was planning to do.  They’d really spent almost the entire night in his bed back at the dam working on this plan.  She was looking at him expectantly now.  This wasn’t the way they’d hoped to tell everyone, but it was pretty much out in the open now.

“Long story short.  The President’s only interested in protecting himself and his cronies.  He wants to take all the supplies from all the depots and make sure they’re secured in locations only he has control over.  He has zero interest in distributing them to groups of survivors.  He expects us and others to help him secure all those supplies for him.  If we do that it means we’re killing anybody who would’ve been able to survive had they been given access to the supplies that were originally intended for them anyway.”  Jeff was looking in each person’s eyes as he related the repercussions of following their orders.  He’d been disappointed but not surprised up in that communications shack when the President had asked to speak to him privately.  He wanted this tight knit team here to understand the consequences of blindly following the orders they’d been given.

“You want us to go rogue and get the supplies in the hands of groups of regular survivors instead of hoarding them for the President?”  LeBron summed up where Jeff was going with all of this.

“Pretty much.”  Jeff answered.

“Works for me.”  LeBron said after hesitating for a second.  The much easier path would’ve been just doing what they’d been ordered to do.  That would’ve meant blindly following the orders of the President.  The coward who’d left his brother and sister to die along with hundreds of sailors on a carrier.  Screw the President.

“I’m in.”  Drew said yawning really big.

“So much for all that commander in chief stuff.”  Mikey sighed.

“We’re probably going to die either way.  Might as well do the right thing.”  Gus said.

“I’m obviously in.”  Yue said when it came around to her.

“So, are we like a rebellion or more of a Robin Hood thing?”  Drew asked.

Chapter 10:  Silent Night

“How are the six of us supposed to steal supplies that you need dozens of people and trucks to load and unload?”  LeBron asked.

“How come you guys get the truck that still has windows?”  Drew asked back.

They were standing in the middle of the road in between the two remaining trucks.  They’d just finished offloading the supplies they wanted to take from the truck that was stuck in the ditch.  Despite the cold they were all sweating.  Yue had been the one to insist they dig around in the jumbled contents of the tilted trailer to find the box full of medicine and first aid supplies each truck carried.  Considering the weather that they were hanging out in the Dayquil tablets were probably going to come in handy.

“Because Jeff’s in charge and the leader gets the better truck.”  Yue answered shivering.  She’d made sure everyone understood that the chain of command in their little group remained the same.  Even while they were actively planning outright treason.

“Maybe the leader should get a better driver?”  Mikey joked.

“Hey that crawler came out of nowhere.  Anybody would’ve wrecked.”  Gus said looking hurt.  His breath clearly visible in the air in front of him.

The plan was to backtrack to pick up Harley’s people at the crypt.  Once they had them on board they’d go back to the warehouse for more diesel.  Then if they were able to make it over the mountains, Jeff knew where some high-ranking members of the government were hiding out.  Assuming they were still alive they might make some great allies.  Not because they liked him but because they’d despised the Vice President.  He was hoping they were chafing under his leadership.

No one really liked the plan.  It’d sounded good to Yue while cuddling with Jeff and whispering in each other’s ears back at the dam.  Spoken out loud in the light of day in front of a very skeptical group of people it sounded more like the first draft of a Tom Clancy novel.  Looking at the snow around her she thought they’d be lucky to make it out of the mountains.  Forget about trying to come back and go over them.  When they’d come up with the original plan, they also hadn’t killed Harley’s girl yet either.  The people they were planning on rescuing had no way of knowing that, but it was one more added complication.  They’d have to build their rebellion on a foundation of lies.

Mikey eased the truck into its lowest gear and said a silent prayer.  It’d started snowing yet again.  Global warming must’ve been wiped out right along with most of the human race.  Feeling the chains bite into the concrete he was relieved when they began moving forward.  Driving at this speed it was going to take them the rest of the day to get a hundred miles down the road.  Mikey reminded himself that going any faster in these condition risked putting another truck in the ditch.  On top of reminding himself he had Drew get on the radio and remind Gus of the same thing.

There was no sign of the infected in the pristine whiteness of the snow-covered scenery they were cruising through.  The crawlerz who’d made it out to attack them the night before must’ve been close.  If they hadn’t been close, then they’d been running all out to reach them before the snow slowed them down too much.

“I wonder how many crawlerz are sleeping in the snow we’re passing?”  Drew asked.  He was focused on the scenery around them looking for threats.  Mikey was focused on keeping the truck on the road.  It was a solid division of labor for hopefully making it to the end of this god forsaken road alive.

“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”  Mikey answered enigmatically.  There was no way to know how many of the infected had dug in to build themselves some cozy little crawler caves to spend the day in.

“How’s it feel to be a traitor?”  Drew asked conversationally.  He was working on coming to grips with it himself.  He’d been raised to be patriotic.  It was a core part of who he was.  He’d always thought of himself as an American.

“I don’t feel like a traitor really.  We haven’t actually done anything besides talk about it yet.  I don’t plan on drawing my weapon on anybody wearing the same uniform I wear.  I’m thinking this whole thing is more like an impeachment really.  That cowardly prick has got to go.  He’s the traitor.”  Mikey said thoughtfully.  There was a lot of vitriol in the undertone of his little speech.  He didn’t think much of a man who took an oath to defend the country then decided the country should be used to defend himself instead.

Drew took some time to consider what Mikey had just said.  It made a lot of sense.  It gave him an angle where he could be proud of what he was doing.  He wasn’t rebelling against his country he was rebelling against a self-obsessed egomaniac who happened to have been in the line of succession.  The line of succession based on the votes of a people who spent more time deciding which reality show singing contestant they wanted to vote for than they did who their national leader should be.

“Makes sense.  Maybe we can get matching anarchy tattoos or something.”  Drew said.

“No way.  You can get hepatitis from getting tattoos.  Plus, I heard it hurts pretty bad.”  Mikey was navigating a steep decline in the deep snow. The heavy trailer kept trying to get away from him even though he was moving at a snail’s pace.  Drew was impressed the Marine was able to keep up the back and forth through all that.  Even though he wasn’t sure if it was scarier to be the passenger or the driver in this situation.

Drew shut up and let Mikey drive.  He could tell by the white knuckled grip and intense look in his eyes that Mikey needed to focus.  Drew stared out into the woods around them.  He was looking for any sort of movement that may indicate a surger was about to come screaming out of the trees to jump on the cage.  Given the difficulty of navigating the current decline a screaming surger coming out of nowhere would not be welcome.  They’d more than likely end up pulling a Gus and wind up with another wrecked truck.

Somehow, they made it to the bottom of the steep hill alive.  Drew’s new obsession had become staring in the rearview mirror to see if Gus was going to lose control and crash into them.  He was also wracking his brain trying to figure out where all these hills had come from.  On the way in they’d pretty much flown down these roads without too much concern.  He only vaguely remembered Mikey having to switch gears to get up the taller ones.  Now it was like they were in a dingy at sea during a hurricane.  They’d make it down one wave only to be confronted with cresting yet another.

Even the times the road was flat were nerve wracking.  There was one wide open area where the trees marking the sides of the road completely disappeared.  They had to stop so that Drew could climb out and verify where the road was.  A task made even more fun by the fact that his clothes were soaked from the snow constantly melting on them.  On the miserable scale it was up there with the time he’d sat down in a fire ant mound with just his soccer shorts on.  It was the last time he ever left the house without wearing underwear.

To everyone’s surprise they made it to the highway without dying or losing another truck.  The highway was buried under the slippery white crud as well but at least there were guardrails on the side of it.  That should slow them down long enough to enjoy the view before plummeting to their deaths if they hit an ice patch.  They’d used up most of the daylight getting to the highway.  They opted to stop for the night once they were parked.  Hopping into the trailer on the lead truck to spend the night they all hoped it’d be a nice, boring evening.

“Cold must be slowing down the crawlerz.”  Jeff commented when darkness arrived with nothing immediately attacking them.  He was leaning against the wall with his long lanky legs spread out before him.  Yue was snuggled into a sleeping bag between his legs with her head up on his chest.  If she fell asleep before he got into his own bag, he was going to either have to be a jerk and wake her up or spend the night cold and uncomfortable.  He’d already lost a halfhearted effort to get her to spend the night alone with him in the back of the other truck.  They both knew it was a horrible idea no matter how much they were dying to get some couple time.

“I could get used to a night without waking up every ten minutes wondering if I was about to die.  We should just start driving north.  Stop when we see igloos and polar bears.”  Drew offered up.  He was only half kidding.  If the cold weather slowed those things down, then going north was a solid idea.

“We could go north.  I want to survive as much as the rest of you.  If we stay down here though we’ll have access to the supply depots I setup to help people like us.  We’ll be able to help a lot of people that the President’s planning to abandon.  At least I hope we can figure out a way to help some of them.”  Jeff said.  Yue knew Jeff was still reeling from the deaths of the crew of the Ford.  The thousands of men and women who’d looked to him to save them.

“I think it may be time to let go of the mission.  Those plans are all falling apart anyway.  Especially if the man in charge isn’t trying to support them.  We need to figure out what’s best for us.”  LeBron said.

“What do you two think?”  Yue asked looking over at Mikey and Gus.  They’d spread out their sleeping bags on the floor and were already halfway asleep.  As the drivers they’d been spared having to stand watch.  After a day of white knuckled extremely focused driving down those slippery slopes, they both needed the rest.  No one in the trailer begrudged them that.

“I’m good.  Let’s save ourselves and save some other people too if we can.  Preferably hot single ones.”  Gus mumbled from the depths of his sleeping bag.  Mikey held up a hand with his thumb extended.  LeBron thinking what a millennial he was when his first thought was that Mikey had just liked Gus’s comment.  Neither Gus nor Mikey were up to engaging in a long-winded debate about apocalyptic morality after the day they’d had.  Nothing short of the Swedish bikini team dragging a keg of beer into the trailer was going to pry them out of their sleeping beds before dawn.

Yue started to say something else when the sound of a fist slamming into the outside of the trailer silenced her.  Everyone in the truck went into silent mode.  Not that it mattered anymore.  Whatever the infection did to the crawlerz made it so they could sense when normal human beings were hiding near them.  Everyone in the back of the trailer felt that psychic sizzling in the back of their heads.  Like when you start to answer a question and you know the answer but for some reason it slips your mind right as you’re about to say it.

It was a frustrating tickle in the back of their heads.  It was as if they were trying to remember how their pets had died when they were kids.  Trying to summon up the image of the broken face of the family cat after it’d been lying on the side of the road for a day and a half.  It was an unrelenting sense of psychedelic rage that left them feeling dirty.  A feeling of being hunted out of hatred.  It wasn’t the same sort of fear you’d have if you were trapped in a cage with a lion.  It wasn’t just that ferocious hunger that slithered into their brains like tentacles from a deathly cold alien.

“They’re getting stronger.”  Yue whispered into Jeff’s ear.  He didn’t bother replying.  They could both feel it.  He held her tighter and attempted to close his eyes.  It’d be his turn to stand watch before he knew it.  He wasn’t looking forward to sitting in the darkness alone while those things slowly pried his brain apart from outside the trailer.

Chapter 11:  Fresh Powder

Drew woke up on the floor of the trailer in a pile of sleeping bags he’d spread out to try and get comfortable.  He’d been assigned the ‘balls to four’ watch which meant his sleep time had sucked.  He’d fallen asleep around ten only to be woken up what seemed like seconds later. LeBron had non-apologetically poked him with his finger until he woke up then happily headed off to snooze land himself.  Mikey was the recipient of a very pissed off stare when he nudged Drew awake at dawn with a big grin.

“Rise and shine clementine.  Time to commit some murder and drive a massive truck down an invisible road.  Maybe grab some breakfast out of a can.”  Mikey said cheerfully.  He was amused by the irritated glare Drew was casting his way.  As one of the two men who’d been driving the previous, highly stressful day before he’d been granted a full night’s beauty rest.  No wonder he was so freakin’ chipper.

“How about you open yourself up a nice big can of ‘shut the hell up’ and leave me alone.”  Drew said before rolling over and attempting to go back to sleep.  Nothing was currently trying to eat them, so he didn’t really see a reason to get up.  It wasn’t like he had somewhere to be.  An image of the refugee kids playing in the crypt popped unbidden into his mind.  Those kids and their families were waiting for them to return to transport them to some mythical safe haven.

“Get up.  The boss man says it’s time to get rolling.”  Mikey said.  The extremely annoying Marine was continuing to risk losing his foot by lightly kicking Drew over and over again.

Not being able to fall asleep now that he’d pictured those kids waiting for them Drew sat up.  He smacked Mikey’s foot away when it was swung in his direction again.  To stay awake the night before he’d slammed a prodigious number of caffeinated beverages.  One thing the trucks hadn’t been outfitted with was a toilet.  Instead, they’d hung a couple of shower curtains and gathered together an array of plastic bottles and tubs.

Drew had no problem taking a whiz in one of the bottles. He drew the line at slapping on a plastic trash liner and dropping a load in a reusable tub though.  Shy bowel syndrome could be a fatal condition in this new world.  Some people were willing to risk going outside rather than noisily pooping it up inside the trailer.  On the other end of the spectrum some people had zero problems doing it.  The resulting noises lending to plenty of disgusted looks throughout the trailers and a few chuckles.  There wasn’t much to do for entertainment in the trailer of a truck.

Cussing as the bottle he was taking a leak in began to overflow Drew hastily reached down to grab another bottle. He was desperately trying not to spill the contents of the original one all over himself.  He ended up peeing in a tub.  In order to avoid being called out for peeing in a tub he poured the contents of the tub into one of the spare  bottles.  While doing so he accidentally poured some more of the still warm liquid on his hands.  Liberally applying hand sanitizer, he walked out of the shower curtain in an even worse mood than before.  Albeit without the pressing need to relieve himself that’d contributed to forcing him out of bed in the first place.

Looking around the trailer he noticed the two lovebirds had finally separated.  Jeff was standing by the back doors with Gus.  Yue was digging through a pile of boxes looking for something or other.  LeBron and Mikey were working on a fresh cup of coffee.  Drew wondered what was going to happen when they eventually ran out of coffee grounds.  They’d either have to set a course for South America or spend a month in some kind of coffee detox.

Grabbing himself a cup of the hot brew Drew ripped open a couple of packets of sweetener and dumped them in.  He didn’t like the fake powdered creamer so drank his coffee black now.  He walked along with Mikey and LeBron to the back of the trailer. They sipped their coffee as Jeff squatted down next to each of the little open spaces to take a look outside.

“See anything neat?”  Mikey asked.

“The snow’s still there.  It looks pretty deep.”  Jeff answered.

“Deep enough to hide a bunch of sleeping crawlerz?”  Drew asked.  He wasn’t looking forward to wading through crawler laced snow again.  Wondering if you were going to step on one of the sleeping monsters and have to fight for your life with every step.

“They might be purposefully lurking there instead of sleeping.  As long as they can’t see the sun, they seem to be good to go.”  LeBron said sipping at his steaming hot cup of coffee.

“Great.  Thanks LeBron.  Here I was thinking we might actually survive walking to the front of the truck.”  Jeff said sarcastically.  He levered out the first of the poles used to lock down the trailer.  Gus and Mikey helped pull out the others so they could swing the doors open.  Prior to doing that everyone got geared up and ready.  It paid to be vigilant when there could be a crew of crawlerz sitting outside chomping at the bit to chomp on them.

“We should drill some holes in the doors or something.  Playing Russian roulette every morning with these trailer doors is getting old.”  Gus said jacking a round into the chamber of his rifle in preparation for the opening ritual.

Drew totally agreed.  It wasn’t like they needed any added excitement in their lives.  The argument against the peepholes and holes to dump their waste out of was the same.  Any holes in the trailer would weaken it.  Drew thought it probably went even deeper than that.  Nobody wanted to spend the night in a trailer with crawler fingers popping through holes all over it.  They didn’t want to hear the screams of the surgers amplified into their space.  They definitely didn’t want the walls ripped away and the trailer filling up with those insane cannibals.  It seemed like they could’ve welded on some peepholes with little sliding metal doors or something.  When Drew had mentioned it to LeBron, LeBron had shaken his head sadly and told him the guys that could’ve done that were all dead now.

At some point they’d have to break down and drill some holes in the walls.  The benefits greatly outweighed the risks in Drew’s mind.  It’d be nice to get some regular sized cars outfitted with the metal cages too.  If they didn’t have to wake up every morning and make the trip to the cab that’d make their lives a lot safer.  The he remembered that the crawlerz were pretty good at ripping the metal cages off.  Lost in thought he was surprised by the sudden surge of blinding white light that hit him when the back doors were thrown open.

Almost as shocking as the light was the wave of freezing cold air that struck him.  It was pretty much a freezer in the back of the truck already. Feeling even colder air hitting him from outside was a major eye opener. Hoping nothing was jumping in the trailer to kill him he let his eyes slowly adjust to the elements outside.  Once he had he was able to easily make out the other truck parked behind them.  He was instantly jealous of the full complement of windows they had left.  The one him and Mikey were driving had most of the windows shot out of it. They got to enjoy the elements up close and personal all day every day.

He was also jealous of the relatively short distance Gus, Yue, LeBron and Jeff were going to have to traipse through the snow before they’d be nice and safe up in the cab of their truck.  Him and Mikey were going to have to traverse the entire length of the trailer to reach the safety of their cab.  There could be a crawler at any point along the route waiting for some idiot to come blundering by.  Based on his morning so far, this may be his day to be that idiot.

Jeff and Gus hopped down off the trailer. They sank hip deep into the snowdrift that’d built up between the trucks thanks to the gusty weather.  If there was going to be a crawler hanging out in the fresh powder that was a very likely spot.  When frozen hands didn’t immediately shoot out to grab them everyone let out their breath.  No one let down their guard though.  Every weapon was trained on the snow around the two men.  After a short pause to reset they proceeded with breaking a path through the snow for Yue and LeBron to follow.

During his watch the night before Drew had heard the crawlerz beating on the outside of the truck.  It hadn’t been the maddened pulse of a hundred hands slapping at a gigantic steel drum like some nights, but it hadn’t been a single crawler softly swatting at them either.  If forced to guess he’d have said half a dozen of the infected had shown up to the overnight jam session.  Luckily it didn’t seem like any of them had bedded down in the path made by Jeff and Gus.  They all waited as Gus climbed up into the cab and started the big rig.

“You ready?”  Jeff called out softly to Yue.

“I was going to give it a few minutes for you to get it nice and warm for us.”  Yue tossed back.  LeBron was too occupied with warily scanning the snow for any sign of motion underneath to join in the banter.  Gus crawled back down and took a spot in the snow by one of the tires.  He was ready to shoot if needed.  Once he was in position Yue hopped down into the path that’d been made for her and LeBron.

She disappeared with a loud screech as soon as her feet hit the snow-covered road.  One second, she was crouching in the snow recovering from the hop down from the trailer. The next she was a blur disappearing underneath the trailer.  LeBron had been about to follow her off the ledge, so he just flipped himself around as he jumped.  The second he hit the ground he immediately dropped to his knees to follow her underneath the trailer.

LeBron muscled his way through the deep snow.  Once underneath the trailer the snow got much shallower.  It was dark under there.  He could just make out the silhouettes of Yue and her assailant struggling in front of him.  Her harsh breathing mixed with the grunts of the crawler.  He slid forward with his pistol in front of him trying to get a good shot.  He glimpsed something slithering at an inhumanly fast pace towards the struggling pair from the front of the truck.  Knowing no regular person could move that fast LeBron rolled sideways and lined up a shot.  His only coherent thought was to kill it before it got to Yue.  He kept pulling the trigger until the thing stopped moving.

Drew was the next one under the truck.  He’d jumped from his post as soon as he saw Yue disappear.  He felt a spike of pride at seeing LeBron fearlessly charge in to help their sister.  He was proud of LeBron, but he poured on the speed to get around his little brother regardless.  The next few life or death seconds were going to revolve around pure physicality.  When it came to the kind of close combat likely to be needed Drew was hands down the right one to be in the lead.

Drew couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather be stuck under a truck facing blood thirsty monsters with than his brother.  Except maybe for the current damsel in distress.  He got to her just as she was pulling her serrated combat knife out of the throat of the crawler who’d grabbed her.  She smiled at him with her face covered in blood.  Looking down at the ground Drew saw that she’d sawed her attacker’s head half off.  Attempting to take out one of the super deadly crawlerz in hand-to-hand combat was not a feat many people walked away from.  Or at least they didn’t walk away without having gained a newfound fear of the light and an unnatural craving for human flesh.

“Is she ok?”  Jeff asked in a panic.  Somehow the tall lanky man had managed to get under the truck and slide up to where they were in record time.  Drew would’ve cared more if Yue hadn’t just collapsed face first into the snow.  She must’ve been banged around pretty bad in her fight.

“We’ve got her.”  Mikey said.  Drew looked towards the side of the trailer.  Mikey and Gus had dug into the drift there and were dragging Yue out by her feet.  She was leaving a scarlet path in the snow as the blood from the crawler was rubbed off of her.  Drew was ecstatic to see that the blood was coming off.  If the blood had kept coming, they’d have had to consider she’d been bitten.  That would have been an entirely different conversation.  One where Drew was pretty sure him and LeBron may have had to draw weapons on the others.  Especially if any of the others thought they should put Yue down for their own safety.

Gus suddenly disappeared as a crawler tunneled over and pulled him backwards through the snow.  The crawler popped up out of the snow in the light of day trying to get a better grip on Gus to take a bite out of him.  The light instantly discombobulated the fearsome maneater.  Gus leapt in front of the monster ready to fight.  A short slightly overweight man stood where a fearsome predator had been seconds prior.  The man’s eyes glossy and wild as he stared at the light hitting the snow without blinking.  He was wearing a sweater like the one Freddy Krueger wore in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.  Otherwise, he was completely naked.

Jeff came out from under the truck shooting.  Gus yelped and went tumbling backwards into the snow.  The crawler silently absorbed bullets until one hit it somewhere critical.  The sad looking crawler crumpled loosely back into the snow.  A scarlet circle forming around the corpse of the Freddy sweater wearing killing machine.  The irony being that he very likely would have a featured place in their nightmares.

“What the hell man!”  Gus yelled out from the snow.  He staggered to his feet clutching at his stomach and trying to breathe.

“Yeah, that one was tripping like crazy.  We could’ve killed it with a spork.”  Mikey said through his own ragged breathing.  This was a lot of action for so early in the morning.

“It was behind you.  I knew you were wearing the vest.  I needed you to get down fast so I could kill it before it bit you.”  Jeff explained.  In the half second that he’d spent considering the plan it’d made sense.  He hadn’t bothered wondering why Mikey had just been sitting there.  There hadn’t been time.

“Everybody needs to stop shooting me!  Ok!  It hurts!”  Gus complained loudly.  Drew thought the Marine was joking at first. Looking closer he saw that Gus looked sincerely pissed off about the whole thing.  Were those tears in his eyes?

“Suck it up man.  You’re alive right?”  Drew said pulling himself out from under the trailer and turning to help LeBron out.  Gus started to say something when the snow towards the front of the other trailer suddenly swelled up like a wave.

Everyone with a gun in hand poured lead into the bulbous pile of white until it died down.  A cracked pile of snow with red stains in parts of it.  They all quickly reloaded.  Jeff picked Yue up and cradled her in his arms like a child.  He carefully skirted around the bloody section of the drift as he took her to the cab of the truck.  Gus came over and between LeBron, Gus and Jeff they got Yue up into the truck and back into the sleeper where they could take care of her.

Mikey and Drew carefully crunched their way up to the access hatch in their own cage.  Drew climbed up first then hung out where the windshield used to be.  He covered Mikey as he climbed up after him.  It may have just been a trick of the sun, but he thought he saw the snow shift around for a second right after Mikey squeezed in through the access hole.

Grabbing the walkie talkie, they checked in with the other truck to see how Yue was doing.  She had a huge lump on the side of her head, but she hadn’t been bitten anywhere.  Finding out she was only unconscious was a huge relief.  He couldn’t believe that she’d avoided being bitten.  She’d been fighting for her life against a monstrous opponent in the tight confines under the truck with no time to prepare.  She’d done it though.  Pride for his family once again swelled in his breast.  That crawler had picked the wrong person to pull under the truck.  She may be the smallest member of the group physically, but she was absolutely the biggest badass.

Mikey got the truck in gear and they resumed their trek to the graveyard to pick up the crypt dwelling refugees.  Drew hoped the rest of the day went a little smoother.  It’d been a pretty rough morning so far.

Chapter 12:  Can’t Fix Stupid

The trailer of the truck in front of them slid sideways towards the guard rail.  Right before it smashed into the metal barrier the whole truck jerked forward and the trailer went back to where it was supposed to be.  At least it went back to where they thought it should be. It was hard to tell considering the ground was just one big expanse of the cold white stuff.  Gus tightened his grip on the wheel knowing they were about to hit the same ice patch.  Either he didn’t have Mikey’s touch, or the ice had gotten slicker.  They slammed up against the guard rail feeling like they were going to go flying right over it. There were a few seconds of sphincter tightening terror before Gus finally regained control.

“That was fun.  Can we not do it again?”  LeBron commented from the sleeper section behind the driver’s seat.  He was sitting up Indian style cradling Yue’s head in his lap.  They’d stopped and filled up a couple of Ziploc bags with snow.  He was keeping those pressed firmly against the big lump on the side of her head.  He dutifully replaced them one at a time as they melted.  Currently on his last one he was pretty sure this wasn’t the right time to ask Gus to pull over so he could get some more snow.

“Mikey drove a truck for a few years before he joined the corps.  I had a thirty-minute lesson like two weeks ago. We’re lucky to be alive.  This has got to be some high-level advanced truck driving here.  My ass cheeks haven’t unclenched since it started snowing.”  Gus answered without taking his eyes off the road.

“You’re doing a great job.  Hopefully we get out of this snow as we come down from the mountains.  Once we make the next turn, we’ll be headed close to due east.”  Jeff said.  He was studying the map spread out on his lap like finals were coming up.  He’d been tracking their progress and figuring out the best route back to the crypt.  There weren’t a ton of options.

The radio crackled to life with Drew asking for a status on Yue.  He must be timing himself since it’d been exactly fifteen minutes since the last time he asked for a status.  Jeff reminded him about the road they’d be turning on soon. Then after taking a quick look into the sleeper section he told Drew his sister was still about the same.  Jeff put the walkie down in his lap and stared out at the road ahead.  The only good thing about the snow was that it slowed down the crawlerz.  Other than that, unless he could be transported in time and space to a ski lodge bar with a roaring fire, he had no desire to ever see snow again.

He was scared out of his mind about Yue and trying hard not to let it show.  Getting knocked unconscious was a big deal.  There could be all kinds of things wrong with her.  It was most likely a concussion from that gigantic crawler flinging her around like a rag doll in the tight confines under the trailer.  The weird thing was that she hadn’t passed out until after the fight was over.  For the millionth time Jeff wished he had access to the internet.  He’d love to be able to read up on what they should be doing to treat her.  Instead, they were relying on their own training and knowledge.  Almost all of which came from personal experience with being knocked out or vague memories of some television show.

Mikey, Gus and Drew had all been knocked unconscious at one time or another.  Either in traffic accidents, sports or fights.  None of them could remember what’d helped them come out of it.  They each insisted there was no long-term neurological damage.  Mikey saying that out loud had almost started a fight when LeBron and Jeff cracked up.  Drew sobered them both up by pointing out Yue had been out for well over an hour.

“How long do you think she can be out for and still be ok?”  Gus asked.

“I don’t know.  I’m not sure if it’s the same as sleeping.  I’m worried there’s some kind of internal bleeding in her head or something.”  Jeff said quietly.  He wasn’t sure how openly they should talk about things like that in front of LeBron.

“Do you love her?”  LeBron asked from the sleeper section.

“I do.”  Jeff said without hesitation.  He wondered where that question had come from.

“I’m going to assume you were asking Jeff that, but I’d do anything for you or your sister man.  We just got to figure out what else we can do to help her.”  Gus said.

“Is she the prettiest girl you’ve ever dated?”  LeBron asked.

“Uh yeah.”  Jeff answered unsure where this was all coming from.

“What do you like most about her?”  LeBron asked.  He was trying hard to suppress a big grin and keep the joy out of his voice.

“She’s awake, isn’t she?”  Jeff said.  He tried to sound pissed off, but he was way too relieved to pull it off.  He spun around in his seat to see that Yue was laughing at him.  Every time she laughed it was causing her physical pain.  Getting Jeff to answer those questions had been totally worth it.

“Hey babe.”  Yue said sweetly.

Jeff reached back into the sleeper to hold her hand. Yue puked all over him, the truck, Gus and the blankets in the back.  LeBron slid back quickly against the wall to escape the onslaught of piping hot messiness. He slid right back over as soon as Yue was in the dry heaving stages to try and help her.  Jeff completely ignored the chunky puke clinging to his hair and clothes to work on getting Yue cleaned up.  Gus was busy rolling down windows to keep himself from puking.  A massively miserable Yue looked up at her puke soaked boyfriend.

“Ah.  You really do love me.”  She said in a sing song voice before putting her head down on the pillow and trying to slip back into a coma.  She wanted to sleep for a few more days.  She felt like if she could just do that, she’d wake up good to go.  Her head was pounding, and she’d never felt more nauseous in her life.  She was praying for sleep to take her away.

“Is she supposed to sleep with a concussion?”  Gus asked.  He vaguely remembered something about that from crashing his car in high school. The paramedics had been intent on keeping him awake on the trip to the hospital.

“That sounds like a thing.”  Jeff said.  He was feverishly googling his own memory bank trying to come up with something.

“It’s not a thing anymore.  Sleeping it off helps.”  Yue said miserably. She was lying on her side with her face hidden in the pillow.  LeBron was pulling out the puke covered sheets from around her.  Gus stopped the truck and let Drew and Mikey know that Yue was awake.  Drew had a million questions which he fired off one after the other without waiting for an answer.  A minute later LeBron watched in amusement as Drew hopped his way through the snow to come check on Yue himself.

“Is that true?  Is it ok if she sleeps?”  Jeff asked LeBron and Gus.

Neither of them had a clue.  Yue had downloaded every bit of medical advice she could get off the internet before the world went dark.  She’d spent their downtime reading up on anything she thought may help them survive.  Absent any actual medical professionals, she was the best source of information they had.  If only their phones had survived being on the road.  The expensive otter boxes had turned out to not be Zombie Apocalypse proof.  He’d have to leave them a negative review on Amazon if he ever got back online.

Drew climbed up on Jeff’s side of the truck and stuck his head in the window.  A look of disgust warred with the relief he felt at seeing Yue looking alive.  He turned his head to the side so he could breathe in some fresh air.

“I guess I’m not going to be able to complain about our windows being all shot up anymore.  How’s she doing?”  Drew asked.

“I’m fine.”  Yue said out of the corner of her mouth.  She’d be doing even better if everyone would shut up and let her sleep.  Hopefully when she woke up the puke would be all cleaned up and her head wouldn’t be pounding anymore.

Drew told them to wait while he went and opened up the the trailer in front of them.  He climbed in and found a bunch of sanitizing wipes and towels plus blankets and sleeping bags.  He snagged a can of water while he was at it and delivered the supplies back to Jeff.  With nothing else to add Drew jogged back to his truck and they got moving again.  The goal was to make it to the crypt with an hour to two to spare before dusk.

Somehow, they actually made it.  The snow was still everywhere but not to the insane degree it’d been up in the mountains.  Slightly worrying was the fact that some of the roads looked like other vehicles had recently been through.  It was easy in the desolation to think it was just them and the crawlerz wandering around.  Jeff was quick to remind them there were hundreds of bases with military personnel and high-level government officials spread out across the country.  Not to mention all the random groups of survivors still holding on.

It was a different kind of feeling driving up the snow coated road to the crypt this time.  Harley had a charisma about him that made people feel like they were doing the right thing.  He’d brought them here to save these people.  They’d rewarded his trust by killing the woman he loved and leaving him imprisoned back at the dam.  Now they needed to convince these people to come with them.  Not because they needed these people for any particular reason.  It was more to atone for the death of Harley’s wife.  It would help them wipe away the memory of those blood-soaked children crawling around on their dead mom.

The best person to act as spokesperson for the group was recovering from a concussion.  They were trying to give her as much time as she needed to rest and recover.  None of them thought it’d be a great idea to try and drag her out to talk to these people in her condition.  By process of elimination the job ended up with Jeff.

The trucks rolled to a stop in the same place they’d parked a little less than a week prior.  With all that’d happened in the interim it felt more like a month had gone by.  They’d told the group of refugees sheltering in the graveyard that they’d be back in a few days.  They’d just have to understand that travel plans got screwed up when you mixed crawlerz and snow together.  Keeping the trucks running they waited for someone to come out to greet them.  When no one did Jeff asked Drew to walk with him to go see what was up.

They’d only walked a few feet off the road when a small group of men stepped out from behind trees and crypts aiming rifles at them.  Jeff recognized them as the men who’d met with them and Harley last time they were here.  He tried but couldn’t remember any of their names.  Looking over at them he could see they were unsure how to address him as well.  He needed to think of something to say before Drew did.  He’d already warned him not to say anything stupid.

“You guys still hanging out in the graveyard?  Last place I ever want to call home.”  Drew joked.  The men gave him some odd looks before focusing on Jeff.

“Where’s Harley?”  One of the men asked.

“We told him when he came with us that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave once he knew the location of the base.  He’s going to be staying there and focusing on his new family.”  Jeff said smoothly.  Drew nodded along with Jeff’s story.  He liked how Jeff was dancing around the truth.  He’d just skipped some of the minor details like the woman getting killed and Harley’s failed attempt to leave.

“Harley said he’d come back.”  The man said.

“He wasn’t authorized to leave the base.  The location of these places is a secret.  Only people authorized to know the locations are allowed to leave once they get there.”  Jeff explained for what felt like the hundredth time.

“That kid you’re with doesn’t look like a special forces type.  He was allowed to leave?”  The man asked indicating Drew.  Jeff realized his error too late in bringing Drew with him to talk to these people.  It’d be hard to convince them Drew was a trusted agent of the government.  Luckily, he hadn’t pulled LeBron out of the truck to come down with him as well.  His obvious youthfulness would’ve really screwed them over.  He couldn’t give himself credit for not bringing him though.  He’d only left him behind so he could watch over Yue.  This meeting was going downhill fast.

“He’s part of the team I’m working with to help out groups of survivors like yours.  We’re here to transport you to somewhere you can begin to rebuild.  A place with supplies and shelter for you and your families.  It’s no guarantee of a better life but it’s bound to be better than squatting in a graveyard until you starve to death.”  Jeff said.

“Pretty words.  Where do you plan on taking us?”  The man asked.  He wasn’t one to be easily convinced.  He was the type who’d check every tooth in the gift horse’s mouth.

Jeff sighed in frustration.  It didn’t help that he didn’t know for sure he actually had anywhere to take them.  All of the bases he’d coordinated getting setup were connected via some sort of communications hub.  They all had some sort of power source.  It was very possible they’d all been locked down by the President with specific orders not to take in any refugees.  Those had been the standing orders since the beginning of all of this anyway.  Orders that Jeff had personally had a hand in writing.

Orders that were supposed to be updated after the initial wave of the infection swept over the country.  The men in charge of the depots were supposed to begin distributing the supplies to the refugees.  That’d all been starting when the previous President had died.  Based on the conversation Jeff had with their newly sworn in commander in chief the survival of the refugees was no longer a primary objective.  The survival of the President and his cronies was now the primary objective.  He hadn’t phrased it that way, but the intent had been clear.  The supplies the government had secured were for people the President deemed critical.  Government resources were absolutely not to be wasted on the riff raff trying to survive out in the open.

“Honestly I’m not supposed to tell you and again there’s a very legitimate reason for that.”  Jeff said starting to get a little exasperated.   Trying to help these idiots was exhausting.

“Does it have anything to do with drugging us and stealing our women?”  The man asked.  His gun snapped up as did the others in his little group.  Drew and Jeff both took a step backwards.  Drew had his pistol in his hand.  He was aiming it in the general direction of the men aiming weapons at them.  Jeff had let his rifle hang off the bandolier and was holding his hands up peacefully.

“We have no intention of drugging you and taking your women.”  He said firmly.  His heart was sinking though.  Harley must’ve let them know what’d happened to them when they rolled up into the warehouse.  Based on the circumstances Jeff highly doubted these guys were going to climb into the back of a truck with their families now.  At least not with the men from the government who they thought planned on making slaves out of the men and using the women to breed a new generation.  The optics were pretty bad.

“Well, we have no intention of going with you or of letting you drive out of here with trucks full of supplies.  Not when we have women and children who are starving.”  The man said.

“If you don’t want to come with us then we’ll leave you with all we can spare.  We really don’t have that much with us right now.  This was supposed to be a supply run.”  Jeff answered.  He was fine with leaving these people supplies.  He knew how to find more.  It may be inconvenient, but it was the right thing to do.  He couldn’t really blame them for not trusting him.

“Hey Jeff!  There’s a couple of pissed off looking women sneaking around over here.  They’re aiming rifles at me!”  Mikey had slid over to the passenger side of the lead truck to yell out the window to Jeff.

“Back here too!”  Gus yelled out of the window in his truck.  He was parked right behind Mikey on the narrow cemetery road.

“We’re willing to give you most of the supplies we have in the truck.”  Jeff said.  He was rapidly losing his patience with these people.  He wasn’t a violent man but the idea of scattering these morons with some gunplay was starting to sound very appealing.

“How about you give us all the supplies in the truck and then maybe we let you walk away.  The man stepped forward and shoved his rifle barrel in Jeff’s chest.  Jeff clutched at his chest where he’d been poked and held up both hands.

“Nobody shoots!  We’re not trying to kill these people!”  Jeff looked up at the incredulous face of the man standing in front of him.  He looked like he was ready to swing the barrel of the expensive looking hunting rifle at him again.  He didn’t even notice Drew had his pistol aimed at his head.  The other men in the group alternating between aiming at Jeff and Drew.  In between wondering if they should shoot or not, they were all nervously glancing up towards the truck. Mikey had scooted over and had his M-16 pointed down at them.

“You said you were going on a supply run right?”  The leader asked Jeff.

“Yep.”  Jeff muttered.  He’d gotten the wind knocked out of him when he was hit in the chest.  He had a sinking feeling as to where this guy was going with his question.

“Excellent.  You’re taking us with you for the supply run piece.  We’d like to skip the whole date rape drug dance afterwards though if that’s ok with you.”  The guy said it like he’d just won some kind of bet.  Jeff sighed.  All that fighting and these scumbags were just going to do what he’d asked them to do in the first place?  Really?

Chapter 13:  That Whole Robin Hood Rebellion Thing

No one thought it’d be a good idea to roll up on the warehouse in the dark.  The refugees knew that the base they were headed to had been completely overrun.  The group had taken the information in stride.  The man in charge of the ragtag group of refugees shook his head and lamented that nothing was easy anymore.  The scraggly leader turned out to be a pharmacist.  Between his medical knowledge and his skill with a gun he’d wound up the leader of the small group when Harley had left.

His skills with a weapon didn’t come from any sort of military or law enforcement background.  He’d grown up in a house where the different hunting seasons were more important than secondary holidays like Christmas.  He hadn’t particularly enjoyed being dragged into duck blinds at butt early or sitting in deer stands in the cold until his legs felt like they were going to fall off.  That youthful experience had given him skills that were super useful in this new normal though.  He owed his survival more to those childhood hunting trips than he did to the college education that his family had spent the equivalent of a nice house in the suburbs on.

His family had pictured him graduating as some sort of surgeon.  His inclinations and abilities had taken him down a different path.  Where they’d seen him as Dr. Thomas Gideon the neurosurgeon, he’d been more than happy to become Tom the pharmacist.  He learned to live with the constant look of disappointment from his parents whenever they came around.  His deep understanding of drugs was going to be useful until the drugs eventually ran out.  While everyone else worried about clean water and ammunition he worried about polio or smallpox wiping out the next generation.  Assuming they were somehow able to best the millions of crawlerz that were coming for them.

“We’re not going anywhere tonight so how about we sleep in our trailers and you sleep in your spot.  Unless you’d rather hop up in a trailer for the night?”  Jeff asked.  Tom gathered his men together for a quick pow wow to discuss.

“We’ll split up and put people in both trailers if that’s alright with you.  We can transfer everything over tomorrow before we head out.”  Tom said.

The next hour was spent hurriedly throwing together the sleeping arrangements.  Tom forgot he was supposed hate them when they started pulling Yue out.  He immediately went into doctor mode.  After they’d gotten her comfortable in the trailer Tom handed her a couple of Ibuprofen for the headache.  There wasn’t much more they could do without an MRI machine. He joked with her that they’d also have to find a guy who knew how to operate an MRI machine. Then he told her to get some rest.  He made LeBron promise to keep an eye on her and let him know if anything seemed off about her.

Jeff was thankful for the second opinion on Yue. He eyed the pharmacist with a great deal of grudging respect.  There was also some avarice in his eyes.  People with medical training were hugely valuable in a world where you could die from pretty much anything.  None of them could tell appendicitis from irritable bowel syndrome.  They were all malnourished and routinely dealing with different sicknesses from eating or drinking something that should’ve been tossed.  Other than Twinkies pretty much everything was expired now.  That’s why MREs were so awesome.  They’d last five years easy if you didn’t leave them out in the blazing sun.  Ten years wasn’t too much of a stretch for the flattened packets of beef flavored goodness.

The nightly crawler assault began promptly at sundown.  With a dozen refugees in each trailer, it was pretty cozy.  The body heat from everyone helped to keep the temperature in the trailers much more comfortable.  The little Coleman stoves they’d been using as heaters were barely even needed.  That was a good thing since Jeff was pretty sure it wasn’t healthy to use them in an enclosed space.  He had to willfully disregard the big red warning sticker on the back of the stove every time he turned it on.

Other than a few startled screams when the first crawlerz rammed the sides of the trailer the refugees were all good about keeping quiet.  From what Harley had told them this group was all that was left of a group that’d originally numbered over a hundred.  It spoke well to their ability to do what it took to survive.  Darwinism was alive and well in the apocalypse.

The wave of fear hit LeBron harder than it had up in the mountains.  He didn’t know if it was because there were more crawlerz or if they were stronger.  He could tell by looking around that the others were feeling it as well.  Gus had his head buried inside his sleeping bag pretending to sleep.  The looks on the faces of most the people were similar to the look of a death row inmate seconds before being injected.  The resigned look of the hopeless.

LeBron knew how they felt.  Those psychic tendrils slipping into his mind were whispering that his death was coming soon.  He may be able to outlast some of the others wandering around, but his time would come soon enough.  There was no escape.  He’d eventually be ripped apart and infected like the rest.  Trying to ignore the murderous mantra of madness he was being force fed he joined Gus in burying his head and pretending to sleep.  Pretty soon there was only the two sentries standing a hushed watch over the sleeping bodies scattered around on the dirty floor.

There were two sentries because neither group trusted the other.  Jeff had taken the first watch since he wanted to keep an eye on Yue.  Tom was sitting on a folding chair on the other side of the truck with a shotgun in his lap staring down the length of the trailer at Jeff.  Every time one of the crawlerz slammed into the trailer close to Tom he flinched.  Jeff didn’t think any less of the pharmacist for showing the exact right amount of fear when bloodthirsty monsters from the deepest parts of hell are slamming into a paper-thin layer of steel right by your head.  Especially when every blow seemed to warp the trailer wall a little bit more.  As impossible as it seemed the demons may actually make it inside.

The crawlerz didn’t make it in that night.  The next morning Jeff was lying on the floor of the trailer staring out at the muddy snow outside.  Like every other morning he was looking through the small opening where the doors met the trailer.  LeBron and Gus were standing behind him drinking coffee and yawning.  Tom walked over to see what they were up to.

“You guys should think about drilling peepholes.”  Tom said after figuring out what they were doing.

“Boom!  Thank you!”  Gus said with a big grin.

“We’ve talked about the issues with that idea.”  A grumpy sounding Jeff said from the floor.

“I still say the reward outweighs the risk.”  LeBron said thinking of the heart stopping moment that was mere minutes away.  It was what happened every morning.  At some point you had to open the doors and hope nothing was standing out there waiting to kill you.  There was also the Hungry Hippo action like Yue had been a victim of the day before.  She was incalculably lucky to have only ended up with a concussion after being dragged under a trailer by that brute.

“It’s the worst possible way to start the day.”  Gus echoed LeBron’s sentiment.  He was helping Jeff lever out the first couple of poles they used to secure the doors.

“You don’t like a little sheer terror mixed in with your corn flakes?”  Yue asked.  She’d wandered over to watch the festivities.  More than likely the smell of coffee had lured her out of her sleeping bag.  Jeff, Gus and LeBron all told her to get back in bed at the same time. She laughed which made her snort out some of her coffee.

“If she can stand up without being too dizzy that’s a pretty good sign.  You want us to get the kids in the back before you open that up? We can get our guys down here to help out.  I mean unless you feel comfortable just flinging the doors open and hoping for the best?”  Tom asked.  Jeff gritted his teeth together.  The diminutive pharmacist was starting to get on his nerves.  A lot.  He had to remind himself the man was medically trained and could be a huge asset moving forward.  No matter how nice it might feel to smack him around some he had to be political about it.

Five minutes later they had a couple of extra guys waiting on Gus and Jeff to fling the doors open.  It was just as anticlimactic as they’d all been hoping for.  The open doors revealing the graveyard covered in well trampled snow.  The crawlerz had dug up the ground so much around the truck that it was mostly mud now.  Gus and Jeff took running leaps off the back of the truck.  They hit the ground and ran a few more steps before spinning around to kill anything that came out from under the truck.

LeBron was standing on the edge of the trailer with his rifle pointed straight down.  He was in charge of killing anything that came darting out from beneath the trailer.  None of them wanted to relive the events of the day before.  Fighting crawlerz in the shadows underneath a trailer was something you really only needed to experience once.  There was no way they’d get lucky enough to live through something like that again.  There must’ve been a patch of four-leaf clovers under all that snow.

Tom and the rest of his crew carefully followed the process Jeff had provided to exit the trailer.  A few of the refugees nodded approvingly at the overabundance of caution being displayed.  Taking chances got people killed.  Tom’s crew were alive in part because they tried hard to learn everything they could.  Learning from other's mistakes was a lot less painful than making them yourself.

LeBron joined Drew and Jeff down on the ground.  They motioned for the refugees to stay where they were and cover the back of the trailer.  Jeff poked LeBron in the shoulder to get his attention.  He pointed to a crumpled body on the side of the trailer.  A middle-aged woman lay frozen in the snow with her spine poking out the side of her bloody neck.  She was part of the overnight crew responsible for the fresh, bloody dents on the side of the trailer.  Smashing your body at full speed repetitively into a tractor trailer all night long wasn’t healthy.  Hopefully no one did a PSA encouraging the crawlerz to start wearing helmets.  The more of them that killed themselves the better.

The three of them squelched through the muddy remains of the snow working their way towards the front of the truck. They were careful to keep plenty of open space between themselves and the underbelly of the trailer.  Weapons trained on the shadowy gap under the trailer they almost missed a suspicious mound of snow up against a large oak tree directly in their path.  Gus happened to notice it before LeBron could get close to it. He quietly pointed it out.  LeBron let out a deep breath and gave the mound a wide berth.  They were all justifiably paranoid about anything out of the norm.

Circling around to the front of the truck they spotted Drew and Mikey standing in the open trailer with their backs against opposite walls.  They’d been in radio contact with Jeff the entire time.  They’d waited to open the doors until Jeff had sent them the ‘all clear’.  Drew had a big grin on his face.  He hadn’t had to patrol the outside of the trailers first thing in the morning for once.  LeBron suspected the grin was more likely due to the pretty girl in camo holding an AK-47 who was leaning against the wall next to Drew.

Drew and Mikey joined them, and they cleared the entire area.  They made sure to tell the people in Tom’s group all of the places they should avoid.  Leaving the children in the trailers with a few armed refugees to protect them they loaded up all the supplies still remaining in the crypt.  That chore didn’t take long at all.  The group had been on the verge of running out of food when Jeff and crew returned for them.

Drew and Mikey drove the lead truck out of the graveyard and set a course for the warehouse they’d so recently fled.  Gus was driving the second truck with Jeff in the passenger seat.  Yue was resting in a pile of sleeping bags in the back with LeBron watching over her.  Tom and one of his lieutenants were sitting in the sleeper section grilling Jeff on the warehouse they were headed to.

“The special agent who drugged all the people in Harley’s party is dead.  Unless he’s hiding out in a room in the warehouse somewhere.  Totally possible since the place is a secure maze filled with tons of supplies.  Yue, Drew and LeBron were all with Harley when the group got drugged.  You can ask any of them to confirm that I didn’t have anything to do with it.”  Jeff explained the whole drugging, kidnapping women thing again for what felt like the twentieth time.

“Rohypnol really knocks these things out?  Then they recover all of a sudden without any noticeable pulse?”  Tom asked.  Jeff could see the wheels spinning in the man’s head.  It’d be nice to get a pharmacist’s opinion on poisoning the infected.

“Yes.  That’s what Drew told us anyway.  They go into such a deep unconscious state that it’s easy to mistake them for dead.  They burn off the drugs then snap awake like nothing ever happened.  Any ideas on that?”  Jeff asked hopefully.  They’d had the top biologists and epidemiologists in the world working on this and gotten nowhere.  Maybe Tom from CVS would be the one to outsmart them all.

“Not really.  I guess you could try injecting a lot more of the tranquilizer into them.  See if that does the trick.  Probably easier to just go ahead and shoot them.”  Tom said after considering it all for a minute.  So much for Tom being some sort of pharmacology savant who could save them all.

“Inject them with hot lead instead.  Someone should totally make that into a bumper sticker.”  Gus joked.

“Why are you guys headed back to the warehouse?  What’s the plan for you?”  Tom asked.  Jeff shifted around in his seat to stare out the side window before answering.  He knew he sucked at lying. He was hoping if he hid his face that he’d be able to pull it off.  At the last second, he started wondering if it’d be better to just tell the truth.  The government didn’t care if they lived or died.  The government definitely didn’t want the refugees taking any supplies.

“We were tasked with gathering supplies and bringing them to another depot.  We’re supposed to gather as much as we can from the warehouse and lock it back down before we leave.”  Jeff said.  He thought that was vague enough to work.  Tom wasn’t buying it though.

“How were you supposed to get in the base with six people?  From what you guys have said it’s filled to the brim with crawlerz right?”  Tom asked.

“No clue yet.  We’re making this up as we go.  There may be a way we can lure them out.  If no one’s in the warehouse anymore they may have all left already.  I don’t know that they stick around if there’s no people in a place.”  Jeff said.  He was working that piece out in his head as he said it.  Lots of theory there with little actual data to back it up.

“What other depot are you supposed to take stuff to?”  Tom asked.

“You know I can’t tell you that.”  Jeff answered.

“Is it the place you’re thinking of taking us?  You can see why I want to know right?”  Tom was starting to sound frustrated.  He kept asking the same thing in different ways hoping for a better answer.

“I see why you need to know.  Do you see why I can’t tell you?”  Jeff replied.  He was thinking maybe he should write all of his arguments down.  He’d just gone through all of this with Carl and Amita the week before.  Maybe they should start using that date rape drug on refugees.  Stick them with a needle then wake them up when they got to whatever base Jeff had decided to take them to.

The conversation continued in circles until they arrived at the small road that would take them up to the warehouse.  The tire tracks they’d seen on the way in were clearly visible in the road leading up to the warehouse.  If the military was sitting up there at the order of the President that kind of changed things.  Tom and Harley had both told Jeff that no one else should know where the warehouse was except for them.

The problem facing Jeff now was that if they pulled in with a bunch of refugees they could be shot on sight.  He had no idea what the President’s orders may have been.  For all he knew this was an ambush to take him out and make sure the location of the warehouse and all the other depots remained a secret.  He radioed Drew asking him to stop for a second.  He knew Drew and Mikey could see the tire tracks as well.  He couldn’t really ask them what they thought without revealing everything to the two jokers sitting behind him.  He really missed being able to send text messages.

“Why are we stopping?”  Tom asked.  It was his millionth question.  Jeff took a deep breath to keep himself from saying or doing something he might regret.  Even in the middle of the apocalypse it wasn’t cool to shoot people just because they were super annoying.  The Rohypnol idea was sounding better all the time.

“We’re stopping because of the tracks leading up to the warehouse.  We don’t know who may be up there.  I’d prefer not surprising anyone.”  Jeff answered.  No one needed hm to explain why surprising jumpy people with guns was a bad idea.

“Only the government knew where this place was though right?  So, it’s probably your guys up there.  Maybe the President sent people to help clear the place out.”  Tom offered.  He looked excited by the presence of the additional tire tracks.  Jeff looked over at Gus who shrugged back at him.  It was a tough spot they’d gotten themselves into.

“The President could care less if you all live or die.  If he sent people here it was to keep people like you from accessing these supplies.  We’re on a mission from the President but it’s our last one.  We’re not planning on running it the way we were ordered to.”  Jeff let it all out in one continuous statement.  It was a lot of information packed into a very short amount of time.

“Why are you taking us there then?”  Tom questioned.  He sounded confused.  The trust Jeff had built with him blew out the window.  Tom was leaning back tensely against the rear wall of the sleeper compartment now.  He was trying to casually make sure the safety on his weapon was disengaged.  His lieutenant was a larger man with a big bushy beard.  He was wearing a big duster jacket like the cowboys in the old western movies.  He had a pistol hidden in one of the big pockets.  He had it in his hand ready to pull out.

“We didn’t know anyone was going to be here.  I figured we could just get the supplies we needed and disappear. I do know other places where you and your families should be safe.  We may need supplies to buy you into those places though.  Especially now that the President is anti-survivor.”  Jeff said.  He was well aware everything he was saying sounded like a lie.  Which sucked since he was finally telling the truth.

“Why should we believe you now?”  Tom asked.

“We’re doing a whole Robin Hood rebellion thing.  It’s all good.  We’re on your side dude.  Why else would we have bothered picking you guys up in the first place.”  Gus said with finality.  He was over dealing with the subterfuge.  He’d been cringing listening to Jeff try to dance around the truth all morning.

Chapter 14:  The Whole Truth

“What the hell’s a Robin Hood rebellion thing?”  Tom asked angrily.  His people’s lives were at stake.  The cavalier attitude of the Marine in the driver’s seat mixed with the steady stream of bull he’d been getting all morning from Jeff had been rubbing on him until he was about ready to catch fire.  He was on the verge of demanding Jeff get out of the truck and sending someone to gather his group from the other truck.  They could take one of the trucks and drive away.  Assuming someone knew how to drive a truck.  Otherwise, the smartass Marine could come along with them.

“I’m done letting people die.  There was nothing we could do when this all started.  There wasn’t a way to save everybody.  Once things leveled out the plan was always to help the people who survived the first wave.  That’s why we hid stockpiles all over the place.  Every single store was going to be cleaned out before that first wave of infections subsided.  The original President believed in the plan.  It was heartless but realistic.  The Vice President didn’t believe in it all.  That’s why he was on the carrier when everything went to hell.”  Jeff paused to make sure everyone was following him.  Seeing he had their attention he continued.

“Those two were never supposed to be on board the carrier at the same time.  They were supposed to be kept apart to ensure the continuity of government.  The Vice President knew he wouldn’t be able to convince the President to let everyone die so the elite could live though.  At least not remotely so he came to visit.  Then the President died. The Vice President got promoted.  He was President for like five minutes before he started reversing everything we’d been working towards.  This is way bigger than just us.  This is every survivor in the states who should be getting the help they need.  That’s why we’re a Robin Hood rebellion thing.”  Jeff answered.  His long-winded answer showing the depth of thought he’d put into it.  His passion came through as well.  It was obvious he meant what he said.

“That’s the first thing you’ve said all day that didn’t sound like bullshit.  Actually it sounds completely delusional, but it rings a lot truer than the other crap you’ve been feeding us.”  Tom said.

“It’s the whole truth.”  Jeff responded.

“It’s great and all.  We’re happy for you and happy to take whatever you can give us.  We’re not trying to join a rebellion though. We’re trying to stay alive.  Why shouldn’t we just take what we want out of these trucks and leave with one of them?”  Tom asked.  He positioned his rifle in a threatening way now to reinforce what he was saying.  Seeing his boss getting ready to make his make his move the other man slipped his pistol out of his pocket.

Gus grabbed the pistol and yanked it right out of the shocked man’s hand.  Then Gus hopped in the back. Jeff didn’t hesitate to follow him.  Tom yanked the trigger on his rifle, but the safety was indeed on.  He frantically searched for the little knob to make the gun work.  Before he could figure it out Jeff had him by the hair and was smashing his face into the wall.  Gus was lying on top of the other guy beating him in the back of the head with his own pistol.  He was cussing the guy out in between every blow.

Jeff’s long legs were straddling the center console.  He’d knocked Tom’s rifle to the side and gone to town. He was beating Tom’s face against the wall as hard as he could.  Tom groped around to find the rifle for a couple of seconds then switched to trying to find his knife.  He whipped out the novelty switchblade he’d snagged from a store prominently displaying throwing stars and num-chuks.  He pressed the button that made the blade shoot out.

“Drop it or I’ll blow your brains out.”  Gus said calmly.  He was holding up the pistol he’d been using to beat the holy hell out of Tom’s accomplice.  Tom looked over at the Marine and saw that he meant it.  He dropped the knife on the thin mattress and waited for the rest of his beating.

Instead of venting a ton of frustration on the pharmacist’s face Jeff slid back down into his seat.  He focused on getting control of his breathing.  Gus was searching Tom and the other guy for any additional weapons.  When he was satisfied that they were both clean he started to slide back into the front of the cab.  Jeff watched in amusement as the pissed off Marine stopped. Gus spun back around to cuss and swing a few more punches before once again crawling into the driver’s seat.

“Feel better?”  Jeff asked him with a smirk.

“Yes sir.  I needed to let some aggression out.  You want me to tie them up or throw them out of the truck?  If you want me to shoot them, we should get them out of the truck first.  The place already smells bad enough from Yue puking everywhere.  A bunch of blood and brains and crap isn’t going to help any.”  Gus replied.

“We weren’t going to kill you.”  Tom said weakly from the back seat.

“You’re damned right moron.  What were you even thinking?  I’m a United States Marine.  I’m trained to kill people.  You’re trained to put pills in bottles and make change.  Your moron friend back there pulled a gun on me.  He shouldn’t even have a gun if he doesn’t know the most basic rule of owning one.  You never pull a gun on someone you’re not planning on killing.  You point a gun at me you better be ready to pull the damned trigger.”  Gus said.  Jeff was enjoying the show.  He hadn’t seen Gus this worked up since LeBron almost shot him trying to kill a bunny rabbit.

“Alright.  You tried to kill us.  We beat the crap out of you.  Are we good? What the hell do we do about the tire tracks headed into the base?”  Jeff asked.  This was fun and all, but they had work to do.

“I’m good.  Jim’s got blood all over the back of his head.  We weren’t trying to kill you.”  Tom said again.  Jim must be the other schmuck in the back.  It made sense that Jim’s head was bleeding pretty bad since Gus had worked it like a piñata.

“Wrap his head in some gauze and try to keep him from bleeding all over the sheets.  The mattresses have to be custom fitted in these things.”  Gus said.  His main worry was the fact that the sleeper portion of the cab was the absolute best place to nap in the whole little convoy.  Tom had a few things to say around Gus caring more about the bed than Jim.  He thought better of it though.  He kept his eyes down while he focused on finding the gauze pads and bandages Gus had mentioned.

“Convoy actual to convoy two.  Ready to roll?  Over.”  Jeff said lapsing back into the radio lingo.  It still didn’t come naturally to him. If the people up ahead had their ears on, he didn’t want them to hear the people driving the trucks sound like a bunch of civilians.  He felt like it was important at this point to be perceived as professionals.

“We doing the fancy radio talk stuff again?  Cool.  Yeah, no worries.  Driving now.  Over and out and whatever.”  Drew’s voice came back over the radio.  So much for sounding like professionals.  Mikey and Drew might have decided to pass a bottle of something back and forth while they waited.  Jeff hoped not.  Drunk driving big ass trucks full of refugees through the snow in the middle of an apocalypse couldn’t possibly end well.

In the lead truck Drew sat the walkie talkie down and made sure his weapons were all locked and loaded.  He told Lisa and her dad to check their weapons as well.  Lisa was the girl he’d been talking to since their first pitstop at the graveyard.  Her family had managed to survive the first wave of crawlerz by hiding out in an old bomb shelter. They’d been lucky enough to have a prepper neighbor. The man’s shelter had been fully stocked in preparation for the end of the world.  The unfortunate prepper had died from an overindulgence in cheeseburgers and milkshakes a week before the tomb was opened in Egypt.  It was a verse straight out of the Weird Al Yankovic version of the ironic song by Alanis Morrisette.

Lisa and her dad were the only two left in her family.  They’d joined up with Tom’s group a month before Harley had shown up.  They’d eaten their way through the supplies in the bomb shelter and been forced to leave.  Tom’s crew had run into them in the back of a Chucky Cheese.  Both groups had been looking to lift a few cans of pizza sauce and whatever else the Chuckster might have in storage.  There was a lot of creative thinking going on around where food stores might still exist.  The rest of their story was a series of scavenging exercises until they wound up sleeping in the graveyard.

The reason Lisa’s dad was staring daggers at him was due to Drew’s ‘talk now think later’ approach to conversations.  He’d asked Lisa if she wanted to come hang out in the bed in the front of the truck with him.  She’d thought that was hilarious.  Her father hadn’t been amused.  She kept bringing it up as a joke making her dad even angrier.  Drew spent most of the morning doing an extra fine job of staring out the windows looking for any threats.  It was way too awkward trying to talk to Lisa after all that.  Her dad sat in the back staring at him like he’d been caught driving through their neighborhood in a big white van offering girls candy to help him look for his lost puppy.

Everyone in the truck tensed up when they drove through the broken gates. There were two heavily up armored Humvees sitting in the field.  Rushing to get in position to greet the trucks was a small contingent of well-armed soldiers.  The men were trying to avoid tripping over the corpses that littered the large open space beside the tarmac.  All of them were focused on bringing weapons to bear on the two large trucks coming up the road into their space.  Drew hit the walkie and relayed a quick sitrep to Jeff from their vantage point. He waited impatiently for Jeff to respond with what their approach should be.

“We’re all on the same side.  Let’s just pull up and see how we can help each other.”  Jeff said.  He’d given up on maintaining proper radio lingo.  He had Gus pull up and park them next to the other truck.  He opened his door and climbed down to the ground.  Gus, Mikey and Drew joined him as he strode purposefully towards the men standing around the Humvees.

A tall man with short blond hair took off his hat and walked towards them.  He was easily as tall as Jeff but there was nothing gangly about him.  He moved with the easy grace of a special forces operative.  It was immediately apparent this wasn’t his first rodeo.

“How are you doing Marines?”  The Captain America in camouflage asked when he got close to them.  Neither Gus nor Mikey had the characteristic Marine Corp haircut anymore.  They were both wearing whatever was warm and easily found in a looted Ross.  Most of what they had on was covered in weird stains.  Jeff was thrown off by how quickly this guy had known they were Marines.

“Outstanding sir.”  Mikey barked off the traditional response. He had to restrain himself from following up with a salute.  Gus had his hand halfway in the air before realizing they were sort of in a formation.  It was really up to Jeff who they saluted.  The tall blond man had a half-smile on his face seeing how easily he’d thrown them off.

“I’m Captain O’Donnell.  You all are trespassing on government property.  Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”  The captain asked politely.  He didn’t mention the array of weapons being pointed at them.  This was a man who knew how to negotiate.

“I’m Jeff Blanchette.  I’m the Director of the Department for the Continuation of the United States Government.  We’re here to reclaim this warehouse.  We have orders directly from the President to that effect.”  Jeff replied.  He’d decided since he sucked at lying, he’d just go with the truth from now on. They could always fight their way out of whatever happened.  Gus nodded in approval.  Keeping track of all the lies was way too hard.  It worked out for Jeff about as well as dating four girls at the same time had worked out for Gus.  The death of social media would at least make it easier for him to lie to girls again.  You’ve got to take advantage of the silver linings where you can find them.

“Director of the Department for the Continuation of the United States government.”  O’Donnell repeated slowly.  “That sounds like a pretty difficult job given the circumstances.  Maybe even an impossible job.  How would you say it’s going so far?”

“Not great.  It just keeps getting worse.  We spent a lot of time thinking about things like asteroids hitting the earth or massive plagues.  The nuclear threat was another one we put a lot of time into.  People turning into insane psychic cannibals because of some ancient mummy curse didn’t really make our top ten things to worry about list.  At least once an asteroid hits it just kind of sits there.  It doesn’t actively hunt for you and try to rip you apart.  The only thing in our favor is the surgers are dying out so we’ll eventually own the day again.  I think we can work with that to rebuild.”  Jeff answered.

“I heard you got everyone on the Ford killed including the President.  Then you flew over here and managed to get this base infected.  The new President’s been spending a lot of time trying to survive your plans.”  O’Donnell waited to see how Jeff would respond to that.  It threw Mikey and Gus for a loop as well.  Hearing it spun that way cast a bit of doubt on Jeff’s already pretty fantastic story.  Only Drew was unshaken.  He’d been with Jeff when everything went to hell.  He knew what the real deal was.

“The people on the Ford weren’t Jeff’s fault and the President’s a douche.  That piece of garbage is responsible for abandoning half the crew to die.  He took a helicopter here to this base when he left everyone on the ship to die. Then he managed to get all of these people killed somehow.”  Drew said.  He turned his head and spat on the ground.

“We’re not huge fans of the guy. We’re all on the same side though as far as trying to get the world back to normal.  This warehouse and the others like it were intended to help everybody get through this.  That’s the reason we’re here.  To continue that mission.”  Jeff said trying his best to smooth everything over.

O’Donnell’s face was impassive.  His hand rested on his holstered sidearm.  An evil looking snub nosed machine gun hung from a strap off his shoulder.  He was festooned in the garb of a warrior.  Knives, grenades and ammunition hanging off him like he was the Christmas tree at the soldier of fortune magazine headquarters.  Compared to him Jeff and his crew were outfitted like they’d been the last people in line to loot an army surplus store.

“My mission is to secure this base against anyone seeking to steal the supplies.  One of my secondary objectives was to place you under arrest if you showed up here.  I was wondering if you’d be dumb enough to wander in if you saw the tire tracks.  You know the President hates you right?  The important guy with every military resource in the country reporting up to him?  The man who ordered you to come here.”  O’Donnell finally addressed them again.  He’d spent a good minute just kind of staring at them.  There’d been consideration in his eyes.  It sounded like he’d made his decision now.

“Not every military resource.”  Mikey said in his best Clint Eastwood impersonation.  He was trying to break the ice a little bit.  He also meant it.  He’d never met the President, but he trusted Jeff and Drew.  If they said the guy was a weasel, then he believed them.  Having Thor show up here to arrest them made it more obvious to Mikey that the President was scared of Jeff.

Behind them the people in the trucks were climbing down.  They were all armed.  They’d left their children behind in the trailers.  On seeing the soldiers barricaded behind the Humvees the refugees started getting into position for a shooting match.  Jeff took his hand out of his pocket where he’d been mashing away like crazy on the transmit key on the little walkie.  It was the one they used to communicate with the people in the back of the trailers.  Yue knew if she heard that random transmit noise her boys were in trouble.  Between her and LeBron they’d very quickly marshalled the other survivors in both trailers to get out and help.

“Those aren’t soldiers.”  O’Donnell said taking a step back to observe the refugees getting into position.  He was annoyed by the amateur hour happening over by the trucks.  He was special forces though.  He was trained on how to walk into villages full of angry locals and arm them up.  He knew that a bullet fired from a rifle held by a ten-year-old girl could kill you just as dead as one fired by a highly trained sniper.

“You going to kill them all?”  Jeff asked.  He was back to bluffing.  He really hoped his poker face had gotten better.  The people behind him were cannon fodder against the well-armed soldiers deployed in front of them.  What he really was hoping was that seeing those people out there would convince O’Donnell that Jeff was one of the good guys.  O’Donnell continued to just stare at them.  He was calculating his odds if the space between the trucks and the Humvees turned into the OK Corral.

“There’s little kids on the trucks.”  Mikey said.  O’Donnell glanced over at him briefly then focused back on Jeff.

“Listen.  I’m all about helping the survivors.  They’re as American as you or me.  You say there are kids over on those trucks?  My men’s families are back at the base.  What do you think happens if I don’t follow orders?  How about we just take you prisoner and everyone else can drive away.  Trust me.  That’s a good deal.  It’s one I can’t promise I can make once the bullets start flying.  How about it?”  O’Donnell asked.

Jeff hated that he’d put himself and everyone with him in this position.  He’d known this might happen and he’d still given the order to drive onto the base.  He knew the location of every depot in the country.  His head was a treasure trove of information.  He could’ve helped all the survivors out there trying to fend for themselves.  It’d been the cause he’d devoted his professional career to.  All ruined because he’d gone against his instincts and driven onto the base.  If the President didn’t have the location to every depot already, he’d get them once he had Jeff on lock down.  It wasn’t like Jeff could hold out against torture.  No man could.

“I’ll go with you.  Let everybody else leave.”  Jeff said clearly.

“They’ll kill you.”  Drew said looking at Jeff like he was crazy.

“Probably.  Tell Yue I’ll miss her.  Tell her I said happy birthday.”  Jeff said.

“Why don’t you tell her yourself?  They don’t have to take you right now.”  Drew said.  Why the hell was Jeff bringing up Yue’s birthday?

“We kind of do.  I need you guys to turn around and head back to your trucks.  We’re not leaving here for a few hours.  If we see you once we leave then all bets are off.”  O’Donnell said.  He waved his arm in the air and one of his men ran over to where they were at.  The man pulled out a couple of zip tie cuffs and worked them over Jeff’s wrists.  Jeff made no move to stop him.

“What the hell!”  A loud feminine voice boomed out from the other side of the trucks.

“Tell them to get back in their trucks.  You all need to pack up and be gone.  I’m tight wire walking my orders right now by letting you go.”  O’Donnell said as his men took Jeff away.

“They’re taking Jeff prisoner, but we can leave!”  Mikey yelled back.

“Everyone needs to get back in the trucks and get out of here!  I’ll be fine!”  Yelled Jeff.  That was the last thing he said before a black hood was dropped over his head.  The last they saw of him he was being shoved into the back of one of the Humvees.  The soldier had to really work on bending him over to get him to fit.

Chapter 15:  The Journal

Walking backwards towards the trucks Drew’s heart was pumping a cold, dark rage through his body.  He wanted nothing more than to open fire on the men taking Jeff prisoner right in front of them.  The only thing holding him back was the thought of the kids sitting in the trailers.  Those trailer walls wouldn’t stop the high caliber rounds the special ops guys in front of them would start spewing out at the first sign of aggression.

“We outnumber them.”  Drew hissed out the side of his mouth.

“Don’t even think about it.  That one guy’s got a ma deuce sitting on the hood.  They’ll mow us down like we’re nothing.  Just be happy none of us died. Let’s try really hard not to do anything this stupid ever again.”  Mikey hoped his answer was enough to restrain his headstrong young friend.  This sucked but it could suck infinitely worse.

LeBron had his arms tightly wrapped around a struggling Yue.  She was still a little wobbly from her most recent concussion.  Otherwise, she’d have thrown her youngest brother off her and charged the Humvees to rescue Jeff.  She’d have ended up joining the corpse collection littering this field of the dead.

“Tell him to let me go!”  Yue yelled at Drew as he got close.

“I’m sorry Yue.  Jeff’s call.  He told us to leave him.  He said he’ll be fine.”  Drew answered.

“Everybody back in the trucks now!  We’re leaving!”  Mikey yelled to the refugees milling around.

“What about getting supplies?”  Tom asked loudly.

“How many of your people are you willing to lose to try and get access to a hole in the ground filled with crawlerz?”  Mikey asked him.  That shut Tom up.  He turned to climb back into the cab of the truck.

“Nope.  Get in the back.  LeBron and Yue can get in the cab with me.”  Gus said.  He wasn’t going to let this guy ride behind him again.  He had no desire to have another pistol shoved in his face.

LeBron helped an extremely agitated Yue up into the cab.  Gus ran around to the other side and climbed in.  He felt completely exposed as he wriggled up into the cage with his back to the enemy.  He breathed a huge sigh of relief when he was sitting in the driver’s seat once more.  Glancing over at the men aiming the large caliber weapons at them tensed him right back up.

In the lead truck Mikey and Drew climbed up into their seats.  Drew was still seething over Jeff being taken prisoner.  He was a million percent ready to unload every weapon they had in the general direction of the scumbags.  Not that any of the small arms they had would do much more than screw up the paint job on the Humvees.  Those things were built to withstand roadside bombs.

“Calm down man.  Jeff will be fine.  He’s too useful for them to whack.”  Mikey said.  He could tell Drew was close to doing something dumb.  He’d done enough dumb stuff himself to recognize the signs.

“There’s only six of them.”  Drew said again.

“Yeah.  Just six guys who strike me as the Delta Force type.  Against them we’ve got a pharmacist, two jarheads, a few scavenger families, LeBron and you.  Those aren’t the infected standing around out there.  Those guys can shoot back.  Those particular guys can shoot back extremely well.  We need to be not here before they change their mind about letting us go.”  Mikey quickly got the truck in gear and started pulling out of the field.  He really hoped Drew was buying what he was selling.

The men positioned behind the Humvees kept their weapons fixed on the two large trucks as they left.  They were ready to blow away the occupants at a signal from their captain.  O’Donnell was fine with letting the trucks go.  He chose to interpret his orders around killing off the refugees as more of a passive strategy.  As long as they weren’t actively trying to get into one of the government owned warehouses, he’d let them live.  They’d eventually die on their own in the field with no support anyway.

In the lead truck Mikey turned right on the road and silently drove in that direction.  Drew noted the direction they were going and was curious where Mikey’s head was at.  The only thing in this direction was the graveyard and the mountains.  He couldn’t imagine Mikey was in any hurry to return to the mountains.  They were lucky as hell to have made it out alive the first time.  He didn’t see why Mikey would think it was a good idea to push their luck a second time.

In the truck directly behind them Yue was trying to figure out why Gus had a blood covered unconscious guy in the sleeper section.  Gus explained that bit of trivia to her.  He was happy she seemed to have gained some level of control over her emotions.  Done with the explanation of how Tom and Jim had tried to shanghai the convoy Gus passed along Jeff’s birthday wishes.  Yue and LeBron both looked at him blankly.  Yue started sobbing again.

“He knows he’s never going to see me again.”  She managed to stutter out while LeBron and Gus tried to come up with something to say to reassure her.  Gus was stuck on trying to think of a nice way to say he didn’t think they’d torture him very much.

“Jeff knows all kinds of crap.  He organized all of this in the first place.  They’d be idiots to hurt him.  You notice they took him prisoner instead of just shooting him on the spot, right?  They also dispatched a crew of their finest.  You don’t dispatch a Delta team to apprehend a low value target.  He’s going to be fine.”  Gus laid it on as thick as he thought he could get away with.

“Jeff’s a smart guy but his memory is crap.  Yue’s birthday is like five months away.”  LeBron said.

“Yeah, that’s why he wrote everything down.”  Yue’s eyes suddenly popped wide open. She sat up so quickly she banged her head on the ceiling of the tiny sleeper compartment.

“You ok?”  LeBron asked her with concern.  Without an MRI they didn’t know if she had a fractured skull, a bruised brain, internal bleeding or just that nasty knot on her head.  She’d just hit the roof with that knot.  The look of excitement on her face yielded to one of disgust as her mouth filled up with bile.  She swallowed down the mouthful of puke and smiled at LeBron to show him she was fine.

“Did you just drink your own puke?”  LeBron asked.  A look of total disgust registered on his face.  They’d just been parked in a field full of rotting corpses and a little chunky backwash was what grossed him out?

“Hand me Jeff’s bag.”  Yue asked LeBron.

LeBron groped around on the floor before coming up with one of the green bags pilots used to carry their flight gear in.  They’d had a bunch of them in the back.  Jeff had claimed one to carry his junk around in.  The general assumption being it had extra undies and a toothbrush and stuff like that in there.  Not that anyone had really cared enough about the contents of Jeff’s green bag to make any assumptions.

There was one item in there that Yue was now desperate to get her hands on.  Jeff wouldn’t have wasted his last words to them for no reason.  She knew there had to be more to the birthday wish.  She hadn’t really considered it until Gus and LeBron reminded her of how smart Jeff was and what his role in all of this had been.  He’d even told her what he was doing when she asked.  He’d been trying to get everything out of his mind and down on paper.  Paper in this instance being a journal file in the iPad he’d grabbed out of a looted Apple store.

He couldn’t just write everything in a regular notebook because the information was beyond sensitive.  In a world full of demons and desolation Jeff was still worried about doing the right thing.  Thinking about that Yue almost went off on another crying jag.  She pulled herself together and took the bag from LeBron.  Digging through it she was freaked out for a minute when she couldn’t find the iPad.  Poking around she finally figured out Jeff had secured it in an inner pocket squeezed between a plastic wrapped pack of fresh tighty whiteys and socks.

“You were looking for his underwear?”  LeBron asked staring into the sleeper compartment at Yue.  He was trying to figure out what’d gotten her so excited.  He was also carefully monitoring her to see if bumping her head again was going to make her pass back out.  Jim chose that moment to speak up.

“What happened?  Ow.”  Jim sat up slowly rubbing the back of his head.  Dried blood falling down like giant flakes of red dandruff.

“Lay back down and shut up!”  Gus barked out from the front of the truck.  He was fully focused on keeping their tires aligned with the tracks Mikey was putting in the snow ahead of them.  He didn’t want to risk hitting any random ice patches.  He definitely didn’t feel like explaining what was going on to the idiot he’d almost beaten to death in the back of the truck.

Hearing Gus yelling at him reminded Jim that he was lucky to be alive.  He immediately shut up and tried to look as non-threatening as possible.  He wanted nothing to do with pissing off the Marine in the front seat again.

Yue carefully removed the iPad from the bag letting LeBron see it.  She wiggled it around to show him that he was a dumbass.  Why did he think she’d be looking for a pair of Jeff sized underwear?  He grinned back at her to show he’d been kidding.  Once her concussion induced befuddlement wore off, she’d be able to keep up with everything better.  For right now she just wanted to figure out what kind of secrets Jeff was trying to relay to them.  Hopefully he hadn’t been overly obtuse, or she’d have to wait until her hangover like headache went away.  Either that or hand the assignment over to LeBron to complete for her.  It’d be like high school calculus all over again.

She had to try twice but her birthdate did indeed turn out to be Jeff’s password.  She wasn’t sure if she’d fat fingered it the first time or just flipped the month and day.  She wondered why he’d chosen her birthday for his pin.  It dawned on her that with his bad memory he might’ve wanted to make sure he could remember her birthday.  Having it as a passcode would help it stick in his head.  That thought earned another harsh sob from her.  She took a deep breath, exhaled and composed herself to scan through the different apps on the device.

The one that immediately popped out at her was the notes app.  It wasn’t like Jeff would’ve been able to connect to the iCloud and pull down his old notes or anything.  He would’ve just been using the iPad to take notes on.  Now that she thought about it, she remembered him being all secretive about what he was doing on the table when he was standing watch.  Not that she’d really cared if he wanted to play Angry Birds while the crawlerz were trying to get in and kill them.  There wasn’t too much any of them could do to stop the infected if they did happen to figure out how to bash their way into the trailers.

Opening up the notes app she saw that Jeff had created individual note files for every state.  She started clicking through them. Most of them contained organized lists about supply depots and bases by state.  He also had notes for the Atlantic and the Pacific that were filled up with the names of ships she assumed were out at sea still.  There were also random ideas scattered throughout the note files.

In the Virginia entry he’d noted the idea of driving the infected down into the caverns.  Then immediately following that he’d written down his idea around the survivors moving into the caverns instead.  Finally, he’d circled the fact that they’d shipped tons of MREs to be stored in the naturally cool environment of those caverns.  What he’d failed to note was the exact location of the caverns he was talking about.  One of the bullet points said ‘Luray’ with a question mark to indicate he wasn’t sure how to spell it.

Yue was amused at the fact the Jeff used bullet points in his own private notes.  She saved that tidbit up to tease him about when she saw him again.  She fought back tears as she closed down the Virginia file and began looking at the Wyoming entry.  Jeff hadn’t written much in the Wyoming one, so she went back to the South Carolina entry.  Most of that file was around the warehouse they’d just been chased out of.  There was a street address in the entry with the words ‘ammo dump’ typed in underneath the address.  That sounded promising.

“Anything good?”  The question jolted Yue out of the little focus bubble she’d been in.  For a minute there she’d been able to lose herself in his notes and almost forget that Jeff wasn’t in the car with them.  He was sitting helplessly in the back of a Humvee with a black bag over his head.  The killers surrounding him in the car dispassionately transporting him back to their secret lair to torture and kill.

“Yeah.  A lot actually.”  Yue answered LeBron.  She handed him the iPad with the notes application open so he could see all the different files in there.  LeBron lost himself in studying the notes Jeff had created.  Occasionally he’d ask a question out loud and either Yue or Gus would try to answer it.  One of the times he asked neither of them knew the answer and Jim was able to supply it.  To his credit he supplied the answer and then then shut right back up.

“It looks like there’s places in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida we could try hitting up.”  LeBron said after he’d sorted through all of Jeff’s notes.  Yue had been mildly annoyed that LeBron had started his own set of notes to capture the information from Jeff’s notes.  Mostly because she felt like the iPad was her link to Jeff.  She had no doubt LeBron was the best one of them to sort through the data Jeff had left and come up with a plan.

“Where are we headed anyway?”  Yue asked Gus.

“We’re going back to that truck stop we spent the night at before on the way to the dam.  We didn’t get a chance to fill up our tanks back at the warehouse.  Mikey is hoping we can siphon some diesel out of the trucks we saw parked down in the lot last time.”  Gus answered.

Yue nodded.  That made sense.  Once they got the tanks filled up, they could figure out their next steps.  Worse case if the place was a bust, they still had plenty of diesel in the red gas containers in the back.  Now that they had Jeff’s notes they might even have someplace to go after they filled up.  She decided to leave all that up to Gus and LeBron for now.  Her head was pounding, and she was emotionally drained.  She lay back in the sleeper and put her head down on the one clean pillow she could find.  The fluffy little miracle had avoided most of the puke and blood that’d hosed down the back of the cab recently.

Chapter 16:  Riding the Avalanche

“Take his hood off for a second.”  O’Donnell ordered.  The soldier sitting next to Jeff in the back seat reached over and tugged on the rope holding the black bag around Jeff’s neck.  He pulled the bag over Jeff’s head.  A rattled looking Jeff looked around wildly.  His eyes wide with fear.  He wasn’t sure if they were pulling the bag off to kill or torture him or what.  He hoped it was just time to eat.

“When’s that girl’s birthday?”  O’Donnell asked.  He was closely studying Jeff’s face.  Jeff registered confusion then surprise.  Then he glanced to the side and O’Donnell could see he was trying to think up the best way to answer the question.  In other words, he’d been lying earlier.

“It’s sometime this week.  She’s just one of the girls we picked up.  We were trying to figure out how to make her a cake when we saw you guys in the parking lot.”  Jeff finally answered.  He seriously needed to work on his poker face.

“Put the bag back on him.”  O’Donnell said.  He knew now what’d been bothering him now.  The one thing he couldn’t let the refugees ride away with was any sort of data around where all of the depots were.  Jeff would’ve known not to fill up a spiral notebook with all of his secrets.  An iPad or a laptop or something was a different story though.

O’Donnell checked his watch.  He’d noted when the trucks had rolled out.  He’d really hoped to avoid having to do this, but he didn’t see any way around it.  If those yahoos started showing up at all the hidden supply caches it wouldn’t take a genius to trace it back to him letting them go.  He wasn’t going to let his family suffer for his mistake.  He gave the order to his men to mount up. A few minutes later they fishtailed the Humvees out of the field in hot pursuit of the big rigs.

A hundred miles away in a massive truck stop parking lot Drew and Mikey were working on the best way to siphon diesel out of the trucks parked there.  They’d found a handful that still had plenty of fuel in their tanks.  A lot of them were down to fumes where they’d either already been siphoned or the driver had burned up all the fuel by leaving the engine running.  The broken glass and blood-stained concrete telling the story of what’d played out in more than a few of the trucks.  The truckers being some of the last people in the country still working when the infected swept in.  They’d been getting paid the big bucks to move supplies around right up until the end.

Determined to get every drop of diesel possible Mikey topped off their own tanks with the canisters they had in the back.  Once their tanks were full then they filled those cannisters back up again.  Using a hose and the power of their lungs they were soon down to just three trucks left with full tanks.  They were completely out of cannisters to fill up though.  They didn’t want to go in the store and risk being attacked by whatever may have taken up residence.  They’d already heard something moving in the sleeper section of one of the trucks they’d investigated.  They were giving that one a very wide berth for now.

“What about checking the trailers?”  Drew asked.  Mikey wanted to smack himself in the head.  Why the hell were they not checking the trailers?

“I’ll grab the loppers.  These things could be filled with all kinds of goodies.”  Mikey said in an excited voice.  He was envisioning a trailer filled with MREs or bottled water or maybe even toilet paper!

The backs of their trailers were opened to let in some fresh air.  All of the occupants knew they needed to stay quiet so as not to attract any unwanted attention.  To check all of the trailers and then quickly transport anything they found they were going to need all hands-on deck.

Mikey recruited a couple of teenage girls to climb up the sides of their trailer and sit on top as lookouts. One of them was Lisa. She smiled down at Drew and gave him a quick wave from the top of the trailer.

“I don’t understand how everybody is hooking up around here except me.”  Mikey said poking Drew in the side as he walked by.  Drew started to joke back with Mikey then realized Lisa’s dad had heard the hooking up comment. The father of his love interest was once again staring daggers at him.

“I’m not getting any love either if it makes you feel any better.”  Gus said.  He had disappeared into the truck and reappeared with three sets of the big loppers.  They were useful for getting through locked gates, into locked sheds and breaking into the backs of trucks.  They were an apocalyptic necessity item.

“Yeah, but you’re ugly.  You probably weren’t getting any before the crawlerz showed up.”  Mikey responded grabbing a set of the cutters from Gus.

The first truck took two of them pressing on either side of the lopper to severe the heavy-duty padlock holding it closed.  Once they’d finally managed to get the doors opened, they were less than impressed to find the thing was loaded down with pallets of building material and blankets.  Once Mikey was done tossing out screw jokes, they loaded some of the blankets onto their truck and moved on.

Gus and LeBron had opened up the trailer next to them.  It was filled with boxes of dry goods.  They quickly put together a line to move the boxes over to their own truck.  LeBron was hoping everyone on board really liked macaroni and cheese.  If so, they were in for a delightful few months.  The crew with the third set of loppers had opened up a trailer that was filled with items that turned out to belong in the freezer section.  Without power the meat had all rotted.  An invisible wall of stench hit them hard enough to drive one woman to her knees dry heaving.  They quickly shut that door and moved on to the next truck.

“There are cars coming!”  Lisa yelled down.  All work immediately stopped.

“How many?”  Drew yelled up to her.  She squinted for a second before replying there were two.

“Can we fight them?”  LeBron asked Mikey.  It had to be the Delta guys coming after them.  They’d all hoped the men had been honest when they’d said they’d let them go.  They’d hoped that while at the same time pushing the big trucks as fast as they’d go.  They‘d wanted to load up on supplies and gas and get down the road as far away from those deadly men as possible.

“We can try.”  Mikey answered doubtfully.

“Everybody in the trucks!  Leave the back doors open!  Best shooters near the back of the trailer.  Hide the kids towards the front.  Move now!”  Gus yelled.  He turned and ran towards the front of the truck while everyone else dropped what they were doing to jump in the back.  Lisa and the other lookout scrambled down from the tops of the trailers.

“Plan?”  Mikey asked Gus before he’d climbed up into his seat.

“More of an idea really.  We drive kind of slow down the road right next to one another so the Humvees can’t get past us.  We leave the back doors open.  The guys in the back are pelting the windows of the Humvees with rounds.  Hopefully it makes them back off.  If not, then maybe we get lucky and kill them.  Just don’t let them get around us cause then we’re seriously screwed.”  Gus answered.

“We’re all going to die.”  Mikey told Drew when he got into the cab with him.  On the little walkie he heard Gus telling the people in the trailers what to do.

“It’s all good.  We’ve got a pharmacist leading a bunch of white collars against a group of pissed off elite Delta soldiers.  We’ve also only got another hour or two of daylight left.”  Drew drawled out.

With a lurching jerk Mikey pulled them out of the parking lot.  Gus followed him out then instead of getting behind him like normal he pulled up right beside him.  Riding side by side like that they blocked off pretty much the entire road.  There was room to get by them on the shoulders but with the snow it’d be pretty risky.  You never knew what the snow was hiding.

Drew was leaning out his window with his rifle ready to go.  That wasn’t going to be super useful unless the Delta team tried to drive in between the two trucks.  That didn’t seem likely, but you never knew.  Drew was hoping he’d be able to take some shots once they got moving.  He knew that himself, LeBron, Yue and the two Marines were probably the best shooters in the whole group.  Somehow their best shooters had all ended up in places they wouldn’t be able to shoot from.  Drew was kicking himself for not hopping in the back of the trailer with the others.  They could’ve sent some of the little kids up to shelter in the cab.

Drew relayed his concerns to Mikey.  They talked about it while Mikey stared in the side mirror waiting for his first glimpse of the enemy.  The men in the back had reported they were in position.  If the Delta didn’t show up pretty soon, they were thinking about stopping so Drew could swap positions with some of the kids.  Assuming nothing happened to screw up their visibility they should be able to see the Humvees coming at a reasonable distance.  It was a cold, dreary dark day.  The big grey clouds overhead making it seem later than it really was.

“They’re coming.”  The simple announcement sent chills up Drew’s spine.  In the truck next to them LeBron looked over to signal they’d received the message as well.  His face was somber and serious. He hoped he was doing a good job of hiding the fear running rampant through him.

“Do we just have them shoot the windows out?”  Drew asked Mikey.  He was looking between the two trucks to try and catch a glimpse of the enemy.

“That’s the idea.  On those up armored Humvees the glass is the only real weak spot.  We don’t have rockets or anything.  Those would be a really nice to have right now.  If those are the expensive up armored ones we’re screwed.  Those things can keep right on going after you hit them with an RPG.  If they’re the cheaper ones we might survive.  Tell them to toss some grenades and see if that slows the bastards down.”  Mikey said.  He quickly added that Drew may have to walk them through the process of how to toss the grenades.  Otherwise, the Delta guys would pull the pins out and throw them back at them.

“The windows on them are bullet proof then?  How about the tires?”  Drew asked trying to think of someway they could win this fight.

“Nothing is bullet proof.  They’re just very bullet resistant.  The really nice up armored ones might as well be bullet proof though.  It’s like the difference between a twenty-dollar Timex being water resistant or a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex Submariner being waterproof.  The tires are made out of Kevlar and ride like they have fix a flat permanently being injected into them.”  Mikey answered.

Drew forgot to ask Mikey how he knew about ten-thousand-dollar Rolexes when the first grenade went off behind them.  The walkie immediately squawking to life to let them know the man who’d thrown it had waited too long.  It’d blown up in the air about twenty feet behind the truck and peppered half their own people with shrapnel.  The panic and fear in the voice of the man transmitting was unmistakable.  Against the unflappable half dozen professional killers chasing them they were doomed.

The snow started coming down harder.  Looking out the open trailer doors Tom noted it was covering up the Humvees windshield making it harder for them to drive.  With a hole in his hand from a flying piece of red-hot shrapnel Tom grabbed a box of macaroni and cheese and tossed it at the Humvee.  It smashed into the windshield and flew off.  Undeterred Tom kept slinging stuff out until a blanket actually covered the whole windshield.  The Humvee slowed and pulled off to the side.  The SUV on steroids quickly disappearing in the swirling snowstorm that’d crept up on them.

In the Humvee the driver told the passenger to jump out and pull the blanket off.  The special forces operator hastened to comply.  O’Donnell pulled over as well.  His passenger hopped out quickly to put some bullets downrange.  The expert sniper stood tall with a heavy barreled AR-15 snapping off shot after shot.  He put rounds into the center of the red brake lights until the trucks disappeared into the blizzard.  He might not hit anybody but hopefully it’d discourage the blanket throwing party.

Two bullets slamming into the window right beside his head surprised O’Donnell enough for him to jump halfway into the passenger seat.  The heavy-duty bullet proof glass was pretty solid but when struck at the right angle it’d shatter.  Having two bullets hit right there was enough to make most men’s knees turn to water.  The captain looked over and saw that it was his own man who’d fired the shots.

The man had a crawler lying on top of him.  That explained why he was waving his pistol around taking random shots.  Another set of feet were disappearing rapidly into the open passenger door of the other Humvee.  A third crawler was poised to jump in the Humvee in hot pursuit.  O’Donnell ripped his pistol out of the holster and aimed it at his own open passenger door.  In front of him the sniper was slammed to the hood.  Two crawlerz were trying to bite him anywhere he wasn’t covered in Kevlar.

Another crawler appeared in the open passenger door.  O’Donnell drilled a hole through its head and screamed for the soldier in the back to get the door shut.  The man was going for the door when another crawler appeared.  The Delta operator and the crawler tussled for a second before the crawler’s neck was opened up.  A pint of steaming hot blood making a watery path from the passenger seat down to the snowy ground.  The Delta dropped his combat knife into the front passenger seat and grabbed the door.  He tried to whip it closed but the bottom of the door got stuck on the body of the crawler he’d just killed.

O’Donnell was covering his man as the desperate soldier struggled to clear the doorway.  The two crawlerz who’d attacked the sniper on the hood of the car had disappeared.  The Delta they’d tackled was no longer visible either.  The unfortunate sniper was either dead or turned.  O’Donnell sensed where those crawlerz probably were going and shouted out a warning. The soldier in the passenger seat was pulling out his pistol when the crawlerz crowded in on him.  He killed them both but took a few bites in the process.  With a large bleeding gash on his cheek, he stepped out of the car.  He calmly pulled the dead bodies out of the way that‘d been blocking the door.  He leaned in to ask the captain to tell his wife and kids he loved them.  That last request filed he slammed the door shut and began shooting at the other crawlerz in the area.

Just like that it was only O’Donnell and Jeff left in the vehicle.  O’Donnell knew his higher priority mission took precedence at this point.  He ignored Jeff begging him to tell him what was happening and did a quick three-point turn.  As he was ready to leave the man who’d been in the backseat slammed his face into the windshield.  The newly turned surger clawed at the smooth glass trying desperately to get in.  With a heavy heart O’Donnell drove past his former report and continued back the way they’d come from.  Jeff sank back into his seat.  His wrist securely fastened to a bracket in the armrest.

Completely ignorant of what’d just happened in the swirling snow behind them Gus and Mikey kept driving much faster than was safe into the howling storm.  The men in back began spotting the first crawlerz scrambling through the snow trying to catch them. On the radio they requested permission to shut the doors.  In the cabs they knew if the crawlerz started hitting the cages they were doomed.  Permission was given to shut the doors.  Mikey took the lead and Gus fell in behind him.  The road had gotten too dark and slippery for them ride in parallel any longer.

With Delta behind them and crawlerz starting to come out of the woodwork their only choice was to drive fast and kill anything that moved.  Out here in the middle of nowhere lost in a blizzard they might survive.  As long as the cages held, and the Delta killers didn’t catch up to them anyway.  Eyes glued to the road Mikey made a beeline for the mountains.  No way would anyone be stupid enough to follow them where they were going.  It was basically suicide in this weather.

Chapter 17:  Pass the Mac

“The sun’s up.”  LeBron nudged Yue awake.  She’d passed out at some point during the endless night.  LeBron hadn’t noticed exactly when.  He’d been pretty occupied with watching out for crawlerz.  He’d shot three of them off the cage.  Gus had rolled down his window to shoot two of them as well.  They were both stoked they hadn’t needed to shoot through the windshield.  They’d heard Mikey and Drew gripe enough about their missing windshield to make them very protective of theirs.

Mikey put the big rig in park and made sure the brakes were applied.  Truck safely parked they climbed down to take a look around and stretch their legs.  After taking turns making yellow snow they headed for the back of the trailer.  Walking slowly with eyes wide open for any strange mounds of snow or movement underneath the trailer they made their way to the back.  They banged on the door to let the people inside know they’d made it back there without any issues.  There were a couple of loud screeches as the metallic poles locking the doors from the inside were pulled up.

The men who opened the door looked exhausted.  They were a lot better off than the dead body they’d duct taped into a blanket though.  Knowing anything he said would come out as cavalier and uncaring Drew kept his mouth shut.  The corpse in the blanket was the man who’d thrown a grenade on the count of six.  It could’ve just been a defective frag grenade but Drew kind of doubted it based on having talked to the man before.  He hadn’t struck him as the sharpest knife in the drawer.  He’d thought the man could at least master counting to three though.

On top of getting himself killed with his horrible counting skills the moron had also fragged everyone near the back of both trailers.  The grenade exploded in the air right between them sending a cloud of shiny metal death bits into both.  No one else had suffered any life-threatening injuries.  Multiple people did now have interesting scars though.

Tom reiterated that after throwing the blankets at the Humvee he hadn’t seen any additional sign of their pursuers.  They’d only had the doors open another five minutes or so before the road had started filling up with crawlerz though.  At the first sign of those things, they’d shut and secured the rear doors.  With Jeff no longer around the first chance someone got to hit up a hardware store for the right drill bit there were going to be peep holes all over the place.  Riding blind in the back was a horrifying experience.  Almost as bad as having to open the doors in the morning without knowing if there was something standing out there waiting to rip your head off.

LeBron and Gus joined them on the snow-covered highway.  Tom was making the rounds checking in on everyone who’d been hit by the shrapnel.  He gave them pain pills or antibiotics or both depending on what he thought they needed.  He had a whole pack full of different drugs he thought may come in handy.  He’d already fended off Mikey inquiring what he had from an OxyContin type persuasion.  Too many people had already killed themselves trying to shield their minds from the horrors of this new normal.

Tom would freely provide antidepressants to people who needed them.  He’d be the first one to tell you that he was nowhere close to a licensed psychiatrist.  When the person asking for help was a mother who’d shot two of her own children to save a third it didn’t take a fancy college degree to figure out that she was dealing with some serious mental issues.  Anything he could do to help he did.  As a pharmacist he’d seen the ravages of opioid addiction firsthand long before the apocalypse came along.  Due to that experience, he kept an eye on his people to make sure they didn’t overdo it.

“It’s freezing out here.”  LeBron said.  Gus gave him a horrified look.  Too late LeBron realized what he’d just said.  Now they were going to have to hear the whole sob story about Mikey and Drew driving around windowless all night long.

They were saved by Tom asking them to help get the body of the world’s worst grenadier out of the truck.  Handling that gruesome task sidetracked them for a good ten minutes.  Once they had the body sitting beside the road there was a brief discussion of what to do with it.  Normally they’d have poured some diesel over the corpse and burned it.  In addition to Mikey and Drew being pretty greedy with the diesel they were also worried about sending a big cloud of black smoke into the air.  Might as well put a red dot on a map and write ‘we are here’ right next to it.

Sadly enough no one had any real attachment to the dead guy.  The man had joined up with them by himself.  No one had bothered digging too much into his past.  He did what he was asked to do and didn’t break any of the group’s rules.  That was good enough for most of them.  Good enough to earn him a spot at the table but not good enough for anyone to care how he was buried.  Drew walked around in the woods until he stumbled across what was left of a rock fence half buried by the snow.  Rather than attempt to dig a grave in the frozen rocky soil they piled rocks over the corpse.  Without any additional ceremony they left him to spend eternity duct taped inside an itchy wool blanket.  Not that the corpse cared.  Funerals are for the living.

“Now what?”  Drew asked after they’d finished the burial detail.  Tom had made a halfhearted effort to say a few words over the pile of rocks.  The people standing around hadn’t really cared too much.  That might have had something to do with half of them having been maimed in some way by the failed grenade toss.

“I’m hoping we can avoid burying anybody else for a few days at least.”  Tom said walking over to where the four of them were standing.

“I wonder how come the Delta dudes haven’t caught up to us yet?  This snow shouldn’t have been a big deal for them.  They had our tracks to follow plus they’re riding on the most expensive all weather tires it’s possible to buy.”  Gus said.  He wasn’t disappointed in the least bit that those killers hadn’t caught up to them yet.  He knew they were insanely lucky that all of them weren’t stacked in a big pile with rocks being piled on top of their dead bodies.

“Maybe they turned around?”  LeBron said wishfully.

“Yeah.  They didn’t want to risk having any more blankets thrown at them.  Maybe they figured if they left us alone, we’d just blow ourselves up with grenades anyway.”  Drew said.  He looked around at the small group staring at him.  He’d said it kind of loud.

“Too soon?”  Drew asked with his hands spread apart.  Everyone went back to doing what they were doing.

“You’re an idiot.”  Yue said walking up.  She’d woken up to the smell of Jim’s feet.  She’d decided on the way out of the truck that if the man was well enough to get his shoes and socks off without help then he was well enough to be shoved into the trailer.  She had no desire to be out of bed right now. Between the smell and seeing the brain trust below working on a plan she’d felt like she had no choice.  LeBron was the only one she trusted to make a good decision.  The problem with him was that he wouldn’t necessarily voice his opinion.  He’d roll right along with an idea he knew was horrible to avoid confrontation.

“Hey!  Good to see you up and only semi-wobbly!  How’s the head?”  Drew asked.

Everyone took a turn asking if she felt ok.  Tom took it a step further and stared into her eyes for a few seconds before admitting he hadn’t done any physical exams like that since college.  Having dispensed with the pleasantries they got down to business.  The first thing they needed to decide is where exactly they were going.  After five minutes of talk not getting them anywhere Yue asked LeBron to lay out their alternatives for them.  She knew he’d have already parsed all the data and come up with some semblance of a plan.  She needed to give him a forum to share it with the group before the group decided to do something stupid.

LeBron walked them through their present state to get them all on the same page.  They were parked in the middle of a snow-covered mountain road.  Up ahead were the mountains where they’d probably end up stuck and either freeze or starve to death.  Somewhere behind them were two Humvees loaded down with deadly warriors who wanted to kill them.  They didn’t know why the Delta team hadn’t already caught and killed them.  LeBron was theorizing that the Deltas must’ve either been swarmed by crawlerz or turned back so as not to risk losing Jeff.  Jeff being their high value objective.

“Are you saying we should turn around and go back the way we came?”  Tom asked.  His face was still an angry shade of purplish yellow from where Jeff had manhandled him the day before.  Looking back on it he saw where he deserved it and didn’t harbor any hard feelings towards Jeff’s companions.  At least not as related to that incident.

“He’s saying we can either risk freezing to death or getting shot.  Getting shot seems less likely since those guys should’ve caught and killed us by now.  Something must’ve happened to spin them around or something.”  Mikey said.  LeBron nodded fervently along with Mikey’s summarization of what he’d outlined.

“We’ve got a ton of diesel, snow chains and enough mac and cheese to last a month without even rationing it.  Can we at least think about the whole driving forward plan?  We could always hole up somewhere and eat bowls of Kraft until the snow melted.”  Gus said.

“Do we have bowls?”  Drew asked.

“Let’s say we get past the lack of glassware.  I don’t know if the snow melts at the top of those passes or not.  We’d have to worry about avalanches to.  All of that aside there’s a few addresses in Jeff’s notes for bases in Tennessee.  Those could be deserted holes in the ground full of crawlerz and food like the one we just left.  Or they could be active bases that the Delta team could’ve reached out to.  We might make it all the way across the mountains and then get blown away by some guy with an RPG and orders to shoot on sight.”  LeBron said.  Those were all good points.  That was the reason Yue had gotten out of the truck to make sure they gave LeBron plenty of stage time.  There was also the issue with Jim’s feet needing to be condemned.  They were really bad.

“Do we flip around now, or should we wait?  Even if they left to make sure they got Jeff wherever he needed to be they might have left the other guys to make sure we didn’t double back.”  Mikey said thoughtfully.

The discussion continued until they decided to find a place to park that gave them some cover in case the Delta guys showed up.  They’d give it a full day then head back the way they’d come from.  They all felt like that was the right window of time to wait.  Too short and the guard left behind may still be sitting there.  Too long and the President may dispatch someone else to look for them.  At the end of the long conversation Yue felt like it’d been productive.  She was exhausted from the effort of standing up in the cold air for so long.  LeBron and Gus helped her back up into the sleeper where she passed back out regardless of the stench wafting off of Jim’s sewer feet.

The rest of them got in the trucks and drove another mile until they came to an exit with a small gas station outside a large plaza.  There wasn’t much else in sight, so they parked by the station and setup for the day.  The propane heaters were used to melt snow in large pots to make the mac and cheese.  A few cans of vegetables and some other random food were circulated as well.  Everyone kept their conversations to a minimum to avoid attracting any unwanted guests.  Looking around at the dilapidated buildings with the shattered storefronts told them all they wouldn’t find anything but death inside these stores.

The refugees all accepted this pitstop as natural.  The Marines, Drew and LeBron were a bit weirded out to not have anything pressing to do.  Sitting around eating noodles covered in powdered cheese sauce while a bunch of kids silently played games in the back of the trailer was surreal to them.  Normally they were going a million miles per hour with their hair on fire.  Sitting around in the middle of the day with nothing to do just felt wrong.

To give themselves something to do they setup a watch schedule that had people wrapping themselves in blankets and sitting on the roof of the trailer for two hours apiece.  With that bit of activity knocked out they decided to clear the gas station and see if there was anything useful in there.  They’d thought about clearing the entire plaza but didn’t want to get too far from the trucks in case some threat showed up where they were needed.  Ensuring they had fully loaded magazines Gus and Mikey grabbed Drew and headed for the station.

Up in the cab of the truck LeBron saw the trio headed for the station and instantly intuited what they were doing.  What he couldn’t figure out was why they were doing it.  They had plenty of supplies in the back.  They had plenty of diesel.  You could never have enough ammunition, but it wasn’t like they were going to find anymore inside the gas station.  They were basically risking their lives for the hell of it.  They were also putting everyone else’s lives in in danger.  If they fired their weapons it could attract surgers now and would ensure they were surrounded by crawlerz later.  If the morons got themselves killed no one else knew how to drive the trucks.  A seriously wound-up LeBron worked his way down out of the warm cab.  He’d miss the warmth, but he could definitely stand getting away from Jim’s foot foulness for a few minutes.

Gus, Mikey, and Drew stared through the shattered front windows of the service station.  The only thing visible inside was a pile of metal shelves haphazardly knocked around.  The smell that invaded their nostrils from the inside was of vaguely spoiled meat and vomit.  Seeing nothing of real value they walked along the storefront to see if maybe there was something they could see from a different angle.  They were mostly just killing time.

“Hey!  You guys know taking risks like this puts everybody in danger, right?”  LeBron hissed at them.  The three of them spun around startled then looked guiltily at LeBron.  All of them absolutely knew better.  They just didn’t care.

“What do you think’s going to happen exactly?  We’re just looking at a building we’re parked next to.  Someone has to scout it out and make sure it’s safe.”  Drew said in their defense.

The pile of metal shelves inside the store exploded with a loud squeal.  Two shadowy forms hurled themselves at the group of people they’d heard right outside the window.  The three men had all turned around to address LeBron when he showed up.  One of the shadows collided with a jagged piece of metal sticking out of a window frame. The crawler slashed its arm from wrist to armpit.  It fell across the windowsill.  Rather than lay draped across the concrete opening it continued to crawl forward as its lifeblood was pumped onto the dirty concrete walkway.

The other crawler bowled into the backs of Mikey and Gus sending them both to the ground.  The two Marines instantly bounced back to their feet with weapons in hand.  The crawler turned towards Gus and lunged.  Gus jumped to the side and stabbed as hard as he could where he thought the crawler should be.  His knife carved a useless path through thin air.  Looking around he saw the crawler staring at the outline of the sun behind the clouds.  Mikey jumped on its back bearing it to the ground.  He stabbed it repetitively in the side.  Drew stepped in and curb stomped the thing’s face until it’s teeth had all broken out.

After they’d stabbed and beaten it to death Mikey rolled off it. They all stood around gasping for air.  Hearts racing, they grinned at one another.  They’d gotten the rush they’d been seeking.  LeBron looked at all of them in disgust.  That they’d risk so much then make light of it was beyond him.  Sick of the three of them he stormed back to the cab where he said nothing about what’d happened to Yue.  Instead, he put his head back on the seat and tried to take a nap himself.  It was going to be another long night.

Chapter 18:  Bullets, Blood, and a Blizzard

First thing in the morning they got the trucks turned around and started back the way they’d come.  Mikey and Drew sitting in the cab of the first truck with Lisa’s dad sitting behind them.  Drew had been irritated at first when he realized Lisa wasn’t going to be joining them.  He got it when her dad told him it was because they might be driving headfirst into an ambush.  It also turned out to be an opportunity the dad had been looking for to lay into the two of them for checking out the station the day before.

“You both realize we need you right?  Mikey, nobody else can drive these trucks.  At least not as good as you.  Drew, my daughter likes you for some reason or other. You seem like you may be an ok guy but why keep doing stupid stuff like you did yesterday?  What if she’d been with you?  Why take risks you don’t need to take.  It’s immature and asinine.”  The dad said.

Drew and Mikey both did their best to look contrite.  Mikey wanted the old dude to shut up and Drew wanted to be able to hang out with Lisa again.  Neither of them felt in the least bit chastised by the white-collar dressing down they’d just received.  Drew had been yelled at way more by coaches and even his own dad.  Not to mention the verbal abuse he’d taken in some of the foster homes he’d gotten stuck in.  Mikey had been verbally destroyed by the drill instructors on Parris Island.  This guy with the rapidly receding hairline crouched in the backseat sporting a freaking sweater vest didn’t even register on his radar.

“Understood sir.  It was stupid for sure.  I think the three of us learned our lesson there.”  Drew said.  He hoped that ended it.  He knew Mikey was trying to help him out with the dad. He was worried though since it was a guessing game how long Mikey would be able to contain his true self.  He was kind of surprised the brash jarhead had lasted as long as he had.

“Yeah, it was absolutely asinine.”  Mikey said.  He kept a straight face for like five seconds before he started giggling.  It was a little concerning since he was driving a big truck around a curve covered in ice and snow at the same time.

Drew bit his own tongue to keep himself from laughing as well.  If anyone said the word ‘asinine’ again he was going to lose it.  He wanted to look in the back and say something to the dad. If he saw the guy’s sweater vest, he was going to start cackling like an idiot though.  Mikey had done a whole routine around the sweater vest the day before that’d almost made him pee himself.

“Up there!”  The dad yelled pointing through the busted windshield.  A vehicle was parked across the road about a hundred yards ahead.  They were coming up on it fast.  It didn’t take but a second or two to verify it was a Humvee waiting for them.  Drew was wondering what they should do when they started taking incoming rounds.  He saw little spurts of flame where rifles were firing at them.  He turned to warn Lisa’s dad to get down.

Her dad was lying on his stomach choking on his own blood.  By the time Drew turned his head to shout a warning a bullet had ripped the man’s throat apart.  The sweater vest was drenched in blood.

”Get down and hang on!”  Mikey yelled.

Drew ducked down under the dashboard as far as he could go.  Mikey ducked down as well.  Bullets were ripping the inside of the cab apart.  They weren’t slowing down though.  Mikey had the pedal to the metal and was screaming out a challenge to the men hurling lead at them.  The truck hit something and there was a momentary feeling of weightlessness before they crashed down to the ground.  Blackness came in around the edges of Drew’s eyes and gradually spread to cover his whole vision as he drifted into unconsciousness.

He came to and saw that Mikey was carefully climbing out the windshield.  Lisa’s dad’s body had somehow bounced out of the sleeper and was draped across Drew.  Mikey stopped crawling and stared out at someone.  Drew watched as his friend started fumbling around his waist for something.  He was probably going for his gun.  There were a couple of loud pops and Mikey stopped moving.  The anger at the death of his friend motivated Drew to find his own weapon.  His pistol was right where it should be.  He had no idea where his rifle was.  He felt the corpse draped over him slide around.

Drew looked through the arm pit of the body splayed across him. There was a soldier standing there looking around the side of the flipped over cab.  The man had shot Mikey and then noticed the sweater vest wearing dead body of Lisa’s dad covering up the passenger seat.  With his neck blown out and blood all over him he looked extremely dead.  The soldier took a few tentative steps around the side of the cab away from where Drew was.  The sound of gunfire drove him back to the front of the cab.

Drew stuck his pistol out the shattered windshield. With his arm trembling he pulled the trigger twice.  The first shot hit the soldier in the arm spinning him around in a half circle.  The next one hit him in the neck right above the body armor he was wearing.  He should’ve thrown on a Kevlar necktie while he was at it.  Drew saw the man’s eyes widen with surprise at being shot.  His dying thoughts centered around how he’d been stupid enough to leave the cab uncleared behind him.  Drew felt a ferocious pride in his chest at taking out the man who’d popped his friend Mikey.  The feeling of vengeance fulfilled wasn’t enough to keep him from blacking out again a couple of seconds later.  His pistol tumbling uselessly into the blood drenched snow.

Drew woke back up to the muffled sound of sporadic gunfire.  Wondering how long he’d been out he carefully maneuvered the corpse of his girlfriend’s dad to the side so he could sit up.  Ignoring the aches and pains his body was throwing at him he stuck his head up far enough to see out the window.  The soldier he’d shot was covered in a thin layer of snow. The dark sky was dumping more of the white stuff everywhere.  It was swirling down thick enough that visibility was limited to under ten feet.  By squinting he could make out a rectangular shape that looked like it might be a Humvee up on its side in the distance.  Muzzle flashes from that direction forced him to drop quickly back out of sight.

Realizing he’d lost his pistol he dug around in the cab looking for weapons.  He took the pistol and rifle off Lisa’s dad.  He found his own rifle after a little bit of searching.  He was planning to rush out through the window firing the AK-47 in the direction of the Humvee then sprint to safety behind the truck.  The truck was resting at an angle that should provide him with some solid cover once he got around it.

Mustering his strength, he climbed out the wrecked window and collapsed to the ground in full view of anyone who happened to be looking.  Rather than firing the AK and sprinting for safety he found himself inching through the snow on his belly hoping no one noticed him.  A full-scale battle was raging around him.  Drew kept his head down and continued to crawl towards the side of the truck.  As he got closer, he saw a rifle muzzle stick out and fire off a few rounds in the direction of the Humvee.  Return fire pinged off the side of the overturned big rig.  Drew buried his face in the cold, snow covered earth shaking with fear.  Too battered, scared and traumatized to continue moving he kept crawling anyway.  He wasn’t capable of giving up.

Hands reached out to grab him. Sliding easily across the snow he was pulled to safety.  LeBron squatted in front of him asking if anyone else was alive.  He shook his head thinking about how he’d left Lisa’s dad in a bloody pile on the side of the seat like a bag full of used fast-food wrappers.  Tears in his eyes he told LeBron that everyone was dead.  He’d ducked when Mikey told him to duck.  LeBron cradled his head and let Drew vent out some of those emotions.  They were in a serious time crunch though.  LeBron hoisted Drew up and began dragging him back to the second truck.  A few men stayed behind to keep the Delta Team from advancing on the trailer and killing everyone while it got turned around.

LeBron half-dragged, half-carried Drew all the way to the back of the second truck’s trailer.  Yue came and met them there helping LeBron get Drew hoisted up and laid down on a sleeping bag.  She looked him over and announced he’d live.  Quickly giving Drew a sisterly kiss on the forehead she told LeBron to get back in the front of the truck. It was time for Gus to get them the hell out of there.  She immediately turned around and went back to caring for the others in the trailer with worse injuries than Drew.  Drew had already curled into a miserable looking shell-shocked ball of pained grief on the thick sleeping bag. Their lives all depended on Gus getting them moving in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.  He hopped out of the trailer and sprinted towards the front of the truck.

Running through the slippery snow knowing a bullet could hit you at any time sucks.  He didn’t think whoever had ambushed them was necessarily aiming for the second truck already, but it wasn’t like they were trying to be careful either.  LeBron slid under the cage like he was a big leaguer scoring a home run in the world series.  Popping up through the access hatch he yelled for Gus to get them out of there as fast as he could.

“I saw you dragging Drew back.  He ok?  How’s Mikey?”  Gus asked.

“Drew’s ok.  Mikey didn’t make it.  We’ve got to go now!”  LeBron said.  He was trying unsuccessfully not to sound completely freaked out.  Gus gave himself a second to reflect on the loss of a friend.  When they’d seen the truck in front of them accelerate into the ambush Gus had known exactly what Mikey was doing.  He’d also known he’d most likely never see Mikey again.

That tactic of charging at an enemy like that was sound military doctrine given the situation.  The distinctive sound of the Ma Deuce chugging away had told Gus they’d be lucky if any of them walked away from this.  Mikey had sacrificed himself to buy them that luck. He’d held on long enough to hit the enemy Humvee with the only weapon they had that’d hurt it.  With the pedal down on an eighteen-wheel juggernaut weighing in at around forty tons he was going to do some serious damage.  No matter how up armored the Humvee might be the laws of physics still applied.

“I’ll start turning around.  I need those guys to keep laying down suppressing fire to keep the ambushers off of us.  I need them to fall back at the same time.  Otherwise, I’m leaving them once we get turned around.  The whole trailer will be exposed to whoever has that machine gun.  I’m not sitting around waiting while everybody in the back gets shredded.”  Gus said.  He was working the big rig dangerously close to the steep inclines on each side of them as he tried to get them turned around.  It was only the second time he’d ever put one of the trucks in reverse.

LeBron started to broadcast the plan with the walkie talkie.  He was actually holding it up to his mouth when he realized the enemy may be listening in.  It wasn’t like they had guys who could speak dead Native American languages or something.  Most of them could barely even use professional sounding radio lingo without the people around them giggling.  Instead of announcing their plans in plain English to anyone in the area with a radio LeBron pushed open the passenger side door.  He told Gus he’d be right back and dropped back down to the snow-covered road.  He had to time it for when Gus hit the brakes for the fiftieth time trying to complete a hundred-point turn.

He ran towards the small knot of men standing on the side of the overturned truck up ahead.  When he reached them, he panted out the plan.  The men got it immediately.  They got in position and started sending a lot of bullets in the general direction of where they assumed the bad guys were.  LeBron unclipped a bandolier he had with some extra magazines and a couple of grenades clipped to it.  He handed it to one of the men who looked like he might be running low.  The man nodded his thanks and ran back towards the overturned cab of the truck.

Before he could get in position there was a loud explosion and a big puff of white.  LeBron couldn’t tell at first if it was smoke or snow getting thrown in the air.  The man he’d just handed the bandolier fell to the ground with a blood covered face.  He wasn’t rolling around or screaming in pain or anything, so LeBron assumed he was dead.  Next to him a woman had collapsed to the ground.  She’d dropped her hunting rifle and was holding her leg.  The two other men helping hold down their position tossed their last grenades over the top of the trailer hoping to slow down whoever had just popped one off on their side.

LeBron ran over towards where the wounded woman was sitting in a patch of bloody snow. He slowed down to rip his bandolier away from the dead body of the man that he’d just handed it to.  The wounded woman looked up at him and then back down at her blood-soaked pants.

“Tie off the wound.  I’ll cover you.  We have to get back to the truck or they’ll leave without us.”  LeBron said.  His harsh breathing sending jets of his steamy breath into her face.  She abruptly pointed behind him and tried to move backwards all at the same time.  Her body shook as she was struck with a burst of automatic weapons fire.  One of the rounds caught her on the chin sending bone and bloody skin flying off her broken face.  She crumpled lifelessly to the ground leaking blood like a sieve.

LeBron jumped to the side and rolled over on his stomach. He had his rifle pointed in the general direction she’d pointed.  He didn’t see anybody, so he just started pulling the trigger.  Off to his right the other guys were both lighting up that whole section as well.  One of the ambushers must have crawled up there to flank them.  A series of muzzle flashes were visible from where LeBron was taking cover behind the woman’s corpse.  He saw where the man must be lying.  Off to his side the other two men were both down.

Rather than lay behind the dead woman until whoever was in the bushes decided to come kill him LeBron got to his feet. Screaming in fear and anger he charged towards where he’d last seen the muzzle flashes.  He was yanking the trigger on his M-16 as fast as he could.  When he got to the spot that he’d seen the muzzle flashes coming from he was rewarded by the sight of a dead man in winter camouflage.  He’d drilled a hole right through the top of the attacker’s skull with his random shooting.

LeBron turned to leave but something was bugging him.  He had to get out of there or risk being shot himself.  Hoping he didn’t pay for his curiosity with his life he squatted down and carefully moved the dead man’s head so he could see his face.  The dead man was one of the SEALs from the Fontana dam.  The Delta team must have called the SEALs in to block off this road.  That meant the Delta team was most likely out of there.  They must be taking Jeff back to wherever they’d been ordered to take him.

That didn’t explain why there was still a Humvee there.  LeBron didn’t remember them having Humvees at the dam.  The sharp retort of a rifle being fired nearby reminded him he needed to get moving.  He pulled off two grenades from the bandolier and chucked them one after another as far as he could throw.  He didn’t bother counting.  He just threw them as soon as he pulled out the pins.  They‘d land in the snow where no one could recover them fast enough to throw them back at him anyway.  At least he hoped not.  He didn’t want to die as the punchline of a dad joke.

One of the men who’d been shot was still able to walk.  Between the two of them they carried the third man towards the truck.  Gus had now gotten the tractor trailer perpendicular to the road and looked like he was moving it about a foot in between each application of the brakes to switch from reverse to forward.  LeBron was positive they were all about to die sitting in the truck waiting for Gus to finish turning around.

As if to enforce how much the situation sucked the snow suddenly kicked up around them and a couple of loud snapping noises came from the trailer.  Somewhere behind them someone had gotten the machine gun working and was sending some love their way.  They didn’t have a buffer anymore.  LeBron realized him and the men he was with were the only thing standing between the truck and the attackers.

Gus must have realized it as well because he got a lot less risk averse in his turning technique all of a sudden.  LeBron ran as fast as he could for the cab.  The fastest he could move wasn’t very fast considering he was dragging two wounded men along for the ride.  Another burst of bullets struck the snow around them and ate up part of the passenger door.  LeBron lunged for the cage and lost his grip on the man he’d been helping to carry.  He spun around after opening the access hatch and saw that the man he’d been helping was now far beyond any help he could provide.  One of the large caliber bullets had carved a bloody crater in the man’s back.

Gus wasn’t hanging out waiting for LeBron to mourn the fallen.  He started accelerating forward too quickly for LeBron and the other man to climb up.  Instead, they both grabbed some bars on the cage and held on for dear life.  LeBron saw the look Gus had on his face and knew they were in for a wild ride.  He looped his arms and legs through the rungs on the cage and held on as bullets pinged all around them.

Gus hit the gas and they bounced through the incline coming dangerously close to tipping over.  The man hanging on to the cage next to LeBron slipped off the bars and went face first into a big rock.  Unable to jump down and check on him LeBron clung to the cage with all his strength.  Gus slowed down to let the trailer follow them down and up the incline. Everyone was praying they didn’t tip over.  Completely disregarding every law Newton had ever written the trailer made the turn.  It was getting riddled with bullet holes, but it made the turn.  Gus hit the gas once more and they started picking up some serious steam. The remaining members of the group retreated as fast as they could back towards the mountains.

Up in the trees on the side of the steep hill Harley packed away the big gun and started working his way back down to the road.  He was hoping someone was still alive who could help him roll the Humvee back over. He wanted nothing more than to chase down that truck and finish off the bastards who’d murdered the love of his life.

Chapter 19:  It’s a Horrible Day to Die

Gus slowed down long enough for LeBron to painstakingly maneuver himself hand over hand around the cage and up into the cab.  Gus handed him a pint bottle of Southern Comfort that was about half full.  LeBron shut his door and took a big sip out of the small bottle before they got underway again.  LeBron wondered if Gus had been waiting the entire time to laugh when he took the shot.  He wasn’t a big drinker, so he tended to clinch his whole face when the fiery liquid made its way down his throat.

“You ok?”  Gus asked after they’d been driving for a little bit.  They were following the tire tracks they’d made earlier.  They’d lost a lot of good people and one of their trucks.  They’d gambled and lost big time.

“I’m good, I think.  My fingers are all frozen.”  LeBron cringed when he heard himself say that.  Like his fingers getting a little chilled was anything compared to Mikey dying or the injuries the people in the back were covered in.  There was a guy back there with a bone sticking out of his leg.  You could see his bone.  That guy had a balding pharmacist and Yue trying to patch him up.  LeBron was whining because he’d forgotten to wear his mittens when he went outside to play.  He’d only brought it up because his fingers were tingling like crazy as they were thawed out by the hot air blowing out of the vents.

It was more small talk for a bit then Gus finally asked the real question.  What were they supposed to do now?  The whole idea of a rebellion was officially dead.  The soldiers who’d taken Jeff had shown just how powerless they really were against the might of the military.  Did it really matter if the President was a greedy self-serving prick?  Could they really expect a lot more from a career politician?  Jeff’s fears to the contrary they hadn’t seen any evidence of the President using the military to actively attack survivors.  At least not until those survivors had driven away with an iPad full of valuable intel that they wanted back.

“Yeah.  I think it’s time we get back to reality.  We need to find a place to hide and lick our wounds.  Maybe we can find a ski town up here somewhere with a restaurant full of canned food.  Survive the winter off those gigantic restaurant sized cans of green beans and crap.”  Gus said.

“You think Harley was with those guys?”  LeBron asked.  He’d taken another big sip of the Southern Comfort.

The whiskey was making him reflective.  It was also making him feel a little nauseous.  It didn’t help that the inside of the cab smelled like a hobo’s butt crack.  Jim was still camped out in the back.  They’d made him put his shoes back on, but the damage had been done.  Between his foot stench and the lingering smell from Yue hacking up her stomach stew it was pretty bad.  They needed to stop somewhere and stock up on Febreze.

“If that guy you wasted really was one of the SEALs from the dam then Harley could be with them.  I don’t know that a SEAL team would take an amateur out with them on a mission.  Then again, those guys were noobs when it came to running ops outside the dam in a crawler world.  They may have taken him along in a consulting type capacity.”  Gus said.

“He’d have jumped at the chance to come along considering how much he must hate us.”  LeBron said.  Gus had been avoiding bringing that up.  Shooting that woman was one of the low points of his life.  It kept him awake some nights thinking about it.  He couldn’t drink away that image of the two kids covered in their mother’s blood.  They were both silent.  LeBron once more pissed at himself for saying something stupid.  Gus had obviously been avoiding the topic for a reason.  A reason that now had Gus glancing over longingly at the capped-up bottle of amber elixir sloshing around in LeBron’s hand.

“Who’s Harley?”  Jim timidly asked from the sleeper section.  He’d been keeping so quiet in the back that LeBron and Gus had gotten used to ignoring him.  He’d been laying back there recovering from the beating Gus had given him a few days prior.

“Why are you still up here anyway?  Next time we stop how about you take your dumb ass back to the trailer.  See how long they let you stay back there when you take your shoes off.”  Gus replied angrily.

They drove until it was starting to get dark again.  Gus saw the spot they’d left from that morning and pulled them back into the same place.  They’d expended all those resources only to end up in the exact same spot.  They’d wasted diesel, ammunition, food and most importantly lives to get them nowhere.  Gus dragged Jim out of the sleeper section to take him back to the trailer.  Yue and Tom had the door open and were waiting for them.

Yue held down a hand to help LeBron climb in.  Gus climbed up by himself while Jim looked like he expected someone to stick a hand down to help him up.  When no one was so inclined he painfully climbed in himself.  He was horrified of the tall Marine who’d beat the crap out of him.  He’d absolutely learned his lesson about pointing a gun at someone if you weren’t ready to pull the trigger.  If he needed a reminder, he could just run his tongue along the jagged edge of his teeth.  Gus had slammed Jim in the mouth multiple times with the handle of a pistol before leaving him in the back to spit out blood, a small chunk of tongue and pieces of his teeth.

Yue took LeBron to a little section she’d staked out in between stacks of boxes.  With everyone left consolidated into the single trailer it was getting uncomfortably crowded.  The wounded were laid out on the ground sucking up a ton of the limited floor space.  Not that anyone begrudged them the room.  Tom went around with pain pills and antibiotics offering whatever comfort he could, but the moans of pain were still heart wrenching.  There was blood and trash everywhere.

To make everything even more discombobulated the bullets that’d raked the side of the trailer had penetrated in multiple places.  Despite the long range and thick walls of the trailer the high caliber bullets had torn through boxes and flesh alike.  A woman was sitting in one corner cradling a toddler with a bandage wrapped stump for a hand.  LeBron wondered idly if Tom had any Flintstones morphine gummies to pass out.  He decided not to share his thoughts. The only one who’d appreciate the humor was Drew and he was out cold.  Judging by the slack look on his face Drew had taken his share of the pain pills and then snaked a few more.

“Yeah, he’s not waking up any time soon.”  Yue said running her fingers through Drew’s hair fondly.  She’d dragged him over to her little section to watch over him.

“How bad are the walls?”  LeBron asked.

“No clue.  I’ve been pretty busy trying to keep the blood on the inside of people’s bodies.  We have so much crap stuffed in here now there could be a whole wall missing and we might not notice.”  Yue said waving her arms to indicate the tightly stacked boxes rising to the roof in multiple places.  People were sleeping in caves they’d created underneath the cardboard containers of supplies.  Dry noodles littered the floor where stray bullets had ripped through the piles of boxes.

“You think they’ll be able to get in?”  LeBron was worried the bullets may have done enough damage to allow the crawlerz force their way in.  If they got in it was game over.  No way they were defending this place with everyone as wiped out as they were.

“Why don’t you grab Gus and Tom and go check?”  Yue wasn’t planning on leaving Drew’s side until his eyes opened back up.  She knew he’d do the same for her.

LeBron rose painfully to his feet.  Being bounced around on that cage hadn’t been fun.  There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t hurt.  He’d ask Tom for a little something to help out, but he didn’t want to take the medicine more seriously injured people may need.  He walked out of the little cubby and looked around for Gus.

Gus was standing in the very front of the trailer with Tom and a couple of other people.  They were shifting boxes around checking out the walls.  Evidently it wasn’t just Yue who was worried about the structural integrity of the trailer.  LeBron was surprised more people weren’t concerned after bouncing around in it through a hail of machine gun fire.  He suspected the level of concern would escalate once nighttime fell and the first crawlerz showed up.  It didn’t seem to matter where they were.  Once the sun went down the crawlerz came out to play.

“How are we looking?”  LeBron asked walking up behind the small group. They were trying to inspect the wall while keeping a massive stack of metal ammo boxes from falling over.

“Not great.”  Gus said pointing out the hunk of trailer wall missing from this section.  LeBron squatted down to look at it. He was highly alarmed to find out he could clearly see a decent chunk of the snowy ground outside through the jagged hole.  How were they supposed to keep the crawlerz from getting in if this was the state of the walls?

“Are they like this anywhere else?”  LeBron asked.

Gus shrugged and pointed at the boxes and people stacked up along all the walls.  It’d take a major effort to check out the entire trailer in the minutes left before the sun set.  Bullets had raked the whole right side of the trailer as they’d been trying to escape.  That eliminated one side they needed to check.  Then there was the matter of there not being much they could do about the damage anyway.

“We’re so screwed.”  Tom was on the verge of panic.  Nobody likes sitting in a giant metal coffin waiting for the monsters to come along.

“How about we have everybody shift to the left side of the trailer and we shove all our supplies up on the right side.”  LeBron thought that’d help make it take a little longer for the crawlerz to get in and kill them.  On the other hand, they didn’t have to stop the crawlerz completely.  They just needed to keep them out until the sun came back up.

“Let’s do it.  We get everyone armed and ready to shoot whatever comes at us.  Hopefully we don’t all die from the ricochets.”  Gus was flashing back to shooting house flies in his garage when he was little.  He’d been shooting the big bugs with a BB gun.  One of the little round pellets had bounced off the wall and come back to hit him right in the eye.  He remembered watching it coming at him like it was moving in slow motion.  His parents had never made it a whole year without maxing out their health insurance deductible thanks to him.

If there was a better way to handle the situation none of them could think of it.  They dispersed along the length of the trailer enlisting the aid of everyone able to hold a gun.  The wounded were shifted over while the supplies were all stacked along the weakened wall.  A few more places were found with splintered boards and bulging walls.  The dried noodles were crunching under everyone’s feet as they got into position. By the time they had a thin line of armed protectors down the middle of the trailer it was beginning to get pretty dusky outside.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere.  As long as just a few of those things show up we’ll be fine.”  Gus said seeking to reassure Tom.

“If a pack of them show up we’re screwed though right?”  Tom lashed back at Gus.  The pharmacist was pacing back and forth as much as he could in the overcrowded trailer.  A tactical shotgun dangled loosely out of one of his hands.  The oversized magazine on it bumping up against his leg as he paced.

Gus started to respond but shut up at a look from Yue.  She’d gotten Drew comfortable then grabbed her rifle to join the skirmish line.  She smiled over at LeBron who was standing tall despite the pain and exhaustion she could see in his eyes.  She held her finger up to her lips in a hushing gesture that quieted everyone down.  By the light of the battery powered lanterns that they’d rigged up she settled into a firing stance and waited.

There were crawlerz outside.  Yue flashed back to the scene from the Hobbit where they’re hiding beside the road and sense the dark riders shuffling around.  They couldn’t hear anything more than the occasional moans of the wounded or sniffling of the constantly sick kids.  Everyone was able to feel the crawlerz approaching though.  It was like little tendrils of smoke drifted into your head and froze parts of your brain.  The tentacles massaged it in a cold dark way that left you feeling disgusted.  It was like little psychic maggots were being rubbed into your brain until they burrowed into it.

Yue wasn’t smiling anymore.  She was one of the ones highly susceptible to that wave of fear that preceded the arrival of a crawler pack.  LeBron had been the first to identify why they all got so scared at night.  Once it’d been identified it’d gotten worse.  Maybe because they focused more on it or maybe just because the crawlerz were getting more powerful as the days wore on.

That psychic terror seemed to be stronger the larger the group of crawlerz.  Yue was struggling to understand how such a large pack could come to exist out in the middle of nowhere.  They’d gotten here almost as soon as the sun set.  It made no sense.  Trying to get her mind off the coldness digging into it she set herself to working on that problem.  By the time the first crawler whacked it’s frost bite covered hand against the side of the trailer she’d come up with why she thought they’d gathered in this remote spot.

Once she had it figured out, she wanted to slap herself for being so stupid.  Why hadn’t they thought of this before?  They’d parked in the same spot they’d stayed in the previous night.  These crawlerz attacking them now weren’t super-fast.  They were slow.  They’d gotten here a day late.

Chapter 20:  Against All Odds

“Rip the bastards apart!”  Yue yelled savagely.  Her voice could barely be heard over the smacking of flesh against the walls.  No one inside the trailer was bothering with being quiet anymore.  They screamed and sobbed along with the pounding on the walls.  Mothers kissed their children then stood up with pistols in each hand to defend them.  The looks on their faces proclaiming they’d die before anything got past them.

The pounding grew louder.  Boxes started tipping over.  It was too late now to switch it up, but they should’ve just gotten rid of the lighter boxes.  They were going to provide cover for the crawlerz when they started slithering in.  Wicked looking shadows danced across the walls.  The defenders braced themselves to receive the enemy.  Weapons gripped in shaking, sweaty hands they stood tall against the demonic forces about to break in.

“I love you sis!”  LeBron yelled over at Yue.

“Love you bro!”  Yue yelled back gazing fondly at her little brother for a second.  She looked back at Drew lying on the ground behind them.  True to form he was poised to sleep through yet another battle.  She didn’t bother trying to wake him up.  He was a natural warrior who’d be a huge asset normally.  Between the injuries he’d sustained earlier and the pain pills he’d taken because of them, he wouldn’t be anywhere near his best.  She kind of hoped he’d surprise them and jump into the fray once the bullets started flying though.

A row of boxes towards the front of the truck toppled over.  An arm was sticking through one of the holes in the wall where the boxes had been.  It looked stuck.  A crawler had shoved its arm in and couldn’t get it out.  Gus ran over to where the fingers were grasping at thin air and put a round in the arm as high up as he could get.  Then he stepped back and let the thing bleed.  Yue understood what he was doing immediately.  If the crawler bled out with his arm stuck in the hole, he was effectively sealing the hole up for them.

That wasn’t going to work everywhere.  There was a lot of suspicious movement around the front of the trailer as shadows swirled and people screamed.  A stack of boxes tipped over and two of the refugee crew lit up that section of the trailer.  Their bullets completely missing the spot the crawler was ripping at.  Yue yelled for them to stop firing.  The bullets were buzzing evilly around the inside of the trailer like angry metallic hornets.  The ones that hadn’t struck the sheet metal and ricocheted had caused even more damage to the walls.  The ones that’d bounced around had come to rest in boxes, the soft wooden floor of the trailer, or in the flesh of those unlucky enough to win the random ricochet lottery.

More boxes started falling in other parts of the trailer.  The defenders rushed to each section and shoved the boxes out of the way so they could see what was going on.  The wild shooting had stopped.  Gus was loudly threatening to shoot the next moron who popped off a random shot in the small space.  Arms and shoulders were breaking through multiple sections of the wall.  The crawlerz were ripping at the wood and metal holding the walls together.  The defenders squatted down by the holes and started shooting through them.  They were defending against the rush of crawlerz by creating a flesh rending wall of bullets.  As long as the bullets didn’t run out, they’d survive.  She didn’t know if they had enough bullets to patch all of the holes that were opening up.

A crawler ripped a chunk of the wall out near the front of the trailer and forced its way through.  Gus and Tom were near that section.  They rushed over and emptied their magazines into the crawlerz fighting each other to squirm through the jagged hole.  One of the pistol wielding mothers stepped in when Gus yelled that he needed to reload.  Tom kept slamming slugs into the skulls of the crawlerz coming through the rapidly expanding hole in the wall.

Yue lost track of what was going on at that end of the trailer when a four-by-four plate of buckling sheet metal fell off the wall directly in front of her and LeBron.  They stepped forward sending a steady stream of lead into the faces of the crawlerz trying to get in through the gaping hole.  The silent crawlerz were the stuff of nightmares.  They had no fear of dying.  No sense of pain and absolutely no mercy for the normal humans they were intent on devouring.  Their hallucinogen controlled brains sending constant spurts of adrenaline into their systems to drive them forward.

One of the crawlerz got a grip on LeBron’s leg and yanked him off balance.  Yue flipped her rifle around to aim it at the monster attacking her little brother.  She pulled the trigger with the barrel an inch from its forehead.  It was like somebody put a firecracker inside a watermelon that also had a bunch of gray stuff in it.  She stopped pulling the trigger when Lebron regained his balance and jerked his foot back.  The neck of the crawler that’d grabbed him now ended in a bloody stump.  She’d completely obliterated its head.

Sliding in a fresh magazine she turned to continue battling the infected mob.  They kept surging forward shoving the ones in front through holes in the side of the truck that were too small for them to fit through.  When Yue was little her mom had bought her some of those playdough toy sets where you put in the playdough and squeeze it through different sized holes to make different shapes.  The crawlers being forced through some of these gaps were starting to look like that.  She watched one who trying to slide through get forced into the hole at an awkward angle causing both of its eyes to pop out.  On another one the nose and ears were ripped off in a translucent sheet of bloody skin.

Even with parts of their bodies being shaved off the crawlerz kept coming.  They were bleeding from a dozen bullet wounds on top of whatever damage they’d sustained squeezing in.  They kept coming.  Nothing was stopping them.  The holes in the wall of the truck kept getting bigger from the immense pressure of the crawlerz fighting their way in.  Two by fours were cracking and sheet metal was bending.  Brackets and bolts were popping out of the walls left and right.

A low roar started to come from the crawlerz.  It was a rumble as of distant thunder.  Yue wasn’t sure at first if she was hearing it or if it was all in her head.  She didn’t let it stop her from shooting anything that moved along the wall in front of her.  The floor was two inches deep in blood already.  She knew some of it had to be sloshing behind them onto the helpless wounded laid out on the floor.  If a single crawler got past them it’d be all over.  The wounded would be attacked and turned.  The bite would put them into a state where they no longer cared about the pain from their wounds.  Crawler saliva was the key to a lifelong high.  Not that they’d get to enjoy it with all of the insanity and cannibalism and everything.

Yue’s rifle jammed. Dancing back a few steps she grabbed a spare off a box.  They’d laid out extra weapons every few feet for just this eventuality.  There was plenty of spares since everyone kept dying.  The building supplies had mostly been in the truck they’d lost that morning.  Extra wood and a few bags of screws would’ve been a nice thing to have when they noticed the walls were full of holes.  Yue picked up the shot gun and raised it to her shoulder.  She was just in time to see a crawler gobbling on the neck of one of the defenders.  They were losing.

The wounded had all been moved to the back of the trailer.  If they had to fall back at least they’d have their backs to a set of doors instead of being cornered.  It gave them options.  That loss of ground was happening now.  The holes up front had allowed the crawlerz to rip off almost the entire front section of the wall on the right side of the trailer.  The only other big hole was the one Yue and LeBron were constantly banging bullets through.  There might as well be a flashing neon sign telling them they were all going to die.

A crawler came out of nowhere and knocked Yue to the ground.  She dropped her shotgun and wrapped her hands around its neck.  She was pushing like crazy to keep the snapping teeth away from her.  A shaky hand with a pistol in it appeared out of nowhere. The hand positioned the gun at an angle such that the bullet wouldn’t hit Yue.  The gun coughed a couple of times and the crawler collapsed to the blood soaked floor.

Yue scrambled to the side to collect her shotgun out of the blood puddle. While she did that, she was glancing around to see who’d saved her.  A very groggy looking Drew smiled at her then fell backwards into the lap of a man sitting up with a pistol in each hand.  Yue recognized the man sitting down as the one she’d been helping with the broken leg earlier.  She hoped Drew hadn’t landed on the bone that was still sticking out of the man’s leg.

“We’re losing!”  Gus shouted into her face.  He’d been walking steadily backwards blasting away at the monsters.  He was shooting as fast as he could aim and pull the trigger.  It was pretty much impossible to miss at this point.

Yue didn’t know how to answer that.  All they could do now was shoot every bullet they had then switch to knives.  She already knew they were losing.  They’d known if this happened that they were screwed.  As long as she was alive those things weren’t going to be gnawing on the children behind her though.  She screamed out a challenge and jumped back into the fray.  On either side of her Gus and LeBron fought like madmen to stay abreast of her.

They pressed forward until the trailer was once again devoid of crawlerz.  It was a lull in the battle.  The eye in a deadly storm.  The trailer was a death trap.  They needed to get out.  They at least needed to get the children out.  Yue spun around to see the blood-spattered refugees from the cemetery staring at the three of them like they were some sort of pagan gods.  Yue knew they’d mowed down a ton of the enemy in the heat of battle. She hadn’t realized how truly spectacularly they’d fought until she saw it reflected back at her in the eyes of the survivors.  The everlasting thankfulness of the mothers of the children wedged into that tiny corner.

“We can’t waste this lull.  Let’s get the kids and wounded moved up into the front of the truck.”  Yue ordered Gus and Tom to take care of that.

Yue stepped gingerly through the piles of the dead to the large hole in the side of the trailer and looked down.  The bright moonlight showed the extent of what they’d done.  It wasn’t just the dead in the trailer.  The outside of the trailer had a massive drift of the dead wedged up against it.  Here and there a crawler was still squirming around trying to get up.  She supposed they must’ve paralyzed some of them.  The paralyzed ones wouldn’t bleed to death until later that night.  Looking up at the full moon she wondered why it didn’t impact the demons the way the sun did.

“Can we get out that way?”  One of the mothers was standing behind her.  The woman was holding her little girl by the hand.  The father was nowhere to be seen.  He was more than likely one of the bodies lying face down on the blood drenched floor.

“No, we’re going to have to go out the back.  There’s a pile of dying crawlerz here.  If you try to get out through that mess one of them might bite you or your little girl.”  Yue answered urging the pair to hurry back to the doors at the other end of the trailer.

“Open the doors!  We’re going out the back.  We’ll fit as many of the kids and the wounded in the cab as we can.”  Yue said loudly.  She‘d raised her voice to be heard over the desperate chatter of the survivors.

“What about the rest of us?”  A short man with long hair asked.

“How about we save the little kids then we worry about you?”  Yue shouted at the man.  Covered in blood with weapons dangling off her in every direction she wasn’t to be trifled with.  The man stepped back and shut his mouth before the Valkyrie he’d upset decided to strike out at him.

“Got the poles out!  We doing this?”  Gus was breathing raggedly as he stared over at her.  Tom was standing beside him ready to throw the doors open when told.  Yue nodded for them to open it up.  Considering the trailer was missing big sections of the wall already it didn’t matter much at this point.

The swinging door tagged a crawler in the head.  It’d been standing behind the truck down the road at something.  The crawler stumbled then spun around to attack them.  It was shot very dead by multiple weapons.  The body of the crawler lying in the snow a stark reminder to them all that the danger wasn’t over just because they’d fought their way to a reprieve.  They needed to get those kids up front as soon as possible.

Yue and the others all blinked as they were suddenly bathed in the bright glow of industrial strength high beams.  A vehicle slowly rolled towards them through the snow.  It must have been parked down the road.  Yue and the others immediately shifted their weapons to point at the source of the blinding white light.  The vehicle stopped.

“Is that you Tom?”  A familiar voice yelled out from the vehicle.

“Harley?”  Tom yelled back hopefully.

“Yep, it’s me.  I didn’t know you guys were in the trailer.  How’s everybody doing?”  Harley yelled back.

“Turn off those brights man you’re blinding us!  We can all catch up later.  We need to get these kids somewhere safe.  How much room you got in that thing?”  Yue asked.  The bright lights clicked off to everyone’s relief.  Harley climbed out and walked towards them.  He was so big he made the massive Humvee seem like a regular sized car.

“I’m good.  This everybody?”  Harley asked looking into the trailer.

Yue was looking past Harley at the Humvee.  She wanted to make sure she didn’t see anybody moving around in it.  With no warning given Gus jerked his rifle around and started shooting in Harley’s direction.  Harley swung his pistol up to shoot back. He stopped when he realized there was probably a reason the Marine standing twenty feet away had missed him multiple times.  That reason was the crawlerz streaking out of the darkness behind him.  It looked like whatever reprieve they’d gotten was over.

A quick line was formed to transfer the kids from the trailer to the Humvee.  The IED resistant behemoth of an SUV easily held them all.  The surviving moms piled in along with the seriously wounded.  Harley squeezed himself back into the driver’s seat.  He slammed his door shut right as a couple of crawlerz came out of the darkness and flung themselves at the bulletproof windows.  Harley worked on making the kids less horrified by making funny faces at the crawlerz.  Yue was so distracted watching the ridiculous circus over in the roided up jeep that she almost forgot they still needed to get somewhere safe.

There wasn’t really a super safe space for them to go.  The only option was to see how many of them would fit in the cab up front.  Anyone who wouldn’t fit would have to fend for themselves.  It finally dawned on Yue that the reason Harley was making funny faces at the crawlerz with his dome lights on was to try and distract them.  He was buying them precious seconds to make a run for the cab.  They were currently wasting those seconds in indecision.  It’s not like they had so many options that paralysis by analysis should even be an issue.

Yue grabbed one of Drew’s arms and took off for the front of the truck.  Gus had Drew’s other arm. He was waving for everyone else to join them as they dragged Drew along.  Up ahead she saw that Jim was already halfway to the cab.  That didn’t surprise her at all.  The slimeball had probably taken off for safety before the children had even been shuttled over to the Humvee.  She was a little worried Jim might try to lock the rest of them out if he got there first.  He’d be rightfully worried that he’d be a prime candidate to be tossed out if there wasn’t enough room for everyone.

A crawler took care of that concern for her.  It darted out from the massive drift of the mostly dead on the side of the trailer and pulled Jim to the ground.  LeBron sped past Yue to put a bullet in the crawler munching on Jim.  Jim looked up from the ground with his hand and neck bleeding profusely from bites.  He crawled desperately away from LeBron.  He was yelling that he’d just run into the woods.  He didn’t want LeBron to shoot him.  What if he was immune?  They’d heard it all before.  LeBron put one bullet in Jim’s heart and another in his head just to be safe.

Tom patted LeBron on the back and tugged his shoulder to keep him moving.  LeBron had been wasting crawlerz left and right all night but shooting a real person had hit him hard.  He wished he’d had the time to wait to make sure Jim turned.  They were all living on borrowed time now though.  Even once they got in the cab the cage wasn’t exactly a solid concrete wall.  They’d be fighting for their lives until the sun came up.

Running along behind Tom and the others LeBron tried his best to look in every direction at once.  The short man with the long hair directly in front of him was the next to get pulled down.  This time LeBron didn’t hesitate at all.  He ran past the struggling pair pulling the trigger of his rifle multiple times to make sure they were both dead.  Ahead of him the small access hatch was causing a major bottleneck.  LeBron caught up and put his back to the cage next to Tom. The small group of defenders focused their fire on the crawlerz coming at them out of the darkness.  More men went down with crawlerz who appeared out of thin air.  The creatures moved with such speed across the moonlit snow that they materialized like ghosts.

At the rate everyone was dying LeBron was thinking they’d have plenty of room to stretch out in the cab.  Yue pushed him to go next.  Gus had just dragged Drew up and into the cab.  LeBron started to argue for Yue to go first but then just climbed as fast as he could.  There was no time for arguing.  Yue was immediately after him followed by Lisa then Tom.  That was it.  No one else was left alive.  LeBron was thrilled to see Lisa had made it.  He knew that’d make Drew happy.

Considering the truck was already a wreck they didn’t hesitate to blow the windows out when crawlerz started scrambling across the cage.  The rest of the night was spent picking off individual crawlerz as they showed up.  The exhausted survivors took turns falling into uneasy naps.  There was a half dozen of them shoved into a cab meant to hold four.  The Humvee behind them was packed much tighter.  What they were supposed to do with all those little kids they had no idea.  The couple of wounded they’d gotten into the Humvee were another set of problems none of them wanted to think about.

For now, it was enough for Yue, Drew and LeBron to be alive and still together after everything that’d happened.

Chapter 21:  For the Children

“Sun’s coming up.”  Gus announced.  In case the others in the cab couldn’t figure out why the sky was getting lighter.

Yue stretched out.  She was in the sleeper section with LeBron, Lisa and Drew.  Lisa was curled up with one arm thrown over Drew.  How she’d survived when men and women twice her age had fallen was a mystery.  Yue had watched how the girl darted around taking surgical shots with her pistol when needed.  She’d also seen the gallant last act of a man who’d tackled a crawler bearing down on Lisa.  It hadn’t ended well for him, but Lisa had made it.

A thoughtful Yue wondered if the puppy love between her jock brother and this lucky survivor was going to become an issue.  Yue didn’t want to see Drew laying down his life for anybody.  The man who’d died saving Lisa the night before may have been gallant, but he was also now a corpse.  A gallant corpse doesn’t do anybody any good.  Wondering if she was judging Lisa too harshly out of concern for Drew, she decided to let it drop for now.  It wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other things for her to worry about.

For instance, why had Harley chased them down in a Humvee and been sitting outside watching them last night?  If he was the only one in the truck that lent itself to him having been the one who put a bunch of holes in their trailer.  He may have been the one who caused the injuries of the people they’d hurriedly shoved in the back of the Humvee the night before.  They’d turned that roomy vehicle into a clown car with all the people they’d piled into it.

“You think Harley’s going to shoot me?”  Gus asked.  He was trying to make it sound casual but there was some worry in his voice.

“Probably.”  Drew answered.  Yue kicked him hard enough to make him grunt in pain.  It figured he’d woke up just in time to make an ass of himself.  Lisa shifted around but didn’t wake up.

“If he was going to shoot you, he could’ve done it last night when everything was going crazy.”  Yue said trying to cheer him up.  It’d seemed like a good thing to say in her head.  It sounded lame when she said it out loud though.

“I killed his girl right in front of him.”  Gus said.

“You shot at her from the ground after she shot you first.  It’s about a million times more likely someone else shot her.  Probably Mikey.”  Yue said continuing to make it worse.  Drew must be rubbing off on her.  She was normally so much better than this.  A confused looking Tom was moving his head back and forth like he was watching a ping pong game.

“You shot Marguerite?”  He asked when silence settled over them all a little too long for comfort.  Not that hearing him ask about what happened helped at all.  Gus nodded miserably.  To his credit Tom didn’t say anything else.  He just leaned back in the big leather passenger seat and stared out the window.

The Humvee drove up to park beside them.  Gus gulped as the driver’s side door opened and Harley got out.  Harley hitched up his pants and walked towards them.  The big man looked like an extra from a Mad Max movie.  Weapons hung off him in every direction.  A giant fur lined coat flapped around him like a cape.  He stopped to stand in the snow a few feet back from the cage.  He stood there waiting until Gus opened his door and climbed down to stand in front of him.  Harley looked Gus in the eyes and started talking.  He talked loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I know that what happened back at the dam can’t be undone.  I know how she ended up dead.  I take some of that blame myself.  I didn’t pull the trigger though.  I know Mikey’s dead.  We saw where you guys lost a truck on the road from the dam. I don’t see them here, so I assume those other jarheads are all dead now, right?”  Harley asked.

“Yeah.  Crawlerz got them.”  Gus answered.  He looked like a high school kid asking a WrestleMania star for an autograph.  The size difference was ridiculous.  Gus wasn’t backing down though.  He stood his ground without trembling.  His fear had evaporated the second the fight was in front of him.

“They didn’t tell me anything.  They were going to leave without me actually.  I kind of forced my way into the patrol going out looking for you guys.  I reminded them I was the only one with experience fighting crawlerz.  If there’s one thing all you Gi Joes eat up its leveraging people with field experience.  I wanted to kill you all for what happened.  Or at least I did until I recognized Tom wandering around.  That’s when I realized you must have actually gone back to the cemetery to rescue them.”  Harley said.  He paused there to make sure Gus was following along.  He didn’t bother looking up in the truck where they were all listening intently.  Everyone except for Lisa at least.  She was still sound asleep.

“I’m not sure I’d call what’s happened to them being rescued.  We went and picked them up though.”  Gus said.

“Yeah.  She shot you right?”  Harley asked.  Gus looked confused for a second by the question.  Once he realized Harley was talking about Marguerite, he nodded his head in the affirmative.

“Yeah, she shot me.”  Gus answered finally.  He wondered where Harley was going with all of this.  For his part Harley was staring hard at Gus.  A mixture of grief and anger played over Harley’s normally stoic features.  A tear rolled out of one eye carving a path down through the road grime covering his face.

“Good for her.  We’re good man.”  Harley said.  He patted Gus on the back and walked past him to go talk to the rest of the people in the truck.  Gus now found himself emotional.  He’d been so keyed up to fight that the sudden forgiveness by the big man rocked his world.  Worried he’d start blubbering like an idiot he turned to go inspect the damage to the trailer.  Between the crawler assault and the ambush that they’d driven through he was surprised the trailer was still upright.  If nothing else, it was a good excuse to hide from everyone until he got the sobs that’d snuck up on him under control.

He hoped the people stacked up in the Humvee like cordwood couldn’t get a clear look at his face.  He waved to them with his head down as he walked past.  He blew off the emotional garbage and focused on checking out the damage to the trailer on the driver’s side.  It didn’t look any different than it did every other morning the crawlerz threw one of their ragers outside.  A few new blood-stained divots and the snow was all messed up.  Par for the course.  He saw the bodies of some of the crawlerz they’d put down the night before.  The pathetic piles of frozen flesh were hard to reconcile with the screaming demons that’d bore down on them out of the darkness.

Turning the corner Gus forgot all about the handful of bodies he’d just been checking out.  He stopped and stared into a scene that would’ve been considered too bloody to put into a hardcore slasher film.  If Gus had seen it in a movie, he would’ve thought it was too over the top.  It wasn’t even believable.  It looked like someone had dropped a hundred fresh corpses into a blender then sprinkled in some macaroni noodles.  If they ran the blender on the lowest setting for a few seconds before slinging the resulting mess into the back of the trailer they’d have nailed what it looked like.

There was also a very impressive number of spent cartridges mired in the nasty mixture of guts and blood that coated pretty much every surface.  If he decided to take a stroll inside the trailer for some reason, he was going to have to make sure his boots were laced up tight.  The congealed muck on the floor looked deep enough to suck them right off his feet.  Not that he had any intention whatsoever of playing around inside that biohazard laden seven-layer dip of disgusting.

“Woah.”  An awestruck LeBron had turned the corner and was staring at the carnage inside the trailer.  Drew, Harley, Tom and Yue joined them a second later.  Lisa was still sound asleep in the sleeper section.

“That’s…”  Drew had no words for it.  He stood there with his mouth open trying to figure out how they’d come out of that hell hole alive.  Not only had they survived they’d saved the equivalent of a small table full of Chuckee Cheese birthday party goers in the process.

A man with a missing arm and ear appeared from behind a messy pile of shredded carboard.  He crawled through the muck at an unholy speed boosted by the psychotic control of his adrenal gland.  Like something out of a horror movie, he came at them in fast forward working his twisted body unnaturally fast.  Three rifles, a tactical shotgun and a nine-millimeter came up and spit their little lead missiles.  The surger collapsed on its face adding its blood to the general nastiness.

“We need to do some more cleanup around on the side too.  There were some crawlerz still kicking around here last night.  They’re either still in the pile or crawled under the trailer.”  Yue said.

The small group let out a collective sigh then began the grisly task.  Digging through the bloody broken bodies to see if any crawlerz were lurking in them wasn’t pleasant by any measure.  Kind of like sticking your arm into a bucket filled with cow snot to fish around for a venomous snake.  The disgusting and boring job of picking through the drift of the dead was sporadically interpreted by short bursts of sheer terror.  They found and killed two crawlerz after an hour’s worth of hard manual labor.

Panting and sweaty in the chill air they stood in a circle facing one another afterwards.  Speaking in low voices so as not to attract any random surgers the conversation centered around what to do next.  All of them were getting pretty sick of having these conversations.  They kept finding themselves circled up in smaller and smaller groups trying to figure out what to do next after losing people they cared about.  Without Jeff they were rudderless.  They’d gone from fighting to save the country back to fighting to save themselves.

They’d found out early in the conversation that to mention Jeff’s name was to earn a hard look from Harley.  Harley may have forgiven Gus for his part in the death of Marguerite, but he most definitely hadn’t let Jeff off the hook yet.  This was an issue since the only thing that they could come up with as far as a long-term plan was finding Jeff and getting back to saving the world.  Every other plan they came up with revolved around finding a secure house close to a town they could visit to forage for snacks

For his part Harley was focused on getting the Humvee full of tweens, their moms and the wounded into the care of someone else as quickly as possible.  His big contribution to the apocalypse planning committee was that they should drop off the Humvee and its occupants back at the dam before setting out.  The people back at the dam would already be reeling from losing their husbands and fathers in a failed ambush.  Even Harley wasn’t sure about how they’d like it if an armored gift basket full of more mouths to feed got left on their doorstep.

That topic got more than its fair share of consideration since it was the only thing brought up so far that actually had a tangible action associated with it.  None of them wanted to drag the Humvee full of future collateral damage along with them into the freaky wild.  Not when there was a place less than a day away that could take them in.  A place about a million times safer than wherever they were headed.  It also felt like some pretty good revenge for the dam sending out a bunch of SEALs to try and kill them.  It reminded Yue of the signs she’d seen in stores back before the world went to hell.  The ones that said unattended children would be given a gigantic stick of cotton candy and a free puppy.

Harley was pushing them escorting the Humvee back to the dam until Drew asked him point blank if he was still trying to get them all killed.  A red-faced Harley then had to spend the next few minutes convincing them all he hadn’t meant they should go back to the dam full of people who’d just sent out an ambush party to kill them.  At some point during that conversation Harley even admitted he’d been ordered by the SEAL survivor of the ambush to find them and report back on their position.

“Wouldn’t sending back a Humvee full of people who know everything about us qualify as reporting in?”  Drew asked.  He was staring at the massive man across from him.  Harley was shifting around uncomfortably.  Harley was pissed and it irritated him that he could totally understand where they were coming from.  He was about ready to smack Drew.  He’d always thought it was refreshing how Drew didn’t seem intimidated by anyone and always spoke his mind.  It was turning out to only be a refreshing trait when he wasn’t the one it was being applied to.

“Good point.  I’m totally covered if they catch us.  I’ll just flash the secret hand signal and the attack helicopter or whatever will kill everybody but me.”  Harley said with an exasperated sigh.  He liked it much better when he could just scowl to get everyone to leave him alone.  You strap a couple of guns on people and all of a sudden, they think they’re badasses.  They didn’t get their feathers ruffled by a man sporting a few hundred pounds of solid muscle.  It wasn’t like he could bench press a bullet after all.

“What attack helicopter?”  Drew asked.  He realized Harley was probably just throwing something out there but maybe it’d been one of those Freudian slips.

“The one leaving your mom’s house.”  Harley answered.  That shut Drew up but pissed LeBron off.

“He’s just checking.  You were on the side that shot at us you know.  For all we know you killed Mikey.”  LeBron said coming to Drew’s defense.

“I was climbing up that damned mountain to be the lookout when you morons pulled up.  Who the hell drives back to where the guys trying to kill them are?  I was expendable.  I wasn’t one of the dudes sitting in the Humvee with the heater on.  We rode freakin snowmobiles all the way from the dam to there and then they sent me straight up that mountain while they relaxed in the car.  None of us thought you’d be dumb enough to actually come back.  Way to prove us wrong.”  Harley turned and walked back towards the Humvee filled with kids.  He stuck both of his middle fingers up in the air over his head as he walked.

“Is that the secret hand signal?” Drew called out after him.  He thought that was pretty funny but no one else was amused.

Where are you going?”  LeBron called out the question to Harley before he disappeared around the side of the truck.

“I’m letting the nice ladies in the Humvee up here know they’ll be driving back to the dam by themselves.  Since Siri went on vacation, I’m going to draw them a map.”  Harley tossed his final comments over his shoulder as he disappeared from view around the front bumper.

“Does that mean he’s coming with us?”  LeBron asked.

“Coming with us where exactly?”  Gus asked.

“To find the man he thinks is responsible for his girl getting killed I’m guessing.”  Yue answered their question.  She didn’t seem too worried that they were bringing a man who may kill her boyfriend on a hunt for her boyfriend.

“So, we’re going to go find Jeff and we’re bringing Harley and you don’t see anything wrong with this plan?”  Gus asked.

“Harley’s got a hot head but he’s a good man.  He’s also a great asset to have with us.  He’ll do the right thing when it matters.”  Yue answered lightly.  A second later her brow furrowed slightly.  A dangerous glint lit her eyes.  “He’ll do the right thing, or I’ll take him out myself.”

Chapter 22:  The Trailer Comes Off?

The team said their goodbyes as Tom slipped into the Driver’s seat of the battered Humvee.  Everyone wished him and the others luck.  Tom was one of the few who’d managed to keep his family alive this long.  It still sucked to lose someone who knew so much about medicine.  None of them begrudged him the decision to take his family and settle at the dam though.  On the contrary they were all genuinely happy for him.  His medicinal knowledge would come in handy at the dam.  They weren’t sending these refugees there with a ton of supplies like the last time.  Tom’s medical training would hopefully tip the scales in their favor as far as them being welcomed at the base.

Once the Humvee disappeared down the road the smiles dissolved.  They were out here in the middle of nowhere.  There may or may not be paramilitary forces coming for them.  That attack helicopter Harley had made up could turn into a reality at any second.  They had a tractor with a trashed trailer.  None of them had any idea how they were supposed to survive the night.  Harley had already mentioned trying to find a graveyard so they could call dibs on a nice warm crypt.  None of them trusted the cage to hold if another mob of crawlerz happened to show up.

Lacking an actual plan, they settled on sifting through the supplies in the back to try and see what could be salvaged.  Boxes of food not covered in blood were stacked in the back of the trailer.  The disgusting ones were thrown out onto the pile of frozen corpses.  The ammunition situation was looking pretty bad.  They’d burned through a lot of bullets repelling the crawlerz the night before.  When they were done, they’d accumulated a decent little pile of things that were worth keeping.

“We should ditch the trailer.”  Gus stated the obvious before anyone could beat him to it.  He was pretty stoked about the idea of driving the truck without the hassle of dealing with the trailer trying to flip them over every time he went around a sharp curve.

“Yeah.  It’s not like we can use it to sleep in anymore.  There’s not enough bleach in the world to sterilize that thing now.  Can we strap this pile of crap to the back of the truck once we get the trailer unhooked?”  Yue asked.  She was hoping somebody actually knew how to unhook the trailer.  She hadn’t even known the trailers came off the trucks until recently.

“Let’s do that.  Then we can get on the road.”  Harley said.  It kind of annoyed Yue the way he said it.  He was acting like they had the slightest clue where they were going.  Other than finding a crypt or a secure basement or another trailer to hang out in Yue was at a loss as to what to do next.  She wanted to whip out Jeff’s iPad and start scanning through the files.  She wasn’t feeling comfortable doing that in front of Harley though.  For all she knew he really was there to check to see if they had the notes from Jeff or not.

“Agreed.”  LeBron said clapping his hands together lightly.  His words visible as little puffs of smoke thanks to the chill in the air.  Drew nodded and looked around to see what to do next.

“Gus you want to drop the suspension after we get the kingpin out?”  Harley said.  Everyone stared at him like he was speaking Klingon.

“You want me to drop the suspension?  Is there like a button or something for that?”  Gus asked.  He’d never implied he felt the slightest bit of confidence in driving the big rigs.  Getting called out like that was still a little awkward.  Considering he didn’t know what ‘CDL’ stood for he felt like he’d done a damned fine job of driving the massive machine up and down steep icy slopes.  He’d even made a lifesaving turn while under fire the day before when they’d fled the ambush site.

“Any of you know how to unhook a truck?”  Harley asked.

“Mikey was the only one who actually had experience driving these things.  He taught Gus how to drive.  Considering Gus just started learning I think he’s doing pretty good.”  Yue said defending the red faced Marine.

“The way you whipped this truck around the curves it sure looked like you knew what the hell you were doing.  No worries.  I’ll show you how it’s done.  I’ve driven plenty of trucks with the circus and had to unload and hook them up.  I’ve even got my license and all that happy stuff.”  Harley said.  Yue wondered if he thought they were worried about getting pulled over or something.

The sign welcoming them to Waynesville was as scary as it was welcoming.  By the time they’d unhooked the trailer and decided to set a course for the interstate it was early afternoon.  Harley had taken the driver’s seat with Gus riding shotgun.  Drew, Lisa, LeBron and Yue had sacked out in the sleeper section.  Lisa having passed on going with Tom and the others back to the dam.  Yue had some reservations about that but figured she wasn’t really in charge of what Lisa wanted to do.  She knew that battle would’ve hurt her relationship with Drew.  Especially since she was combing through the iPad files trying to figure out where Jeff may have been taken.  She’d told Lisa she was playing Angry Birds.

Waynesville was close to I-40 but based on where the sun was sitting in the sky, they didn’t have time to make it.  They needed to find someplace to hide for the night.  Some place crawler proof.  Yue liked the idea of it being anywhere but in a graveyard.  She didn’t get the ghoulish fascination everyone else seemed to have with following Harley’s lead to have a sleepover in a giant coffin.  There was no way that was sanitary.

“Let’s turn off here.”  Yue said from the sleeper.

“At the town center shopping plaza?  We can look for some fresh underwear tomorrow.  Right now, we need somewhere secure.”  Harley said obviously still fixated on the whole concrete tomb idea.

“Yeah.  Shopping malls are a horrible idea based on every zombie movie I’ve ever seen.”  Gus chimed in uselessly.

“They managed to stay alive a long time at the mall in that one movie.  The one where the zombies were superfast.  Remind you of anything?”  Drew piled on top of what Gus had brought up.

“This isn’t a movie!”  Yue snapped shutting everyone up.  In a calmer voice she continued.  “Shopping centers have loading docks where trucks drop off stuff.  I say we look for a trailer to spend the night in.  Then we can wake up in the morning and look for cute shoes since we’ll already be here.”

“I’m in.”  Lisa said holding her thumb up and smiling for the first time in a long time.  She’d taken losing her dad really hard.  Drew shot Yue a smile from behind Lisa. He appreciated that Yue had made the effort to include her.

“Whatever.  I could use some new Timberlands.”  Harley said turning down the off ramp towards the shopping center.

They cruised down four lanes of nothing until they got to the turn into the plaza.  The parking lot was barren.  They drove around to the loading dock area which was also barren.  The plaza was made up mostly of a Walmart and a Belk’s.  There were some smaller stores lining the plaza in between the two as well.  Harley drove slowly past the storefronts noticing that many of them looked like they hadn’t been disturbed in forever.  In a world where every store they passed looked like a bomb had gone off inside it that was weird.

The Walmart windows were smashed in and they could tell the store had been looted.  That was to be expected.  The smaller stores being untouched, and the general tidiness of the parking lot were odd.  Odd but also promising since it meant there was some prime looting that could still be done here.  The only problem was the growing sense they all had of being watched.

“I think we need to get out of here.”  Yue said.  It’d been her idea to come here in the first place but now she was a hundred percent on board with hauling ass in the opposite direction.

“Yeah.  I feel it to.”  LeBron backed her up.  Everyone else was also in agreement.  Harley didn’t admit he was unnerved but he did start driving faster as he headed for the exit.  It was starting to get dark out.  This detour around the shopping center could end up costing them dearly.  Yue willed Harley to speed up.  She felt like the crawlerz were all leaning against the surrounding doors and windows just waiting for the sun to drop low enough that they could rush out and attack them.

They pulled back on the four-lane section of road leading to the highway.  They were now about thirty minutes from being out in the open when the sun set.  No one said anything.  Everyone in the truck was acutely aware of how screwed they were.  A wild hope at this point being to press on to the Interstate then spend the night driving down it at top speed.  If they didn’t run into any random packs of crawlerz they might even survive the night.  If they survived until morning, they’d realize they’d left all their coffee making paraphernalia in the back of the blood coated trailer they’d abandoned.

Driving too fast down roads clogged with ice and snow Harley was rushing to get them out of the little mountain town.  Lisa and Yue were nervously tossing jokes back and forth about the quality of the footwear they could’ve purchased at Belk’s.  Drew loudly proclaiming Walmart was good enough for him while LeBron and Gus were both channeling Harley’s growing sense of urgency to find somewhere to hole up.  The tension in the cab was getting thicker by the second.

Drew wasn’t used to driving around without Mikey.  Every time he looked over at the driver’s seat, he was abruptly reminded his friend was dead.  It also dawned on him that the man driving them now may very well have been the guy who killed Mikey.  Harley had been on the wrong side of that ambush.  They had nothing but his word for it that he hadn’t opened fire on them.  The word of a convicted felon who’d worked as muscle for a traveling band of gypsies.  The word of a man who’d watched them shoot down his girl.  Harley had admitted that he’d talked his way into the patrol going to setup the ambush because he wanted revenge.

“Does this crap town ever end?”  Harley asked in a flustered tone of voice.  Gus and everyone else who could see out the windows were studying street signs like crazy looking for somewhere they could hide.

The houses slowly grew sparser as the big truck ground its way down the snowy pavement.  The chains had turned out to be worth their weight in gold.  Not that gold was worth anything anymore.  The chains were worth their weight in spam.  The naked limbs of the trees around them growing a little harder to see in the fading light.  Gus the first one to cuss out loud when the truck lights automatically came on in the dim light of dusk.  He started rocking back and forth and cussing under his breath urging the truck to move faster.

Why he thought moving faster would help was anybody’s guess.  They’d been hit hard the night before and that’d been out in the middle of nowhere.  Maybe they’d have better luck further up the Great Smoky Mountain Expressway.  Judging by all the houses they’d seen along this stretch of highway they could expect to get hit pretty hard once the sun dipped below the horizon.

LeBron was furious at himself for allowing the group to get in this mess.  Harley had the truck skills down, Gus was on watch keeping them safe, Drew and Lisa were busy staring at each other, and Yue’s job was keeping the peace.  LeBron knew he was the one who was supposed to be doing things like keeping track of what time it was and thinking through where they should spend the night.  He’d been sidetracked working on the problem of where Jeff may have been taken.  Taking his eye off the ball like that could have some serious repercussions.

He’d taken the iPad from Yue and scrolled through the files and notes.  Three of the names had stood out to him as possibilities.  Jeff had even bolded two of them.  There was Mount Weathertop, Cheyenne Mountain and Raven Rock.  All three of them were bases that could be used as headquarters for the continuity of government.  They were all highly militarized well-known secrets.  If they happened to survive the night and everyone was still onboard with looking for Jeff, then LeBron had decided to recommend they head towards Weathertop first.  Mostly because it was the closest of the three.

Surviving through the night was the immediate problem.  Where they wanted to go tomorrow didn’t matter if they died that night.  It was pitch dark outside.  The sun was nowhere to be seen and the moon hadn’t bothered making an appearance yet.  The lights from the truck glared off the endless snowy road ahead.  Harley was squinting and leaning forward in the seat trying to keep the truck centered on an invisible road.  The drive got really exciting when they drove over an overpass covered in snow.  It was almost like they were driving across a puffy white cloud high above the earth.

They continued to chug along at about thirty miles per hour.  The moon and stars gradually taking their places in the night sky.  It wasn’t until almost an hour after the automatic headlights decided it was dark that they saw the first crawler.  It was a poor representative of the normally fearsome fast-moving monsters.  Harley had grunted and pointed ahead so everyone could see the shadow of what looked like an old man limping across the snow towards them.  The shadowy figure abruptly shifting into high gear to skate over the ice and snow straight at them.

Harley sped up slightly as the old infected man slid on the ice disappearing into the giant grill of the truck.  That first encounter seemed to break the seal.  It was never more than one or two of the crawlerz running after them though.  Something everyone in the truck was extremely thankful for.  One or two crawlerz coming at them when they were in a moving truck surrounded by a metal cage was something they could deal with.  Even though the cage was starting to show signs of the hits it’d taken.  It squealed and squeaked every time the truck hit a bump, or a crawler slammed into it.

The road they were on merged into another road that turned into an even bigger road with signs saying the interstate was coming up.  Harley asked which way they were turning on the interstate.  LeBron told him to go east.  Harley didn’t bother asking why which was actually kind of annoying.  The giant of a man in the driver’s seat kept acting like they had a plan they weren’t letting him in on.  It was infuriating because Harley thought he was winning points with them by not asking too many questions.  All they were really doing was chasing down Lebron’s hunch based on an entry in an iPad Jeff had left behind.  Everyone else was just along for the ride.

Yue glanced over at LeBron when he gave the order to go east.  There hadn’t been any sort of formal discussion of who was in charge of the small group.  With Jeff gone everyone had naturally turned to Yue to lead them.  Gus had no desire to be a leader and Harley seemed content to follow along with whatever plan it was they had in mind.  Neither Drew nor LeBron were dumb enough to try to boss their big sister around.  The only one who had no real idea of what was going on from a power dynamic point of view was Lisa.  She’d thought Tom was in charge.  She’d been completely thrown off when he drove away in the Humvee with the other survivors.

Not that Lisa regretted her choice to stick with Drew and his little family.  They seemed to be pretty good at surviving.  She was also in full on teen love for Drew and he was returning that love with puppy dog intensity.  One of the last things her dad had ever done was warn her about getting too close to Drew. That made their relationship feel a little bit like a betrayal.  That was life in this new normal.

Chapter 23: The Not-So-Secret Secret Base

“We’ve got to find somewhere safe to sleep tonight.”  The announcement from Harley was accompanied by a jaw cracking yawn.  The sun had finally come up after an infinitely long night packed full of boredom interspersed with brief periods of completely unwelcome excitement.  They’d had more than one crawler appear out of nowhere right on the cage.  The damned things were so fast and quiet that if they hadn’t had the cage, they’d have been dead ten times over.

Everybody in the sleeper section had nodded off at one time or another.  Most of them woke up anytime Gus or Harley started firing off live rounds from the front seats.  The only real injury overnight was Harley adding a new scar to the side of his head.  One of the rounds he’d fired had ricocheted off one of the steel bars surrounding the cab and grazed his head.  It was easy to say to avoid hitting the steel bars when defending the cab. It was hard to do so in practice.  Harley was driving through the snow while shooting sideways at a demonic crawler ripping at the cage and attacking him psychically.  It was completely understandable that his aim might be off a few inches every once in a while.

Drew hadn’t been super happy when another ricochet hit him in the foot.  The bullet hadn’t penetrated the military style combat boot he was wearing but it’d hurt like hell.  With the sun coming up they realized they’d made a tactical error in where they’d positioned everybody.  Harley and Gus were the only two who knew how to drive the truck.  Harley and Gus had both been awake for over twenty-four hours straight at this point.  Driving the truck through the snow and ice wasn’t something anyone should be doing if they were in danger of dozing off.

“Why don’t you two take a short nap?  From now on when one of you is driving the other person should be in the back resting.”  LeBron made it sound like a suggestion and everyone agreed.  Harley looked around and decided that this middle of nowhere was as good as any other middle of nowhere.  He slowed to a stop without bothering to pull to the side.  Everyone in the back moved to the front seats while Gus and Harley crammed themselves into the sleeper.

“Harley’s going to need to sleep in the passenger’s seat or something if you want to fit anybody else back here.”  Gus said from the back.  He looked extremely uncomfortable smooshed into the tiny compartment with Harley.  LeBron hadn’t thought of that when he’d been coming up with ideas for the two to drive in shifts.

“Any reason we still need to drive this truck around?”  Yue asked.

“We have all that diesel and it’s got this really cool cage welded to it.”  Drew answered from the passenger’s side where Lisa was sitting in his lap with her arms draped across his shoulders.

“Those big ass tires with the chains are good for driving through the snow without sliding all over the place.”  LeBron added.  Both LeBron and Yue were doing their best to avoid looking at Drew and his new girl.  Drew and Lisa were completely oblivious to the fact that their PDA was making everyone uncomfortable.

LeBron and Yue continued discussing next moves while trying to ignore the make out session happening three feet away from them.  Occasionally Lisa or Drew would throw out suggestions in between trying to bruise each other’s tonsils.  The immediate concern was where they could go to be safe at night.  LeBron had been thinking about that a lot and had some ideas.  Drew’s ideas were mostly from an old TV Series he’d watched religiously the first few seasons.

“How about a prison?”  Drew asked for the umpteenth since this had all started.  The concept was pretty solid.  They’d just have to find a prison and figure out how to break into it.  A solid concrete infrastructure with lots of solid doors should be pretty good at keeping the infected out.  Prisons were built to keep people from tunneling out so that minimized the worry about the crawlerz digging in to get at them.

“That could be good for a long-term solution.  It’s a lot of work to break into one of those for a night or two though.”  Yue answered.

“I’m thinking we look for tall buildings.  We can sleep on the roofs at night.”  LeBron said.  It was an idea he’d been mulling over the last day or so.  He hated to admit he’d actually gotten the idea from a zombie movie as well.  If he recalled correctly it hadn’t ended well for the people in that movie.

LeBron’s comment kicked off a whole debate on the feasibility of sleeping on roofs.  What if it rains?  How do they get on the roof it there isn’t a bunch of stairs leading to an easy to open door?  How were they supposed to block the door once they get up there?  The questions encouraged LeBron.  Everyone was taking his idea seriously.  They were able to work out the answers to most of the questions.  The biggest missing piece being how often was there going to be a tall building conveniently available when they needed it?  Not to mention the excitement of running into a dark stairwell that could be a crawler hangout.  It’d suck to figure that out halfway up a dark staircase.

“Do we really need to stay on the move?  We could find a safe place like a prison somewhere with supplies and rest there for a while.  We might even find a place we could stay permanently.  These mountains seem pretty desolate.”  Lisa asked.

Yue started to snap off an angry retort.  She was one breath away from telling Lisa to get out and walk back to the dam then caught herself.  She could tell by the way Drew stiffened up that he knew Lisa had just shoved her foot directly into her mouth.  Taking a deep breath Yue reminded Lisa that they were trying to find and rescue Jeff.

“I know you miss him.  I know he was your friend and everything.  How do you expect to find him though?  Don’t you think he’d want you to find somewhere safe and survive instead of throwing your life away out in the open trying to find him?”  Lisa asked.  She was so earnest and open about the way she was asking that Yue couldn’t get angry with her.  The truth in what Lisa had just said made Yue feel more than a little guilty.

“We think we have a good idea where they’d have taken him.  Jeff called out three specific bases as the main ones.  These things were built to withstand nuclear attacks.  It was probably where the Vice President was before he flew out to meet the President on the carrier.  We’re on our way to the first base now.”  LeBron said in a hushed voice.  He’d leaned over to look into the sleeper compartment and make sure Harley wasn’t being nosy.  Unless Harley could snore and listen to them with his face shoved into a pillow, they were good.

“Are they close?”  Lisa sked.  Drew was starting to look a little uncomfortable with Lisa’s persistence.  In his mind if Yue loved the tall nerd then they should go rescue the tall nerd.  The rest was just details.

“Two of them are less than six hundred miles from here.  That shouldn’t take too long.”  LeBron answered with a shrug.  He didn’t mention the third place was in Colorado.  He figured he could bring that up if they actually made it to the first two without dying.

“Aren’t these bases controlled by the guys who ordered the ambush on us?  I’m sorry.  I’m not trying to be a bitch.  I’m just wondering what the plan is when we get there?  Won’t they just take us prisoner too?”  Lisa asked.

“Did he happen to type in the street addresses on that tablet?  If these are secret bases, I’m guessing there aren’t signs or anything?”  Drew asked.  LeBron shook his head a few times to indicate that was a no.  Jeff had written the city down and that was it.  The city next to the entry marked Raven Rock had three question marks beside it.

“I get it ok.  Lisa, you barely knew Jeff and we didn’t make it big time apparent our plan was to go after him when you decided to stay.  Mostly because sleeping beauty in the back might or might not try to kill Jeff when we find him.  There’s a lot going on here.  I’m going after Jeff though and my brothers are coming with me.  I assume you’re planning on staying with Drew, right?  Or are you just using him now that your dad’s dead?”  Yue asked.  Her tone had started out nice and even but as she talked, she’d slowly lost control of her emotions.  Who the hell was this little twerp trying to butt in?

“I don’t want any of us to die because we’re being stupid!  Jeff’s dead or locked up somewhere we can’t get to him.  Now we need to just go find somewhere safe for us to live.  Not go charging across the country like a bunch of idiots!”  Lisa rose to Yue’s challenge.  LeBron and Drew both stared at each other unsure what to do.

“How the hell are we supposed to sleep with all of you fighting up here?”  Gus asked from the back.  That diffused the situation somewhat.  Everyone in the cab settled into an awkward silence and tried to grab a quick nap.  It wasn’t like they had much else to do.  Any planning needed to be shelved until they’d had a chance to cool down and think things through.

An hour later Gus decided he’d slept enough and slid into the driver’s seat.  He got the truck started after a quick bio-break. They continued to head east along the interstate.  The snow on the ground was gradually thinning out  So far, they hadn’t seen any more tire tracks.  They had seen footprints in the snow outside that looked human when they got out of the cab before leaving.  Gus had given the tracks a wide berth when he went to take a whiz.  No telling what may have slithered in to hide under the truck.

They were ticking off the mile markers on their way to Asheville, NC.  Yue diligently tracing out routes to the little sharpie dots LeBron had put in the atlas.  Each dot represented a top-secret military base location where Jeff might be.  Asheville was going to be a decision point.  They could either keep going east towards the ocean, north towards the not-so-secret bases or south back towards Florida.  No matter what the group decided Yue knew she’d be going north.  Even if she had to ditch her brothers.  Not that she thought for a minute they wouldn’t come with her.  Gus would tag along as well, Lisa would follow Drew, and she was pretty sure Harley wanted to strangle Jeff to death with his bare hands.

“Where we headed?”  Harley asked Yue from a distance of about six inches away.  She hoped she didn’t look too startled.  He’d asked her that at the same time she was wondering if he still intended to kill Jeff with his bare hands.

“We’re almost in Asheville then turning north on twenty-six.”  Yue answered his question then asked one of her own.  “Are you planning on hurting Jeff if we find him?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve run through what I’ll do over and over in my head.  I guess it depends on how he reacts when we meet him.”  Harley answered honestly.  Yue nodded her head and gave him a half smile for the answer.

“You hurt him too bad I’ll kill you.”  She threatened him in a whisper.

“I don’t doubt that one bit.  We going to Raven Rock or Weathertop first?  I’m kind of excited to see what the government’s got going on there.  I used to geek out on all the conspiracy stuff.  Those two places are basically the East Coast version of area 51.”  Harley said.

With everyone up and talking they decided not to risk being surprised by the sunset again.  They’d gotten lucky the previous night. Not many crawlerz had been wandering the cold, snowy passes when they drove through.  There was no guarantee that they’d survive doing the same thing again.  Every night they spent in the cab the cage got a little weaker and their ammunition supplies a little lower.  They decided to start looking for a place to spend the night.  Better to waste some daylight than die because they couldn’t find anywhere good down the road.

They didn’t see any good spots as they approached Asheville.  Once they hit the city limits though the skyline showed a lot of opportunity.  Office buildings and hotels with enough height to keep them safe from the most ambitious of crawlerz.  Especially if they could find one that’d been locked up before the crawlerz hit this section of the world.  They skipped the turnoff for I-26 to take the exit that’d lead them to downtown Asheville instead.

LeBron had been talking about hiding out on the roofs of tall buildings for a while now.  He’d envisioned them taking the emergency stairs up multiple flights until they got to the roof access door.  Then they’d spend the night on the roof safely hidden away from any crawlerz.  The only problem being how they’d secure the roof access door behind them to make sure they didn’t get any unwelcome visitors.

The streets through the middle of downtown Asheville were eerily quiet.  A growing sense of unease crept up on them as they drove through the tall buildings lining both sides of the street.  It felt like there were eyes staring at them from behind every dark sheet of glass.  The eyes were willing them to walk into the buildings.  The pull to stop the truck and enter one of the dark buildings was palpable.  They could all feel it.  This may have been a really bad idea.

“Do we have time to get out of here and find somewhere else?”  Lisa asked timidly.  She didn’t want to start another fight, but she didn’t want to get pulled into a Bank of America and eaten either.  An extremely vivid image flashed in her mind of being ripped apart by a group of crawlerz. She couldn’t explain how but she knew beyond any doubt that the monsters were staring at them through a large picture window on the front of the bank.

Yue and the others hadn’t really given LeBron’s idea of sleeping on a roof much thought.  They’d liked the idea of finding a secure place at a high enough elevation to keep the infected out though.  Most of them were picturing penthouse suites in swanky hotels with thick doors keeping out anything that managed to follow them up that high.  No one had put a lot of thought into how they were going to get up that high.  Based on the bad vibes they were all getting they had no desire to enter a building to take the regular stairs up.

Gus pulled up in front of a Marriott branded hotel and parked in the middle of the street.  He sat there checking out the chained-up entrance.  There were faded signs all over the windows saying that they were closed until further notice.  He didn’t see any broken windows.  There was a narrow alley on one side and a cross street on the other.  He drove around to the cross street to see what was on that side.  There was an entrance to a parking garage.  He was pretty sure their truck didn’t have a hope in hell of fitting in there.

Choosing to be extra cautious he drove back around so they could check out the alley.  It was dark in the alley, but Drew was quick to point out the barely visible contraption strapped to the wall.  Gus let them all sit a moment and just try to feel the vibrations from the hotel.  It was weird having everyone sit there trying to get their Zen on.  It was worth it though to check if evil spirits were going to kill them if they went in the hotel.  Gus announced the Feng Shui felt good to him after five minutes of staring at the building.  If they didn’t get a move on, they wouldn’t be leaving much time to look for an alternative if this turned out to be a no go.

Chapter 24:  Checking in the Hard Way

“I didn’t know buildings still had fire escapes.”  LeBron said looking up at the rusty set of metal stairs climbing up the ancient brick facade of the hotel.

It was dark in the alley.  The shadows extended all the way across the narrow space between the old hotel and an adjacent office building.  While LeBron was staring up at the bottom rung of the ladder everyone else was scanning the alley for crawlerz.  This kind of dark space was the perfect habitat for them.  The dumpster down at the end was especially forbidding.  Drew kept picturing it opening up like some kind of dingy blue crawler clown coffin.  The infected would just boil out and rush up the alley towards them.

Nothing moved down the alley and none of them were getting that weird feeling of imminent death.  The feelings they got weren’t necessarily a reliable indicator of an imminent attack. Any kind of early warning sign was greatly appreciated when your enemy came at you as fast the crawlerz did though.  Even if it was a sensation that wormed its way into your brain and made you want to lie on the ground and puke in disgust.  A feeling like your brain was rotting and chunks of it were rattling around in your skull.  Everyone’s nightmares had reached the point where falling asleep was dreaded.  That was half the reason Gus and Harley had both stayed awake the last twenty-four hours.

“How do we get the ladder down?”  LeBron was still staring at the ladder.  He looked like he was hoping it may decide to just randomly fall down.  Drew looked from the ladder to the overly ominous dumpster.

“Let’s push the dumpster over and use it to climb up.”  Drew said.  No one else seemed overly excited about the idea either.  With no alternatives in easy reach, they formed up and headed towards the dumpster.  The big blue box getting more sinister looking the closer they got.  Drew and Harley warily circled it to make sure nothing was crouching behind it.  Gus stuck his flashlight inside and made sure nothing was ready to leap out at them.  LeBron, Yue and Lisa all stayed back hoping they weren’t needed for anything concerning the scary big rusty blue box of stink.

The dumpster had wheels on the bottom so it could be moved.  The three men lined up on the side where the wheels aligned and began pushing it towards the fire escape.  When it’d moved about three feet there was a weird scratching sound. The men all jumped backwards cussing and hitting themselves with their hands.  The girls and LeBron couldn’t see what the problem was since they were on the opposite side of the dumpster.  They ran over to help.  They stopped when they felt something crunching under their feet.

“Oh, hell no!”  Yue shouted as she turned and sprinted for the truck.  Lisa was right behind her.  LeBron was doing his best to learn how to levitate over the massive carpet of roaches pouring out from under the dumpster.  He ended up making it to a spot the roaches were ignoring for whatever reason.  He tried looking down and realized it was getting so dark he couldn’t really make out the roaches so well.  That wasn’t good.

“We need to get the dumpster moved over to the ladder now!”  Lebron shouted.  Drew looked over at him like he was crazy.  Easy to yell that command out from the other side of the alley.  Drew, Gus and Harley forced themselves to ignore the bugs. The three of them put their backs into moving the dumpster over.  A few minutes later the dumpster was resting under the fire escape and the three of them were feverishly brushing at their pants to get the roaches off.

Looking up LeBron realized they still needed someone about ten feet tall to reach the bottom rung of the ladder.  They didn’t have anyone ten feet tall, but they did have LeBron standing on Harley’s shoulders.  Yue and Lisa watched from a safe distance while LeBron climbed up Harley’s back to try and reach the ladder.  Harley’s feet were solidly planted on the edges of the dumpster.  LeBron was just able to reach the bottom rung.  Noticing how quickly the light was fading out in the street he jumped for it.  Harley wasn’t expecting him to do that and tumbled backwards into the roach filled dumpster.

LeBron hung from the bottom rung expecting the ladder to just slide down with his bodyweight on it.  When that didn’t happen, he began climbing up the rusty metal ladder.  He tried not to think about how pissed Harley was going to be about falling into the dumpster.  LeBron hadn’t even thought about giving the big guy a warning.  Worried about how quickly they were burning daylight he’d just jumped for it without a second thought.

LeBron climbed all the way to the first platform before finding a latch that’d let the ladder slide down to the ground.  He pulled the lever, nothing happened.  He started to panic.  Looking below he saw that Harley was climbing out of the dumpster.  LeBron considered jumping off the ledge into the dumpster if he couldn’t get the ladder down.  The thought of a big pile of roaches breaking his fall motivated him to try harder to figure out what the deal was with the ladder.

He pressed the lever again and nothing happened.  Rather than try to isolate the issue he gave in to his rising panic and kicked the holy hell out of the ladder.  He was rewarded with a loud clicking sound as the ladder finally loosened enough for gravity to yank it forcefully towards the ground.  Too late he realized he should’ve tried to slow it down some.  The metal ladder hit the dumpster below with a sound akin to the world’s largest pair of cymbals crashing together.  If every crawler in Asheville wasn’t already aware that they were here, then they were now.

Knowing they didn’t have time to screw around the rest of the group quickly scurried up the ladder to go up the stairs behind LeBron.  All of them searching frantically for the best place to enter the hotel.  The fire escape creaked, swayed and otherwise did it’s best to freak them all out.  Harley brought up the rear of the pack keeping his focus on the ground below them.  He was waiting for the crawlerz to make their presence known.  So far, the alley was still clear.  They were all getting that anxious feeling that normally preceded the crawlerz showing up though.

They hustled up the ancient staircase past the narrow windows sunk into the wall of the hotel.  It wasn’t like the alley offered much of a scenic view.  LeBron’s plan was to get to the highest window they could find and break in there.  Then they could barricade themselves in and pray they’d been right in choosing this hotel.  Hopefully it’d been shut down and secured before the infected took over this small mountain city.  With no normal people inside there wouldn’t have been a reason for a concerted attack on the hotel by the infected.  With no reason to break in the infected would’ve looked elsewhere for places with easier access to pass the day away.

That was the theory they were betting their lives on.  For all they knew once they shattered that window all hell was going to break loose.  A hotel full of ravenous psychotic killers may spew the infected out like the pus from an overgrown pimple when the window got popped.  If that happened, they were most likely dead.  It wouldn’t matter that they were lugging most of their ammunition with them if a waterfall of infected poured down.  Nothing like carrying an ammunition box in each hand up a rickety outdoor staircase a dozen stories with a bunch of super zombies heading over to kill you at any second.

Completely out of breath LeBron kept climbing as fast as he could force his body to move.  The others were carrying most of the ammunition and other supplies.  He’d been spared the extra burden so that he could serve as their scout.  That meant he had to suck it up and go hard.  He was drenched in sweat by the time he got to the top of the fire escape.  It ended well below the actual roof of the building.  There were a few more stories above them based on the rows of windows in the brick facade.  Evidently the architects didn’t care if those people could escape or not.

A window loosely aligned with the top level of the rickety fire escape.  The window was covered in dirt and grime.  There was a curtain or something on the other side of the window blocking his view.  Hating the fact that they’d be going into the hotel completely blind LeBron whacked on the glass a few times with the barrel of his rifle.  Nothing immediately attacked the window, so LeBron flipped his rifle around and smashed it into the window.  The glass shattered with enough noise to be heard for blocks in the dead city.

Expecting arms to shoot through the broken window and drag him inside to be devoured LeBron was ecstatic to still be alive after breaking the window.  Yue came up behind him shouting that they needed to hurry.  The two of them used their rifles to clean out the rest of the jagged glass from the window frame.  LeBron tried to unlock the window and slide it open, but decades of paint had sealed it completely shut.  How the fire escape had escaped the code enforcement department was a complete mystery.

Since they couldn’t open the window they fell back on brute strength and broke the rest of the frame.  By the time they were done making a hole where a window used to be the rest of the group had made it up.  Harley was waiting a level down since there wasn’t room for all of them.  LeBron went through first with Yue right after him.  The two bouncing to their feet quickly after climbing over some kind of bureau that was sitting in front of the window.  The twin beams of light from their flashlights cut through the dust in the long desolate hallway.  They were looking down a long hallway with the doors to rooms on either side of it.

“Oh, they have a coke machine!”  Yue whispered excitedly pointing out the vending machine in the little open space a few feet down the hall from them.  Drew dropped in the window behind them followed by Lisa.  Yue was about to point out the soda machine to Drew who had a serious Cherry Coke addiction when gunfire erupted outside the window.

“We need to get a door open.”  LeBron said beginning to check the doors to rooms.  They were all sealed tight.  The fancy electric lock handles completely foiling them from getting in the rooms.  The thick hotel doors would be lovely to keep crawlerz out if they could just get in a room themselves.

Fully automatic fire from outside was interrupted by Gus literally rolling through the open window.  He landed and stood immediately to cover the window.

“We good in there yet?”  Harley yelled through the window as he was changing out magazines.

“Give us a minute!”  Drew yelled. He was wondering if they could just shoot the door to get in.  They did it in the movies.  In real life he wasn’t sure if that’d work.  He couldn’t ask over the deafening noise of Harley unleashing hell on whatever was coming up the stairs to get them.  It turned out he didn’t need to do it himself since Gus had some urban warfare training.  Gus shot the door in front of him four or five times then kicked it hard.  The door flew open and he rushed in to clear the room yelling for everyone to follow him.

Drew shoved Lisa after Yue and LeBron into the room with Gus then took a spot next to the window. When Harley finally came crashing through, Drew stepped in and covered the window while Harley got to his feet and reloaded.  Drew asked how many of the crawlerz were making it up the stairs.  Before he got an answer back the crazed face of one of them was staring at him from the other side of the window.  Freaked out Drew put some rounds into the open-mouthed freak and yelled for Harley to get in the room.

Not seeing another face stuck in the window yet Drew walked backwards towards the door Gus had kicked in for them.  He started pulling the trigger as soon as he saw another crawler make an appearance in the window.  He setup right outside the room and kept his flashlight focused on the window.  He was thinking this may be the best place to hold off the crawlerz.  It wasn’t like a zillion of them could squeeze through that tiny window at the same time.  They’d be forced to come up the stairs outside single file.  This could be the chokepoint that allowed them to hold off the hordes of infected from the city with ease.

“They’re going from one balcony to another outside.  We need to hold this space out here and give them some time to get across without falling.”  Harley said walking back out into the hallway to stand next to Gus.

“I was just thinking we may be able to hold those things off right here anyway.  The windows a solid choke point, right?”  Drew said without taking his eyes off the prize.  As if on cue there was a blur of motion and a crawler flew through the window.  It tumbled past them down the hall.

Drew and Harley both turned to shoot it as another crawler came through the window behind them.  It turned into a fast-moving crawler conga line as they started pouring through the window.  Drew and Harley held their triggers down and retreated into the room.  The crawlerz scrambling over the bodies of the dead and the dying to chase them.  Harley slammed the thick door shut and braced it with his foot.  He looked around until he saw the little metal lock at the top of the door.  He got that fastened as the crawlerz started slamming into the door on the other side.

“Go out the balcony and over to the next one!  I can hold this for a minute then I’ll follow you!”  Harley yelled to Drew.

Drew ran into the oversized suite and saw there was an open door leading into a bedroom.  He ran through the door and saw Gus over by the curtain covered slider.  The slider opened on to a tiny balcony overlooking the street below.  There was another tiny balcony about two feet away.  A super easy jump if you were down on ground level.  You’d just climb up the railing, lean forward with arms extended yelling out you were king of the world, and then hop across to the other balcony.  It was a different experience when you were far enough in the air to make the big truck that they’d parked on the street below look like a Tonka toy.

Gus saw Drew and looked relieved.  Drew assumed that was because Gus was worried that he may have been hurt out in the hallway.

“I’m glad to see you.  Now it’s your turn to go.  I hate heights man.  Like I can parachute because that’s really high up but when I can see the ground like this, I don’t like it man.  I’m going to go help Harley.”  A freaked-out Gus took off before Drew could try and convince him to take the leap of faith.  Not wanting to be the bottleneck in this operation Drew went ahead and hopped across to the next balcony.  He could understand why Gus didn’t like it.  Drew’s legs had turned to jelly when he looked down.  He’d been afraid he might not make the short jump either.

“Look down.”  LeBron was pointing at the ground below.  The moon had come out enough for them both to make out what was going on down on the street.  It wasn’t easy to see in the dark from this distance, so it took him a second to figure out what he was looking at.  As his eyes gradually adjusted his first thought was it looked a lot like the roaches pouring out of the dumpster earlier.  Basically, it looked like every person who’d been infected in the city of Asheville was headed to the hotel.

“We’re so screwed.”  Drew whispered.  He stood on the balcony staring down at the massive mob converging on them from every direction.  The first floor of this hotel wasn’t going to stay pristine for much longer.

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

“Watch out!”

Drew looked up as Harley hurled himself through the air to land on the skinny balcony jutting out from the adjacent room.  The shouted warning had given Drew just enough time to see that the next few seconds of his life were going to be painful.  Harley was coming over and didn’t care who was in the way.  The two of them collided and tumbled backwards into the room.  Harley did a push up off Drew and spun around to go back out on the balcony.

On the neighboring balcony Gus slammed the glass slider shut and got up on the railing.  Without looking down he immediately jumped towards the balcony of the room everyone else was now in.  He landed straddling the balcony in a way that made everyone in the room flinch just seeing it. He would’ve fallen to the ground below if Harley hadn’t grabbed him and yanked him inside.  Gus collapsed into the oversized couch in the room recovering from his rough landing on the rail.  Harley went to shut the slider. He had to realign it where LeBron and Yue had pried it off its track to gain access to the room.

“You think they can figure out how to go out the slider and jump over to this balcony like we did?”  A wide eyed Lisa asked the room.

“”I hope not cause you guys royally screwed up this door.  I can’t get it back on the tracks.”  An exasperated Harley said as he banged the heavy-duty oversized glass slider around like a normal person would wave a frying pan in the air.

The wall between the room they were in and the suite they’d just vacated started thumping.  They backed away from it hoping it would turn out to be too solid for their pursuers to beat through.  Flashlights aimed at the wall in the dark room they watched as the generic hotel paintings fell off the wall.  The paintings bounced off the couch and landed on the floor.  They leveled their rifles to blow away whatever came through the drywall.  LeBron ran out through the still open doorway to the balcony and looked both ways.

The balcony to their left was too far for the jumping trick to work.  They’d have to make a bridge or something to be able to get over there.  Unless they beat their way through the wall themselves.  He looked over at the balcony they’d just vacated.  The crawlerz didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the slider on that side.  He knew that wouldn’t last forever.  Once the room started filling up the psychotic monsters would be trying every possible path to get to them.  They were a lot like army ants when they hit an obstacle.

“Can we get to the next balcony?”  Drew asked.  He’d guessed what his younger brother had gone out to check on.  LeBron shook his head.

“No.  It’s too far.  We need to go through the wall.”  LeBron said desperately trying to figure out a way for them to escape the mess they were in.  Drew shrugged off his pack and pulled out the crowbar he used to get through doors and windows.  He liked to call it his skeleton key.

Drew ran to the opposite side of the room and took a swing at the wall.  The crowbar stuck in.  He worked it around and started prying away.  Seeing what he was up to the rest of them joined in on attacking the wall with whatever tools they had strapped to them.  You didn’t survive long in the apocalypse without being able to carry around a lot of random crap in case you needed it.  They were a bunch of walking Swiss army knives.

A plaster covered hand was sticking out of the wall behind them.  It was groping around while it’s owner on the other side of the wall continued smashing itself against the sturdy two by four studs.  Glancing over her shoulder Yue saw a scene from a horror movie unfolding.  More hands began to break through the wall.  The white powder coated hands waving in the air while their owners did their best to squeeze through.

Drew had cleared out a space between two studs almost wide enough for one of them to fit through.  He was prying at the boards when Gus pushed him out of the way to put a few bullets through each of the studs.  A big section of the roof cracked off and fell on his head.  Ignoring the pain he pushed the studs hard enough for them to separate.  He still hadn’t recovered from going crotch first into the hard metal railing outside. It felt a little unfair to Gus that the roof had also hit him.  A considerate universe would spread the random pain around to the others in the group.

The wall behind them was starting to crack as they beat their way into the next room.  It was another suite with the same layout as the first room they’d vacated.  That meant they could duck into the bedroom section, shut that flimsy little inside door and hop across another balcony.  This time they knocked it out efficiently.  Drew and Harley both supervised Gus jumping across.  This time Gus did a lot better.  Evidently the fear of smashing his crotch again overrode his fear of heights.

They were in the new room less than a minute when once again the wall started thumping.  They attacked the wall on the other side of the room while LeBron checked the balcony just to make sure the jump wasn’t doable.  It obviously wasn’t so he joined in on the assault on the wall.  This time they used their weapons to weaken the wall in the same spot Drew had broken through before.  That sped up the whole process and they were shortly standing in yet another hotel room.  Gus even avoided having the roof hit him in the head this time.

They didn’t even pause in the next room.  They just repeated the process again in an attempt to gain a little breathing room.  They were getting tired which was making them sloppy.  It was Yue who slipped and almost fell to her death off the railing this time.  She found herself in the odd position of owing her life to Lisa.  Lisa had snagged her by the waistline when she’d slipped.  Scrabbling around for purchase she’d grabbed a handful of Yue’s underwear.  Yue’s apocalypse appropriate briefs had been turned into a thong, but she’d ended up on the right side of the railing.

They pounded their way through yet another wall.  There was no plaster dust covered arms sticking through the wall behind them yet.  The crawlerz were already at the outside wall with the door to the hallway though.  They were pounding on that trying to get in.  The outer walls must be a little more solid by the door.  It was only a matter of time before they’d be able to beat their way in though.  The psychotic bastards were nothing if not persistent.

Covered in plaster dust, bleeding from too many scratches to count the inevitable happened after another series of walls and balconies.  They were stuck.  There were no more balconies to hop over to.  A whack on the wall revealed solid concert on the other side.  Drew was still rubbing his arm from the shock of that unexpected impact.  Lisa was starting to panic.  She wasn’t the only one.  Rather than be annoyed by her Yue actually thought a bit of panic right now was a fairly sensible reaction.  Plus, if it wasn’t for Lisa then Yue would be splattered all over the sidewalk so that earned her a pass.

“Now what?”  Drew asked.  He was holding his rifle like he was ready to charge out into the hallway and do some damage.

“Too many of them out there.  They’ve been pouring in the whole time we’ve been renovating these rooms.  We’d make it about negative two feet outside the door.”  LeBron said.  That sucked the wind right out of Drew’s sails.

“I think I have an idea.”  Gus said just loudly enough to be heard over the pounding on the door to the room.  Luckily, they’d ended up in a hotel that’d been pretty serious about the quality of the doors going into their suites.  They were able to absorb a serious amount of punishment.

Everyone looked over at Gus.  He looked like a very militant Casper with all the plaster dust covering him.  Yue wondered if it was her imagination or had Gus gotten even whiter when he turned to tell them he had an idea.  Gus stood there unable to speak while everyone stared at him.  He finally just pointed at the balcony then looked up and down.  LeBron got it immediately.  Everyone else was wondering if Gus had slammed some drugs from his private stash.  Not a bad idea when the odds all say you’re about five minutes from being ripped apart and devoured by an insane mob.  Before anyone had a chance to ask if he had any extra LeBron ran excitedly over to the balcony.

“We can go up or down!”  LeBron yelled back to everyone else.  No one got it for a second then the very obvious statement resonated.  Of course, there were balconies above and below them as well as to the sides.

“How the hell do we get down there?”  Drew asked.  He’d walked over to stare off the side of the balcony.  The balcony below them didn’t seem too far away.  Once he was hanging off the side with nothing but air beneath him it’d probably seem pretty damned far though.

“Tie sheets together?”  Yue said casting around the room looking for something they could use.

“Or we could use this rope I brought.”  Harley said dryly.  He’d already dropped his pack and was digging through it.  Ammunition and Slim Jim’s were spilling all over the floor as he dug for a tangled ball of nylon climbing rope.  Yue walked over to shine her light down so he could pull the rope out without losing all of his stuff.  Not that it mattered really.  They didn’t have enough ammunition on them to make a dent in that mob outside.  Bullets were for blasting through walls at this point.

They tied the rope to the balcony and let it drop.  It hung way past the balcony below.  It was just a piece of rope hanging off a balcony.  It wasn’t like a knotted climbing rope or the big thick rope from gym class.

“Well, that’s horrifying.”  Yue said staring down at it.

Despite the fact that the room they were in was bound to be overrun by the infected at any second no one made a move to try and climb down the rope.  They were all thinking the rope would just slow them down on the way to their deaths below.  To add insult to injury they’d smash into the concrete below with rope burns on both hands.  Harley stared at the rope for a second then yanked it back up.  He looked around at all of them sizing them up.

“Who weighs the least?”  Harley said looking back and forth between Lisa and Yue.  Neither of them said anything. An oblivious Drew piped up that he thought Yue was probably the lightest.  Lisa shot him a look that said if they managed to survive the next few minutes, he had some explaining to do.  Harley very quickly tied the rope around Yue.  His familiarity with ropes and knots was obvious in the professional way he did it.

“You’re scary good at tying up girls.”  Yue joked nervously.  She was trying to get her mind off the next step.  The next step was going to suck.  Not giving her time to think about it Harley picked her up and with Drew’s help lowered her gently down the side of the building.  She worked her way onto the balcony below then quickly untied herself so they could pull the rope back up.

Harley quickly tied Lisa up and tossed her after Yue as casually as most people would fling out a fishing lure.  They were able to get LeBron lowered down as well before the first of the infected burst into the room.  One of them had beaten its way through the wall from the hallway.  The hole was between two of the studs in the wall so only allowed the crawlerz to enter the room one at a time.  Gus stood tall blasting away at them as they tried to push through the corpses of their cohorts to gain access to the room.  Drew was wondering if Gus was considering staying up in the room.  It’d make a warped kind of sense considering his fear of heights.  Harley started tying the rope around Drew before he could try to talk to Gus.  There was no time for it anyway.

“This is going to hurt.  Just so you know.  Try and climb on that wall as much as you can. We don’t really have a lot of time to mess around.”  Harley said.  Then he wrapped the rope around the railing to lower Drew.

Drew climbed up on the rail and hesitated to go over the side.  Harley gave him the courage to do so with an inspiring shove.  Dangling in the air like a gigantic YoYo he felt himself being lowered.  The rope was cutting into him painfully in multiple places.  He occasionally bounced off the wall.  How Harley expected him to do any sort of climbing was beyond him.  His best guess was that Harley said that to distract him so that he could push him over the edge.

In a complete panic he kicked out when he felt someone grabbing at him from below.  It took a second for him to register it was Yue and Lisa trying to pull him onto the balcony.  Harley was even shouting for him to let them pull him in.  The girls pulled him over far enough for him to get down on the balcony.  They immediately started untying him.  Drew sat down and tried to rub some feeling back into his back and underarms.  He’d done rope courses before with his dad where they made them a swiss seat out of the rope to sit in.  Lots of D-Rings and stuff for zip lines.  He liked that way a lot better than the Harley way.

In the darkness they couldn’t see what was going on above.  The steady roar of gunfire assuring them that at least one of the men up there was still alive.  The rope snaked it’s way quickly back up about halfway then descended with both ends dangling in the breeze.  Harley’s voice roared out from above telling them to wrap the rope around the bars and tie the two ends together.  Yue quickly moved to do as she was asked.  Once it was tied, she felt it get tugged on a few times then Harley yelled for them to watch out.

The four of them stared up into the darkness in the direction of the gunfire.  They could see the bottom of the balcony and the occasional flash as a weapon went off.  Yue was leaning way out staring straight up when her vision was completely blocked by Harley hanging by his hands off the railing above them.  His feet were kicking all over the place then he was coming towards them at a million miles per hour.  Yue jumped out of the way even as Drew and LeBron leaned forward to catch the big man.

Harley swung towards them like an overweight Robin Hood.  They caught him by the legs and pulled him in.  He unwrapped his hands from some kind of knot he’d made in the rope and unfastened his belt.  He’d wrapped it around the rope as a backup evidently.  Falling to the ground he crawled into the suite and collapsed.  Up above the gunfire went fully automatic.  LeBron leaned over and almost got hit in the head by a flashlight that tumbled off the balcony.  Shining his own flashlight up he saw Gus edging over the side of the balcony above him.

A smashing sound as the slider above them was knocked off its tracks.  The broken glass door tumbled off the balcony.  Shards of glass rained down all around them.  Gus went over the edge backwards with a crawler riding him in the middle of a glittering rain shower of glass.  Their flashlights illuminated the sparkling particles as Gus plummeted past them.  Yue saw Gus purposefully let go of the rope.  His eyes closed tightly and his lips moving as he rocketed past them.  He was either cursing or praying as he fell.  Knowing the passionate Marine, he was probably doing both.  A crawler was still attached to him.  It was riding him like a remora riding a shark into the depths.

Then he was gone.  Drew walked over to stand beside Yue in shock.  They’d shared a ton of time and experiences with the Marine since they’d first met him.  Drew was having problems standing because of the pain in his arms and back.  Harley was still lying on the floor gasping for breath.  Everyone else was as well as could be expected after being tied to the end of a rope and tossed off a balcony.

“Come on.  Let’s see if this floor is any safer than the other one.”  LeBron was working to pull everyone away from the balcony.  There’d be time later to mourn Gus.  Right now, they could best honor him by staying alive.

Chapter 26:  Requesting an Upgrade

They lay around a musty dark room recovering in pained silence.  They’d checked the hallway and hadn’t seen any infected on this level.  The fire escape didn’t line up right with each and every window.  With everything that’d happened that night LeBron couldn’t remember if there’d been a platform lined up with the window on this level.  Harley had been the one standing down there the longest.  Harley thought there was a window there, but the fire escape covered a portion of it.

The infected would be slamming themselves into every possible part of the building to try and get at them.  They were ripping the carpeted floors of the rooms above to shreds.  The solid concrete floors the only thing keeping them from continuing to dig down.  Even the balconies outside could be used by the crawlerz.  They didn’t care about rope.  Most of them would end up as piles of bloody bones and skin on the sidewalk down below.  A few might actually make the leap onto the adjacent balconies.  Once there they’d be able to prowl the floor until they found the group of uninfected humans cowering in this room.

“We can’t stay here.”  LeBron announced.

“Where are we supposed to go?”  Lisa challenged him.  She’d thrown her arms up and given him a nasty look when she said it. She realized almost immediately that was a bit over the top.  She was saved the embarrassment of apologizing since no one could see very well in the dark room.  The one flashlight they’d left on was pointing at one of the walls.  Little specks of light magically floating around in the tight beam as it cut a tunnel through the dusty darkness.

“We have to go up.”  The wheels in LeBron’s head were back to spinning at full speed.  The death of a friend had reminded him of the high cost of not staying ahead of the game.

“Like to the roof?”  Yue asked.  He must be back on his roof kick.  She’d kind of hoped he was over that idea.  It may be a good idea on a nice night in the middle of nowhere with an easy to access roof that had a heavy-duty lockable door up top.  How often were the stars going to align to offer up something like that on a nightly basis wherever they happened to randomly end up at though?

“Maybe.  If we end up that high.  I’m thinking we just need to get up to a floor the fire escape doesn’t reach.”  LeBron responded.  His plan made sense now that he’d said it out loud.  The exhausted group reluctantly got to their feet to figure out a way to hobble up a few more floors.  Each of them aware they were living on borrowed time on this floor.

“Out the door and check the stairs?”  Drew asked.  It was really more of a rhetorical question.  It wasn’t like the elevator was running.  If the infected hadn’t infested the stairwell yet, then they’d be able to easily skip up a few floors to the penthouse suite.  Drew walked towards the door to the suite to open it and head out.

Something started pounding on the door from out in the hallway.  A few seconds later there was a similar pounding on the wall beside the door.  Their brief respite in the room had given the crawlerz enough time to figure out they could get through the window off the fire escape to close in on their prey.  This new development left them with nothing but options that sucked.  They could bounce down another level by ‘Tarzanning’ to the balcony below or they could say screw it and try their luck in the hallway.  A third not so great option was to try and secure the room they were in.

Staying in the room would just delay their deaths by maybe twenty minutes.  Swinging down another level sounded suicidal.  There may already be an army of infected waiting for them a floor below anyway.  There was a nice big window on that floor leading to the fire escape as well.  There was realistically only one choice.  Time to roll the dice.  Drew hesitated long enough to look behind him. Everyone was nodding at him to go for it.  Everyone he could see anyway.  It was pitch black except for the flashlight beams which were all directed straight into this eyes.

“I’m going to open this door and start shooting.  A soon as I see a path forward, I’m taking it.  We get to the stairs and we go in.  I’ll open the door to the stairs.  Yue and Lebron go in first and make sure it’s clear.  Once everybody’s in Harley and me will follow you and secure the door.  I’ve got a couple grenades I may toss out.  Ready?”  Drew asked in a deadly serious tone.  He was busy blinking as much as he could to try and regain the night vision the bright flashlights had stolen from him.

Without waiting for an answer, he made sure his rifle was where he could reach it and pulled his pistol out of its holster.  He had no idea how you were supposed to open a door when a crowd of flesh-eating freaks were knocking on the other side, so he just opened it and stepped back.  A quick thought flashed through his mind that either Gus or Mikey would’ve probably been trained on the proper way to blast your way out of a room like this.  Knowing them they’d have insisted on a rapid escalation to the maximum amount of violence they could visit in the small area.

The infected man on the other side of the door was tall, skinny and had surprisingly long luxuriant looking hair.  He was caught off balance trying to smash into the door when Drew had opened the door.  He looked like he’d just taken a step back to try and ram the door again.  Multiple other bodies were visible milling around outside trying to press on the wall and door.  Drew shot the skinny guy with the shiny hair and slammed the door in the other monster’s faces.  Thinking about Gus and Mikey had given him an idea.

“I don’t know why I was saving these for the stairwell.  Everybody down!  LeBron you cover me.  I’ll toss the grenade out there.”  Drew shouted over the noise of the renewed banging on the wall and door.  Drew popping into the open doorway had taken the rage of the small mob outside the door up multiple notches.

“Are you sure about this?”  LeBron asked stationing himself in front of the door.  Yue was behind him shining her flashlight so they could see.  Harley was standing bent over behind the two.  He was still in pain from the jump.  Drew took the pin out of a grenade and gripped it tightly in his right hand.  He held his pistol in the other.  He realized he had no hands to open the door with so shook his head in Yue’s direction.

Yue handed off her flashlight to Lisa and opened the door.  LeBron went full auto on the wall of flesh standing in front of them.  Drew pitched the grenade over the heads of the ones trying to get in and screamed for Yue to shut the door.  Unfortunately, too many of the crawlerz were pushing on it for that to happen. There were also all the dead ones laid out on the ground in the doorway.  LeBron kept pulling the trigger as he walked backwards.  He was doing his best not to shoot Yue or Drew.  If he happened to kill a crawler that was a bonus at this point.  Considering how many were outside the door he didn’t see how he could possibly be missing.

Flashing back to his earlier thoughts around how they needed to plan better he wondered how they’d let themselves get here in the first place.  The live grenade in the hallway outside the door they couldn’t shut wasn’t going to end well.

The grenade exploded.  The explosion in the confined space was loud enough to reach into their ears and rip out their ability to hear.  LeBron felt a piece of shrapnel hit him in the shoulder.  He spun in a half circle and fell to his knees.  He wanted to scratch it out.  It was a hot, searing pain.  Blood bubbled up and covered the front of his chest and shoulder.  He sat down and held his hand over the blood.  He looked around the room dazed by the explosion.  He couldn’t hear anything.

Drew picked himself up off the ground where he’d jumped on Lisa to shield her from the blast.  She’d been backing up to get away from the doors when she’d tripped over an end table and fallen to the floor.  She’d been trying to make sure Drew and the others had a light to see by.  Drew was yelling as he got up.  No one could hear him since they were all temporarily deaf.  Those who hadn’t had the sense knocked out of them struggled to their feet to follow him out the door.

LeBron shakily pointed his rifle in the general direction he thought the door was in.  He started fumbling around trying to find his flashlight.  Being deaf and blind in a building filling up with things trying to kill you was getting really old really fast.  Especially when one of those things was his moronic grenade throwing brother.  A beam of light from someone else’s flashlight lit up the room.  LeBron gave up on finding his for now.  They had to take advantage of the window of opportunity the grenade had bought them.  It wasn’t going to last long.

Yue was laid out on the floor by the door.  Seeing that everyone else looked to be in bad shape Drew bent down and scooped Yue up onto his shoulders.  They didn’t have time to make sure she was ok.  It wasn’t like it was the first time that Yue had been knocked unconscious.  It wasn’t even the first time that month.  That couldn’t be a good thing to keep happening to her.  Not that it’d matter if they all ended up being eaten alive in the hallway in the next couple of minutes.

Drew high stepped his way over the dismembered pieces and parts of the former crowd of killers.  Lisa followed pointing her flashlight down to help him keep his footing.  He didn’t bother looking down the hall towards the distant side where the crawlerz would be coming in through the window.  He shifted Yue around on his shoulders and kept his eyes on the new prize.  The prize in this case being the entrance to the hopefully deserted stairs about twenty feet away from them.

While Drew played hopscotch through a hallway littered with body parts the others turned to face the mob of crawlerz racing towards them from the other end of the hallway.  Their guns roared to life behind Drew as he reached out to grab the handle of the door labeled ‘stairs’.  Yue was squirming around on his shoulders. Her movement reassured him since he’d been worried that she might have been knocked unconscious again.  He shifted her around so he could open the door to the hopefully empty staircase.  He was immediately attacked by an infected man who’d been a tax attorney before his mid-life crisis wound up getting him bitten by an infected Porsche salesman.

Unceremoniously dumping Yue headfirst onto the concrete floor Drew sidestepped the hard charging auditor.  The number crunching crawler slammed into the vending machines behind them.  Drew was slinging lead into the crawler from his rifle almost before Yue hit the floor.  The bullets ripped the flesh off the monster who’d bounced off the Coke machine and lunged for Drew again.  Drew was knocked back against the wall with the bullet riddled carcass of his bloodied assailant crumpling to the floor beside him.  The body settled right on top of Yue.

LeBron and Lisa appeared with their flashlights arcing through the darkness.  They saw a shocked Drew, an open staircase door and wondered fearfully where Yue was.  When Drew bent down and pushed the bloody body off of his sister everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.  There’d already been too much death for one day.  It was too loud to talk since Harley was trying his best to use his entire ammunition supply in the hallway.  Looking to make way for the big guy when he finished his murder spree they hustled into the stairwell.  Having already been attacked once Drew was shining his light all over the place to see if he saw any more infected hanging out in the musty concrete passageway.

“Shut the door!”  Harley literally flew into the space from outside.  He bowled over Lisa who’d been standing ready with LeBron to jump in and slam the door shut.  The two of them rolled down almost an entire flight of stairs together.

LeBron dodged the Harley juggernaut to pull as hard as he could on the handle of the door.  It was setup so you couldn’t slam it.  He‘d been standing there holding it wide open.  A big boom sounded from down the hall.  LeBron was tossed backwards as the door was rocked shut by the shockwave from the grenade going off.  It would’ve slammed shut all the way, but a crawler managed to get its hand between the door frame and the door.  The door pulverized the bones in the thing’s hand, but the door didn’t quite latch all the way shut.

Drew quickly tossed Yue to the ground again.  He was careful not to just drop her this time.  He didn’t know how many more blows to the head she could take.  If they made it out of there alive, he was going to make her start wearing a helmet.  He bounded towards the door the second he’d shifted Yue to the cold concrete of the staircase landing.

What do you do about a hand that’s been smashed into a door jam?  Drew grabbed it. The nasty lump of fleshy goo felt like a warm Ziploc bag filled with tomato soup and crackers.  The hand twitched around and started trying to open the door.  Rather than fight it Drew went all Kung Fu and rammed his shoulder into the door.  He was trying to leverage the momentum from the crawler outside to ram the door hard into its face.  Already weakened by being pelted in the back by multiple frags from the grenade the crawler lost its grip.  Drew tugged hard on the handle to the door.  This time it made an extremely satisfying noise as it snapped shut.

“As long as they can’t figure out the intricacies of pulling on a door instead of trying to beat it down, I think we’re good.”  Drew announced to a stairwell filled with people who didn’t really care what he was thinking at the moment.

“Wasn’t there one hiding out in here already when you opened the door the first time?”  LeBron asked from the floor.  He’d given up trying to see how bad he was hurt.  Between the weapons strapped to him, his pack, his multiple shirts and jackets he wasn’t going to be able to peel down to his skin soon enough anyway.  He’d just have to hope he didn’t bleed to death before they found a safe room.

“Yep.  One in ten thousand can figure out how to operate a door handle.  I like those odds.”  Drew joked. He was making light of the situation while being seriously concerned about everyone.  Harley and Lisa were working to recover from their very abrupt trip down the stairs.  Yue was twitching around and groaning a little bit on the floor.  LeBron looked like a giant had grabbed him and used his body to clean up a spaghetti sauce spill.  How was Drew supposed to get them up multiple flights of stairs to safety? He needed to get it done before that one in ten thousand genius level crawler happened along and popped open a door.

“Time for some stair climbers.”  Harley said leaning down to help LeBron to his feet.  Lisa got on the other side of LeBron.  Together her and a hurting Harley were able to keep LeBron moving along.  Drew picked Yue back up and they trudged solemnly up the stairs.

“Down a level.”  Drew said staring at the padlock and chain wound tightly around the door marked ‘roof access’.  The chain was most likely a leftover from hotel management trying to keep romance seekers from going up on the roof at night.  It very effectively spelled the end to LeBron’s whole sleeping under the stars plan.  Gus had been the one carrying the lock loppers.  They were somewhere far below them now wherever Gus had come to rest.

They went down a level then carefully popped the door open.  Leaving the others in the stairwell Drew and Lisa entered the floor and made sure the hallway looked clear.  Shining their lights around they didn’t see anything but doors and the ever-present vending machines.  They took a quick spin to the end of the hall and back. It looked like they’d reached a level where they might actually be safe.

Once everyone had moved from the stairwell into the hallway Drew recruited Lisa and Harley to help him shove the vending machines in front of the door to the stairs.  It took some time and serious cussing, but they were eventually able to wedge the machines where they wanted them.  That should keep even the most dedicated crawler from getting the door to open wide enough for them to slink through.

Gus had been the expert at getting into rooms that were locked.  It took them a few minutes and more than a few rounds, but they were standing inside a nice sized suite soon enough.  Drew asked Lisa to tend to LeBron and Yue in the king-sized bed in the bedroom section of the suite.  He realized how exhausted he was when Lisa handed him a bucket and asked him to go get some ice.  He was halfway to the door before sensing her giant smirk behind him.  Rolling his eyes, he turned around and went with her to help get LeBron’s shirt off so they could patch him up.

Once they were done with LeBron, he yanked an already sleeping Harley off the couch and asked him to help setup an escape route.  Harley grumbled profusely but forced his aching body to sit up.  After a few minutes of back and forth they got up to stroll around the room and see if they could find anything useful.  They considered tying sheets together. They even went so far as considering taking the bedframe from the sofa bed and trying to build a ladder to the balcony below theirs.  When they couldn’t come up with anything realistic immediately Harley promised he’d keep working on it while Drew went and sat out in the hallway to stand guard.

Within about twenty minutes all of them were fast asleep.

Chapter 27:  Wake Up Call

Drew wiped the drool off his chin and stumbled to his feet.  His body hurt.  That was a pretty standard sensation to wake up to in the new normal.  As long as he could stand up and hold his rifle, he was good enough.  The vending machines stood out in the light streaking in through the grime covered window.  The sun had come up over the mountains and woke up the world.  Even better than the wakeup call Drew liked the fact that the sun would send the crawlerz skittering back into their dark holes to hide for the day.

Knowing the clock was ticking for them to get the hell out of this god forsaken city Drew rushed to the room to wake up everyone else.  Everyone else was still sound asleep.  Hoping it’d work Drew nudged Yue gently.  Her eyes fluttered open. She saw someone standing over her.  She kicked him backwards across the room.  For someone who’d been asleep a second earlier she’d landed a super solid kick.  She’d landed it on the last place a man wants to be kicked.  Drew fell to the ground on the other side of the room gasping for air and cradling his crotch.

Yue sat up which woke Lisa.  Lisa sat up to see what was going on and put her hand on LeBron’s hurt shoulder.  That woke him up.  He gasped painfully and gave her a hurt look.  She muttered a quick apology then climbed out of bed to see why Drew was lying on the floor with his hands covering his junk.

“I’m so sorry!”  Yue stammered out.  The apology would’ve been better delivered without all of the poorly suppressed giggling.  Drew was just happy Yue was awake.  He knew he was a dumbass for surprising someone like that.  He honestly hadn’t thought she was going to wake up when he poked her though.  The giggling was contagious.  Once Lisa figured out what’d happened, she also thought it was hilarious.

“What the hell dude?”  Harley called out from the couch in the main room.  He was fighting through some extreme aches and pains to get up himself.  He’d fallen asleep with the coil of rope in his hands as he tied knots in it to make it easier to climb down.  It hadn’t helped the pain in his neck that he’d fallen asleep sitting straight up.  Finally working his way off the overlarge sectional, he looked forlornly at the comfort that should’ve been his.

The group in the bedroom rushed to assure Harley that everything was ok.  He pulled out a bottle of something from somewhere and self-medicated while he waited for everyone else to get up.  The booze and oxy soothed his muscles much faster than the maximum strength Tylenol Yue was passing around had any chance of doing.

“Do we just walk down the stairs and leave?”  Lisa asked.  She’d addressed the question at Drew but said it loudly enough for it to be fair game for anyone to answer.

“I hope so.”  LeBron said.  They’d trashed his clothes from the night before.  Instead of all the normal gear hanging off him he looked oddly light.  He was walking around in just an orange T-Shirt with the name of a high school cross-country team on it.  He didn’t have his rifle on his shoulder, but he was carrying a pistol near his functional hand.  The Tylenol Yue handed him for the pain was most likely nowhere near adequate for the pain he was in.  Harley considered offering up some Oxy then decided it was better for LeBron to learn to deal with the pain.  Coincidentally it’d also be better for Harley’s limited Oxy supply if everyone sucked it up and dealt with their pain on an over-the-counter basis.

“Alright.  Let’s do this.”  Drew said once everyone looked ready to go.  He’d already walked out on the balcony and confirmed the truck was still where they’d left it.  It looked like it‘d survived the night unscathed. They split up LeBron and Yue’s gear then headed over to the vending machines blocking the staircase door.

“You don’t think the stairwell is full of crawlerz just waiting for us to move these things out of the way, do you?”  LeBron asked.  The question turned the regular looking door into an ominous trap.  Drew was now picturing the entire stairwell full of creepy crawlerz standing in rows silently waiting for someone to open a door so they could feast.

“Shut up!  Why would you even say something like that?”  Drew asked him.  He caught himself before he lied and said he hadn’t heard anything while watching the door all night.  He was pretty sure he’d be called out on that lie.

The truth was that if the stairwell was full of the infected then they wouldn’t have another exit out of the building anyway.  They’d be completely screwed.  Drew thought they might be able to rappel down the side of the hotel going from balcony to balcony to balcony.  Except there were going to be infected on some of those floors already.  Ideally once they opened this door the stairs would be nice and empty.  They’d be able to just walk down to the street below without any issues.

For once they got to take the easy way out.  Drew crawled over the vending machines to pry open the door to see if anything attacked him.  When nothing did, he enlisted Lisa and Harley to help him shove the machines out a few feet so he could check again.  Ready to shove the machines back in place if he had to, he stuck his flashlight in the stairwell and looked around.  Nothing tried to eat him, so he went all the way in.  He backed out after scanning the whole stairwell. Having verified that there wasn’t a horde of demons packed into the space he helped move the machines out of the way. They needed to make it easy to get through the door so that LeBron and Yue didn’t have to try climbing with their injuries.

Ten long minutes later they were standing in the sunlight outside the hotel staring at a pile of bloody clothes next to a broken rifle.  The stark reminder of the death of their friend quickly quelling the giddiness of having escaped the hotel.  Looking up Yue imagined the fear Gus must’ve felt as he plummeted to his death.  She’d seen him let go of the rope.  Gus wasn’t a quitter.  The only explanation in her mind was that the crawler had gotten its teeth into him.  Gus knew he was going to turn.  Rather than hop down to the balcony below and endanger his friends he chose to go out on his own terms.

Not knowing what to say they stood in a semi-circle while Drew went to the truck and grabbed a container of diesel.  He poured the fuel over the body of their friend and protector.  He stood over what was left of Gus shaking with barely constrained sobs of grief once he was done.  It seemed like someone should say something.  They weren’t just getting rid of an unsightly blemish on the street.  They were telling a dear friend goodbye.

LeBron and Yue were the normal talkers.  Neither of them looked up to speaking at the moment.  LeBron was ghostly pale from blood loss and Yue looked like she might keel over at any moment.  Lisa had barely known Gus.  Drew had honestly been a lot tighter with Mikey.  The awkward silence stretched out until it was finally broken by Harley.

“I knew you only briefly brother but the strength in your arm and heart were there for all to see.  We’ll be seeing you again soon enough given the state of things.  A warrior’s death you died.  Your life wasn’t taken. It was freely given so that those under your protection would live.  Semper Fi Devil Dog.”  Harley wrapped up the quickly improvised speech with a flourish.  Drew gave it a moment to make sure no one else wanted to say anything before bending over and lighting the diesel on fire.

They solemnly dispersed to the truck after that.  Each muttering a quick and tearful goodbye to the faithful Marine.  The flames blackening the smooth gray concrete as they scorched away the physical remains of a good man.

Harley did a quick circle around the truck to see if there was anything wrong with it.  Everyone else piled into the cab.  Without Gus there the seating arrangement was a little more comfortable.  LeBron and the two girls ended up in the sleeper section while Drew parked himself in the passenger seat.  Harley messed around with a bottle of DEP and a big jug of diesel before climbing in to join them.  He sat down and fired up the truck.

“Where are we headed?” Harley asked as he looked around at the street signs.  He was trying to figure out how to get back to the highway.  He put the truck in gear and drove slowly in that direction waiting for someone to respond.  One thing they all agreed on was that they weren’t trying to spend another night inside the city limits if they could help it.  They were tremendously fortunate to have only lost one person.

“We’re headed north to the weather base place.”  Drew said from the passenger seat when no one else spoke up.

“Why?”  Lisa asked loudly from the sleeper section.

“To see if Jeff’s there.”  Drew answered quickly.

“How long are we going to spend guessing where Yue’s old lover is?  We’re barely surviving as it is.  Gus is dead.  Yue and LeBron are both hurt.  Harley can barely walk.  This is stupid!”  Lisa said loudly.  She’d clearly been building up some steam for a while.  Looking in the mirror Drew could tell she was seriously pissed.  Harley kept right on driving.  No matter how pissed off everybody got he was focused on getting them as far from this hell hole as possible before the sun went down.

“You’re welcome to leave any time.”  Yue said frostily from the back.

“How would you even know if I’m here or not?  You’re in a coma half the time!  Don’t you think Jeff would tell you to find somewhere safe and wait for him?  Think about it.”  Lisa said belligerently.  She really respected everyone in the cab of this truck.  She couldn’t figure out why they were all being so hardheaded about something so stupid.

“I’m not in one now!  I’m going to find Jeff and we’re going to save him!  I don’t care how hard it is!”  Yue yelled losing her cool.  Tears bubbling up in her eyes.  She knew what they were doing was stupid.  She knew the chances of them succeeding were somewhere between zero and probably not.

“LeBron’s shoulder’s shredded.  That could’ve been Drew instead of Gus splattered all over the sidewalk.  Is this worth killing your brothers over?”  Lisa said trying her best to talk some sense into Yue before she got them all killed.  She knew LeBron and Drew would do whatever Yue said to do.  Neither of them would be willing to stand idly by while Yue took off to find Jeff on her own.  This had to be Yue’s decision.

Yue didn’t respond.  She shoved her face in her pillow and withdrew from the whole conversation.  Lisa wanted to scream at the back of her head and make her listen.  Instead, she sat there with her emotions stewing over.  She wondered if she should’ve just gone back to the dam with everybody else.  She could be sitting in a concrete fortress munching on MREs right now instead of being stuck in a constant battle to stay alive.  She was chasing after Drew like some kind of lovesick puppy.

“We’ve got to go somewhere right?  Staying in one place doesn’t normally work out too well now a days.”  Drew ventured a comment.  LeBron wanted to reach up front and hit him in the back of the head.  Had he bummed a drink off Harley?  That’d explain his moronic entry into this verbal battle between his girlfriend and his sister.  It was scary enough the big dude driving their truck was occasionally sipping some kind of whiskey out of a flask.  It made it even worse if he was also including the person who was supposed to be their lookout.  No one had missed the way Harley casually declined the Tylenol Yue had offered him.

“Are you serious?  We have to go somewhere?  We have to go somewhere so you choose to drive towards the big base where all the guys with guns are trying to kill you?  You’re taking your girlfriend and your little brother there to be slaughtered?  Your sister too for that matter since I bet if you tried you could talk some sense into her.  If I’d known how little you cared about me, I wouldn’t have come.  No way you really love somebody you’re willing to get killed that easy!  You asshole!”  Lisa leaned forward crying. She started punching Drew in the back of his head.

Yue pulled up off her pillow long enough to call Lisa a crazy bitch and try to grab her arms.  Lisa easily threw the disoriented Yue off of her and went back to hitting Drew.  LeBron leaned forward then leaned right back into his corner at a single glance from Lisa.  Unless she pulled out a weapon, he was content to let her beat up on Drew all day long.  If she pushed Yue down again, he may have to do something.  What that was he had no idea.  He really hoped that Yue would just stay down.

Yue sat back up and Lisa stopped hitting Drew long enough to get in a yelling match with her.  It culminated with Lisa screaming for them to pull over so she could get out and leave.  Harley continued to act like none of this was happening.  Even when Lisa screamed at him to pull over, he just kept right on calmly driving.  It looked for a second like Lisa might strike out at Harley.  She appeared to consider it then discarded the idea as going a little too far.  She didn’t think Harley would turn around and slap her silly, but she wasn’t positive he wouldn’t either.  That and the fact that getting out in the middle of the city was suicide was enough to bring her back to reality.

She leaned back and focused on her breathing.  Yue stared daggers at her through a veil of tears.  LeBron and Drew both did their best to not bring attention to themselves.  Harley just kept right on driving like nothing had happened.  If you looked closely you could tell he was fighting back a grin that kept trying to break out on his face.

“Maybe you’re right.”  The subdued tone coming from Yue wasn’t like her at all.

“I’m sorry.  I’m always just so scared now.  Gus died last night.  Any of us could die anytime.  I just want us to find somewhere safe.  If we knew for sure where Jeff was, I’d be the first one to say let’s go get him.  I love you all so much.”  Lisa sobbed.

LeBron and Drew both watched in shock as the two girls who’d been at each other’s throats seconds before collapsed into one another’s arms and began crying for all they were worth.  Harley broke out of his cool façade to smile over at Drew and shake his head in a ‘don’t even try to figure it out’ sort of way.  Staying quiet he pointed up on the dash for Drew to pull down the stack of CDs they’d accumulated.  Listening to the radio wasn’t exactly an option.  You got your occasional HAM radio guy who had no clue what was going on interspersed with your end of the world religious kooks.  There hadn’t been anything useful on the radio since the government signed off to let everyone fend for themselves.

“… if you are on the eastern seaboard please turn to FM 92.3 or AM 540 for the specific locations of facilities you can report to.  Once again this is the director of the department for the continuation of the United States government broadcasting from the formerly top-secret base in Weathertop near our nation’s capital.  Your government is back to serve you.  Our goal is to gather everyone together in centralized locations.  We have the munitions and the experts to train you how to use them.  We can destroy the crawler menace.  It’ll be a long hard fight, but we’ll win it.  We’ll reclaim our country together.  This message will repeat again at the top of the hour.  Keep your heads down out there…”

The shocked occupants of the truck all stared at the radio like it’d just fallen out of the sky.  How long had useful stuff like that been being broadcast?  Was the government really expecting everyone to forgive them and come join in the fight?  Yue finally broke the silence.

“I guess we’re still on our way to Weathertop.”  Sha said beaming at a confused looking Lisa.

“Yeah, this changes stuff, but shouldn’t we check to see where else we should go that may be closer?”  Lisa asked.

“Nope.  That was Jeff talking on the radio.  He figured out a way to tell us where he was.  I believe you were saying you’d be the first in line to go get him?”  Yue said in a teasing tone.  A big smile playing around on her lips.

“Absolutely.  Maybe we can double date some time?”  Answered Lisa with an echoing grin.

Chapter 28:  Fool Me Twice

“If we go the fastest way, we’re going to end up being a frozen dinner for whatever crawlerz are stupid enough to be up in the mountains.”  Harley said it emphatically.  He had no desire to drive until they got stuck in a blizzard and froze to death.

They were parked in front of the sign to take the I-40 ramp east off of I-26.  As if to emphasize Harley’s point a light flurry of snow kicked up out of nowhere.  Harley took everyone’s silence as consensus.  He put the truck back in gear and took the off ramp.  Yue was busy tracing their path in the atlas looking for the next major road they could turn north on to keep heading towards Purcellville, Va.  Purcellville being the closest city to the supposed location of the not-so-secret Weathertop installation they were now pretty certain Jeff was at.

Lisa handed LeBron an antibiotic and a naproxen.  The antibiotic was one they hoped would help keep his wound from getting infected. The naproxen was to try and help with his aches and pains.  Once she’d made sure he’d taken his medicine she signaled Yue to get ready.  This next part wasn’t going to be fun.  They needed to poke around in LeBron’s shoulder and make sure there wasn’t any metal bits still in there from where he’d been fragged.  They hadn’t seen an exit wound when they were patching him up at the hotel.  They’d looked for metal then but hadn’t found any.

“You guys already looked for frag pieces and said you didn’t see anything.”  LeBron reminded them with a slightly panicked look on his face.  Yue wasn’t going to give up on the doublecheck she felt like he needed though.  She was worried they hadn’t poked around deep enough the last time they’d checked.  The idea of them ‘poking around deeper’ was freaking LeBron out.

“Hey Harley, can you lend us one of those Oxy out of your secret stash?  The one that you’re so slick we couldn’t possibly know about.”  Yue asked.

A totally busted Harley rooted around in his pockets until he found a Ziploc with the requested medication.  A few dozen white pills of assorted size were in the bag.  Harley shook it a few times then pulled out two and handed them back.  He told her to give him one now then one after they were done playing doctor on his arm.  The Ziploc bag quickly disappearing back into his voluminous black over coat that’d become his signature look.

Yue and Lisa cornered LeBron in the small sleeper section and proceeded to shine lights and poke around trying to feel anything jagged.  They must have found something.  Drew and Harley both winced as LeBron yelped in pain.  Harley thinking to himself he probably should’ve reminded them to wait until the drugs kicked in before they started digging around in the kid’s shoulder.  Not that he was positive what all of the pills in the Ziploc were anyway.  He might’ve handed them a couple of baby aspirin for all he knew.  His normal dosing regimen was to take two and if he didn’t get a buzz in thirty minutes or less to swallow another random one.

He’d given them two of the pills he thought most resembled the ones that normally worked for him.  Hopefully those were right.  Otherwise, LeBron was going to need to become one tough hombre with all the extra pain he was dealing with.  The screaming eventually subsided.  Drew and Harley both dutifully ignored the blubbery sobs coming from the sleeper section.  Yue opened the curtain wider to see what they were doing up front.  Harley immediately put all his focus on the road.  Drew pretended to be asleep before remembering he was supposed to be on lookout.  He bobbed his whole body around trying to appear casual.

“What’s going on up here?  We there yet”  A bemused Yue asked.

“We’re officially out of the city.  We just need to make sure we turn north before we hit Raleigh.  It’s about a hundred times bigger than Asheville.”  Harley answered.

“Yeah, screw that.  We barely survived Asheville.  I’ve got zero desire to go somewhere worse.”  Drew chimed in.

Yue nodded in absent minded agreement while looking out the windows.  The snowflakes were being swept off the windshield by the hypnotically swinging wipers.  They were only going about thirty to forty miles per hour.  Any faster than that and it was too hard to figure out where the road was.  The slower speed also helped when they periodically hit ice patches.  Harley was worried about having the chains on for this long.  He’d never had them on a truck for longer than it took to drive through whatever area he was in that said he needed chains.  Leaving them on for this long was new for him.

A distracted Yue continued nodding.  She watched the world race by through the windows.  It was like they were riding in a reverse snow globe.  Sitting high and dry in their heated space while everything outside was being shaken around like crazy.  The illusion only partially ruined by the random array of holes in the windows that they’d repaired with copious amounts of duct tape.  Up ahead there appeared several large vehicles off to the side of the road.  Judging by the thick layer of snow resting on top of them they’d been there for a while.  Harley slowed down as they approached to see what the deal was.

“They’re military.”  Drew said straining his eyes to make out any additional details.  As soon as he said it out loud, they all recognized the shapes and muted colors of a military style convoy.

“Should we stop?  There may be stuff we can use.”  Yue said.  Lisa had also poked her head out of the curtained space in the back to see what was going on.  LeBron had slammed his other pill and was impatiently waiting for the drugs to kick in.  He kept talking about the ‘Calgon take me away’ commercial.  That was clear evidence to Yue and Lisa that the drugs had in fact already kicked in.  Lisa could use a magical little pill or two herself.  It hadn’t been fun using a pair of tweezers to pluck out the tiny pieces of metal they’d located under LeBron’s skin.

Harley slowed the truck down beside the convoy so they could check it out from a safe distance.  The snow-covered vehicles looked like they’d been pulled over and parked in an orderly fashion.  The only real sign something horrible had happened were the broken windows and blood smeared interiors.  Even that was pretty well covered up with a fine film of snow though.

“Looks like it might’ve been a supply convoy.”  Drew guessed.  The big trucks could’ve either been transporting troops or supplies.

“We could use some food.  Bullets would be nice too.  We‘ve burned through most of what we brought with us.  I have no clue how we were able to shoot that many bullets.”  LeBron said.

“Yeah, like Gus always said.  You can never have too many bullets or use too much body spray.”  Drew said fondly recalling the back and forth he used to have with Gus and Mikey.  They were both his kind of people.  If the end of the world hadn’t come along and ruined his plans, he probably would’ve been getting ready for boot camp right about now.  Plan ‘A’ had been to get a sports scholarship then ROTC his way in as an officer.  Plan ‘B’ had been a different course to the same result.  Go in enlisted then use the Marines to pay for him to go to college.  Either way would’ve worked for Drew.

“You guys want to check out these trucks?  There’s probably some crawlerz underneath them that’ll come shooting out at lightspeed as soon as you get close.”  Harley said.  He’d come to a complete stop which everyone took to mean it was on.

Drew grabbed his weapons and opened the door.  A chill blast of winter air stripped the warmth from the formerly toasty cab.  He wormed his way down to the snow-covered concrete.  Once there he crunched his way through the frozen snow to the side of the truck facing the troop carriers.  He stood there scanning the surroundings through his rifle sights waiting on the others to join him.  Lisa and Yue showed up a few moments later.  Yue was still looking a little pale but seemed to be dealing with it.  It’d been hours since she’d had to lie down to keep herself from puking.

“I told LeBron to stay in the truck.  That gimpy arm of his could be a dangerous thing out here.  Especially if we have to move fast to get back into the truck.”  Lisa said quietly.  Drew hoped LeBron’s arm healed quickly.  There was no one he trusted more to have his back.  Although he supposed it was actually a toss-up if he trusted Yue or LeBron more.  LeBron might be securing the first-place trophy as most trusted if Yue kept running headfirst into every object she could find.

“Harley’s not coming?”  Drew asked looking up into the cab.  The big man was casually reclining in his seat.  He smiled down and waved at them.

“He’s there in case we need to make a quick getaway.  He reminded me if he got killed no one else knows how to drive the truck.”  Drew nodded at that bit of additional trivia from Lisa.  He made a mental note to get Harley to give them lessons on driving the truck.  They could pretend like it was for when Harley was sleeping.  It was really because they needed a backup in case Harley ended up moaning a lot and craving fresh brains.

“So, he didn’t want to leave the warm cab to come carry stuff and possibly be mauled?”  Drew responded.  He gave Harley a middle finger salute which seemed to amuse the big man greatly.  They all knew Harley didn’t actually expect anything to happen and was just letting them handle this one.  Somebody needed to sit up in the truck with LeBron anyway.  The biggest concern they all shared was that Harley might use all the alone time to self-medicate until driving became an issue.

“I honestly think he just doesn’t like trying to squeeze through the cage to get in and out of the cab.  You guys feel anything?” Yue asked.  The three of them were standing in a line staring at the vehicles.  Now that they were on the ground the troop carriers towered over them.  There was way too much dark space underneath the big military machines.  The way the snow piled up around the perimeter of the trucks you couldn’t see anything underneath them.

“My Spidey senses aren’t lighting up or anything.”  Drew answered.

“Me either.  How about you?”  Lisa directed the question back at Yue.  She’d turned out to be the most sensitive of all of them.  Yue stood there quietly concentrating for another few seconds then shook her head.

“I think we’re good.  I don’t feel anything either.  Not that I trust all that weirdness.”  Yue took a tentative step towards the trucks then stopped.  None of them wanted to get too close to the shadowy underside.  They’d all witnessed how fast a crawler could come out, grab someone by the feet and disappear back into the darkness.  None of them wanted to get munched on because they were stupid enough to hang out by such an obvious hidey hole.

“You guys gonna just stand here until it gets dark?”  Harley asked from directly behind them.  How he’d climbed out of the truck and walked across the crunchy snow without them hearing was anyone’s guess.  Drew could only excuse it by telling himself they’d been intensely focused on the trucks.  Harley was supposed to have been watching their backs.  The big grin spread across Harley’s face told them all he thought this was hilarious.

“Yeah.  Sneaking up and surprising paranoid people with guns is super smart.  Especially when they’re in a place where monsters might be about to leap out at any second.  You might want to chill on the self-medication.  It’s melting your brain.”  Yue hissed fiercely.  She was most definitely not amused.

Drew and LeBron both thought it was pretty cool that Harley had been able to sneak up on them like that.  It’d been stupid but that was totally forgivable.  No blood no foul was the rule of the day as far as they were concerned.  Besides they were way more interested in what may be in the back of the trucks than they were in being pissed off at Harley.

Drew began moving and the others followed.  All of their squabbles forgotten as they did their best to merge into a single fighting force approaching the truck.  Gus and Mikey had done their best to beat the concept of firing lanes into their heads.  They’d kind of gotten the concept.  When Yue wasn’t a little out of it from the constant buzzing in her head, thought crushing headaches and bouts of severe nausea she was an excellent person to have on your fire team.  Right now, she was doing her best to keep it together so that she wouldn’t be a liability if they got into trouble.

Drew approached the rear of the first truck in a way that kept him in the sunlight most of the time.  His eyes were glued to the ridge of snow that partially obscured the underside of the olive-green beast.  When nothing came roaring out to rip his head off, he switched his focus to the back of the truck.  It was the kind of troop-carrying vehicle that had a metal skeleton covered by a thick camouflage tarp.  There was a large tailgate on the back of the truck. A tattered green tarp hung down covering up the opening above the tailgate.

They gathered a good ten feet back from the tailgate.  None of them wanting to get too close to that shadowy space.  The space where a crawler could easily be lurking.  None of them were feeling anything but that psychic stuff was pretty hit or miss.  Not exactly something any of them wanted to bet their lives on.

“Screw it.”  Drew muttered.  He ducked down and looked under the truck.  He couldn’t see anything but snow and the bottom of the truck.  Rushing forward he reached up and grabbed the tailgate to pull himself up on the back of the truck.  His feet slipped out from under him and he fell flat on his back.

Yue and Lisa both thought a crawlerz had grabbed him. The two of them rushed forward spraying bullets into the snow directly in front of Drew.  A breathless Drew was kicking back from the truck as hard as he could.  He was imagining a crawler lunging out to grab him while he was laying on his back like a helpless turtle.  When nothing grabbed him, he became very aware of the bullets whizzing over his head.  Once the shooting stopped Lisa stuck her hand down to help him up.

Drew got himself out of the turtle position and tried to reclaim some of his dignity.  Based on the amused looks he was receiving that wasn’t happening anytime soon.  Choosing to pretend the last few minutes of his life hadn’t happened Drew approached the tail gate once more.  This time he was careful about it and didn’t fall.  He used his knife to cut through the tarp.  Excitedly flicking on his flashlight, he was rewarded with the view of a completely empty truck.

“Empty.”  He said after rescanning it to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

“I was hoping there’d be a flare gun and a trombone just in case you guys wanted to attract a little more attention.”  Harley said sarcastically.  Even he looked a little disappointed though.  You’d think a big truck with a canvas covering it in a convoy like this would’ve been full of supplies.

“Maybe they were headed out to gather supplies?”  Yue put the idea out there.  It made sense to her.

They checked the other trucks. They found some ammunition and a few cases of MREs but nothing substantial.  There was a couple of twenty-gallon jugs of diesel inside of each vehicle.  Those were appreciated.  They hadn’t been looking forward to pulling over to suck diesel out of trucks at a truck stop again.  They found a couple of dead soldiers in the lead truck.  There was no sign of anyone else.  The other members of the convoy must’ve either been turned, or their bodies were buried under the snow somewhere.  They helped themselves to the weapons on the dead soldiers and climbed back in the truck after topping off the tank.

They drove away wondering why the convoy of empty trucks had decided to pull over like that?  They tossed around theories.  Everything from rampant diarrhea forcing them to a pitstop to maybe the soldiers in the truck were all just noobs.  Maybe they thought if they pulled over in the middle nowhere to take a nap in their cabs that they’d be safe.  They were all dead now so there was no way to know.

The conversation in the cab quickly turned to more urgent matters.  Where they were going to sleep that night and how long until they made it to Purcellville being the two main ones.  They wanted to make sure they got to the Virginia town with plenty of time to look around to find the base.  They were evenly split in opinion on whether they’d have to find the base or if the base would just reach out and find them.  The mileage markers peeked up through the snow as they got moving again.  The convoy they’d pulled over to inspect was filed away in their minds with all the other random unexplained stuff they’d seen.  The hardened group put the mystery behind them and focused on the path forward.

Chapter 29:  Shame on Me

“I’m done with mountains.”  Yue announced fervently.  They’d finally left the rolling foothills of the Appalachians behind.  The snow at this elevation was almost non-existent.

“Should we take the chains off now?”  LeBron asked anxiously.  He’d been worried about them ever since Harley admitted he didn’t know what happened if you rode around with chains on the tires for too long.  In response to that question Harley slowed the truck to a stop and got out.

Assuming that meant the answer was a yes everyone climbed down to help him.  The chains had been a pain to put on.  Hopefully they were a lot easier to take off.  They were.  It was easy enough even the non-mechanically inclined could figure it out.  Once they had the chains unhooked Harley drove forward until they were off.  Removing the chains was a quick and easy task.  It still felt pretty momentous.  A lot had happened since they’d first squatted down in the middle of a blizzard to put those chains on.

Standing there reflecting on the journey so far Drew remembered that he needed to get Harley to teach them how to drive the truck.  The massive machine had proven itself way more useful than a regular car would have been.  Now that they were down out of the snow, they could switch over to driving a regular car instead if they thought it’d be better.  All they needed was an elite team of military welders to slap together a steel cage around the front of it.  When they climbed back in the truck, Drew mentioned the drivers ed idea to Harley.

“You think you could teach us how to drive this thing?”  Drew asked.  Everyone in the back perked up at the question.

“So, like if I die you can drive?”  Harley responded straight faced.

“Pretty much.”  Drew said with a grimace.  Saying it out loud like that seemed way too much like tempting fate.

“Sure.  Makes sense.  I‘m getting bored with driving anyway.  Let’s see if we have some daylight left after we find a place to spend the night.”  Harley said and that was that.

They continued to drive.  With the road now clearly visible they were able to make up a lot of miles.  It took a ton of stress off the driver as well.  Harley didn’t have to worry about hitting a hidden ice patch and flying off the side of a mountain.  The only thing keeping him from really putting the hammer down was that the cage was shaking around like crazy.  It’d been fine at low speeds.  Once he started going a little faster though it was obvious the cage had seen better days.  Back before it’d been used like a jungle gym by adrenaline pumped freaks colliding with it at high rates of speed while being shot at with large caliber automatic weapons.

By early afternoon they’d turned off the interstate onto a highway that wound north.  It would eventually join another highway which they could follow on up to Weathertop.  There were refugee centers that were closer to them according to the static recording on the radio.  Yue insisted they just head for the source.  She was worried if they turned themselves in at a base without Jeff there to defend them then the execute order might still stand.  Yue was convinced Jeff had mentioned he was at Weathertop, so that they’d go there to meet him.

Everyone except Harley thought that was a little far-fetched.  The self-professed conspiracy nut Harley siding with her didn’t do a lot to convince the rest of them.  They’d all politely listened when Harley had explained how Weathertop was the place they took the aliens from Area 51 to visit with world leaders.  That’s why there was such a huge top-secret base so close to DC.  The fact that it might be convenient to have a massive nuclear bomb shelter close to where all the leaders of the US hung out didn’t deter his belief one bit.

No one gave Harley too much grief over his conspiracy theories.  Considering they were living through a zombie apocalypse the idea of aliens being shuttled around for meetings at different secret bases didn’t seem all that farfetched.  Plus, those conspiracy theories were why Harley knew where Weathertop was while no one else had ever even heard of it.  That wasn’t going to stop any of them from working on a tin foil hat for Harley the first time they found a roll of aluminum foil.  The best part of that running gag was they all thought he might actually wear it.

None of them wanted anything to do with a repeat of the night before.  The plan for today was to find a secure spot well before sundown.  They could look forward to an hour or two of truck driving school if they found a place early enough.  They all had some ideas on how to improve their chances of finding a solid place to stay.  They needed to access a place the crawlerz couldn’t easily reach.  Once accessed they needed to secure the hell out of it.

Finding a ladder truck to use to access roofs had been the winning idea for about five minutes.  That’s how long it took to determine none of them knew how to drive a ladder truck. Even if they could drive it, they wouldn’t know how to deploy the ladder.  Not to be deterred from his roof top fortress idea LeBron said they should find a building supply store like Home Depot. They could grab what they’d need to access the roof and seal off doors there.  Which is why they found themselves parked in the large deserted lot of a Lowes Home Improvement store after a quick drive around the medium sized town they’d randomly selected to exit at.

“In through the garden section?”  Drew asked.  He was scoping out the chained-up building.  It looked to still have some of its windows which was rare.  Most of the building supply stores they’d seen had been ripped apart by people looking to turn their houses into castles.  Drew fondly remembered working with his dad on getting the plywood nailed down over the windows in their house back in Florida.  At the end of the day the wood hadn’t been enough to keep the monsters away.

“Something wrong?”  Lisa asked.  She’d registered her boyfriend’s emotional shift from his normally cavalier self to a more somber demeanor.

“I was just thinking if we’d known back then what we know now we could’ve saved a lot of people.”  Drew replied.  Yue and LeBron instantly got where Drew was coming from.  They’d been there for the construction of the doomed plywood fortress.  They’d also been there when the fortress came tumbling down.  A moment of reflection and everyone got moving out of the truck towards the store.  Daylight was a precious commodity.  They didn’t have time to waste a drop of it.

The garden section door was broken open.  The small group tightened their grip on their weapons and went in anyway.  Light filtered down through the opaque roof in this section.  Not to mention the walls on one side were made almost entirely out of chain link fencing.  Unfortunately, they weren’t there for mulch or bird feeders.  Everything they needed was going to be inside the store proper.  With their luck the supplies they needed were going to be in the very back.  Even before the apocalypse it’d been almost impossible to find what you needed in these places.

The door leading into the main part of the store from the garden section was also broken.  This wasn’t a huge cause for concern.  If the doors hadn’t been broken that would’ve been weirder. Pretty much every store they’d been in since this all started had already been thoroughly looted.  There were exceptions of course.  Places where the local law enforcement had attempted to keep the peace until the very end.  Stores that were locked up and didn’t have anything that seemed super useful were likely to be ok as well.  On the way out of Florida Drew and LeBron had actually made a game out of counting how many pool stores still looked like they had a full inventory.

Flashlights on they surveyed the inside of the store from the relative safety of the broken doorway.  Somewhere in the store something fell over making a loud noise that echoed in the cavernous space.

“I’ll be in the truck.”  Lisa said turning around to leave.  She saw no reason they should carry on with this foolishness.  Not when they’d just been given proof that the super-creepy warehouse had stuff running around inside it.  How dumb would it be to die while trying to get stuff to secure a different place to safely spend the night?

“We’re on the wrong side anyway.  I think the power tools are in the middle.  All the lumbers over the other way too.  Same with the screws and stuff.”  Drew said backing up to join Lisa.  It didn’t take a whole lot of convincing for everyone else to follow them out of the garden section back out into the parking lot.

They tried looking through the grimy glass doors at the front of the store, but they couldn’t really see anything.  Using a couple of crowbars Harley and Drew took care of shattering every bit of the dirt covered glass.  It was loud and messy but when they were done a whole lot of light was streaming into the store.  The more light the better. Any crawlerz who may have been snoozing before were absolutely now pacing around out there in the darkness just waiting for the tasty treats outside to come in.

“You feel that?”  Yue asked the others.  The hair on her arms was standing straight up.  She had not doubt there was at least a dozen crawlerz back in the shadows stalking them.

“All we need is a couple of drills, a couple boxes of screws and some wood.  We could probably make it.”  Drew said eyeballing the distance he’d have to run.  The light didn’t hit all the sections directly, but it was still lit up.  Even if it was a little dim.  Drew took a couple of tentative steps into the store.

“Nope.”  Lisa and Yue both grabbed the moron and marched him back to the truck.  They’d just have to find what they needed some other way.

“Rentals?”  LeBron asked tentatively.  He was thinking of the little section on the side of the store where you could rent different tools.  For those super serious DIY people who thought it’d be cheaper to mix their own cement instead of just letting people who actually knew what they were doing build them a sidewalk.

Harley shrugged and told them to walk down to the end.  He’d pull the truck around and meet them there.  The motley group walked towards the opposite side of the store.  Yue thinking once again that they really needed to find somewhere to steal some clean clothes.  They were all looking pretty homeless at this point.  The complete randomness of what each person was wearing mixed in with the discoloration from unknown stains was horrendous.  They were dressed like a bunch of meth heads dressed up for a spin around a low budget catwalk showing off the latest in hunting accessories.

The outside door leading into the rental office was locked.  LeBron vaguely remembered the rental office had another door to the main store that was normally closed on the inside.  That kept people out when the rentals section wasn’t open.  Of course, he was remembering that setup from a Home Depot in Florida and this was a Lowes in North Carolina.

The doorframe was no match for the power of the tractor trailer pulling on it.  LeBron stood well back from all that.  He didn’t want to risk anything that may hurt his arm again.  He couldn’t take another poking and prodding session with Drs. Yue and Lisa.  Their bedside manner sucked.

By the time Harley had parked and gotten out of the truck Drew and Lisa were dragging out all kinds of tools.  Yue came out after them.  She’d been watching the door connecting them to the rest of the store.  It was one of those heavy-duty doors with the thick glass square at the top of it.  She’d watched as multiple sets of hands wildly beat on the door trying to gain access.  She’d also been able to feel their thoughts.  Based on the tense looks on Lisa and Drew’s faces they’d felt it too.

She’d felt their anger.  The hunger they had for human flesh.  She’d seen themselves through the eyes of their would-be assailants.  There was a hatred that transcended all rationality.  It was ethereal.  It was guttural and old.  Whatever genetic key the infection turned unlocked something primordial in its hosts.  They weren’t human anymore.  Their thoughts were those of wild animals driven mad by hunger.  It was too much.

Out in the parking lot they climbed back into the truck breathing hard.  Harley started to ask why then just let them in.  Even from the parking lot he could feel something that made him uneasy.  Drew hooked the drill battery to the outlet. The discussion started around where else they might be able to find screws and wood.  A quick lap around the store and they’d located a stack of weather resistant two by fours.  Those would work nicely.

Hoping for a Home Depot Drew clapped his hands together happily when he recognized an Ace Hardware up ahead in a plaza they were passing.  Embarrassed at the exuberance he’d shown he pointed out where the store was to everyone.  Yue and Lisa collapsed into giggles trying to imitate his happy clapping reaction.  LeBron thought the performance was dead on in addition to being completely hysterical.  Everyone was a little loopy with relief from having survived the rental section at Lowes.  Those psychic vibes thrown off by the crawlerz on the other side of the door had been unbearable.

The Ace Hardware turned out to be completely monster free and chock full of everything they needed.  It’d been looted but there was still plenty left for their purposes.  They snagged some more rope and a couple of those long extension ladders to add to the pile.  Supplies in hand for their envisioned renovation project they drove around town looking for a roof that’d work for them.  That turned out to be fairly straightforward.  There was a medical park right off the road they were already on.  The complex had multiple three-story buildings deployed around a central courtyard.

They parked and immediately dismounted the truck to scout out the best building to use.  They were looking for one that didn’t look like it’d been broken into recently.  The less damage to windows and doors the more likely there weren’t any crawlerz lurking inside.  They’d been looking for an office park like this since it would’ve been shut down when the world started going to hell.  Since it was a medical park, they were concerned there may be a lot of damage to the buildings from people looking for pills and supplies.

Pleasantly surprised at the limited damage they were seeing they picked a building that looked pretty pristine and decided to try the same trick they’d used to get into Lowes.  Using the rope that they’d snagged at the hardware store they attached the door handle to the truck and had Harley back up.  At first it looked like trying that trick with this door was just going to result in the rope snapping.  The rope managed to hold together long enough for the handle to come flying off.  The handle hit a handicapped parking sign about three inches from where LeBron was standing hard enough to bend it in half.

“You owe me a new pair of boxers.”  LeBron stammered out. A pale faced Drew was apologizing while Yue asked him if he was ok over and over again.  Up in the truck Harley sat frozen with his mouth wide open trying to figure out what’d just happened.  He was asking himself why he kept letting these idiots talk him into stupid crap like that.

They took a minute to recover from the near death by door handle before heading up the stairs.  At the top of the stairs Drew kicked the bar across the door to open it.  The small group automatically fell into position and cleared the roof.  Once the roof was clear they let their guard down and went to have a quick look off the edge.

“Pro tip.  Try checking the windows before you rip the doors apart.”  A man stepped out from behind the wall where the roof access door was.  Three more people filed out behind him.  All of them were carrying long guns.

“I did.”  LeBron said from behind the sights of his own rifle.

“You only checked the first floor.”  The man responded.  LeBron shrugged.  That was true but he wasn’t about to admit it.

“Here’s a pro tip for you.  If you got four guys and five people come out on a roof with better weapons than you have then shoot them before they turn around. Once they point those better weapons at you it’s too late.”  Harley said.

“We’re not trying to kill you.”  The guy said.

“Then don’t point your gun at me.  I’m seriously close to an accidental discharge.”  Harley said.  He ignored Drew’s immature giggle at his choice of words.

“Yeah.  So, with that we’re going to put our guns down if you guys think you can do the same.  I mean we were up on this roof first so…”  The man speaking for the other group dipped his rifle barrel down and the others followed suit.  Drew and crew echoed the gesture and stared across at the other party.

Now what?

Chapter 30:  Awkward…

“You guys come here often?”  Yue asked to break the ice.  The two groups had been staring at one another for way too long.

“Only when we’re running for our lives from a bunch of B-Movie monsters.  I’m Shaun.”  The leader of the small group answered back.  He looked like he was going to step forward and stick out his hand but then just didn’t.

“That’s a fun name to have in an apocalypse.”  Drew piped up referring to the Shaun of zombie movie fame.

“Yeah.  It’s great.  Did you seal that bottom door back up or do we have to go climb onto another roof now?”  Shaun asked.  He didn’t look overly hopeful that they’d remembered.  This was the group who didn’t check windows first to see if there was an easy way in.  It was doubtful to him that they would’ve remembered to lock a door behind them.

“We have a bunch of stuff in the truck to seal up the doors.”  Drew answered defensively.  It wasn’t like they were total noobs.  They were out on the open road and still breathing which should say something.  Drew wasn’t a big fan of Shaun’s vaguely patronizing tone either.

“Yes.  We were about to get to work on this one up here when we heard you all pull in. Are you headed to Fayetteville?”  Shaun asked.  Fayetteville was the closest refugee station to here according to the radio broadcast.

Drew looked around at everyone.  He wasn’t sure he should be spilling the beans about where they were headed.  He was trying to come up with a good lie when Yue jumped in to save him.

“We can catch up later.  Right now, we need to get working on the door down below and carry some of our gear up here for the night.  Before we lug all of that crap up here are you good with sharing the roof?  In the interest of fairness, you all were up here first.  If you want us to leave, we still have time, but we’d need you to tell us right now.”  Yue stared expectantly at Shaun waiting for an answer.

“The more the merrier.  As long as you guys are quieter at night than you are during the day its fine with me.”  Shaun looked around his group to make sure they were all good with it.  They all nodded.  One of the girls even actually smiled.  Up until then they’d been staring at Drew and Harley like they recognized them from an episode of America’s Most Wanted.  It didn’t help that the expressions on Harley and Drew’s faces were pretty clearly those of men who’d much rather fling them all off the roof rather than have to break into another building with the sun sinking lower.

“The more the scarier is what Shaun meant.”  Drew said to Yue as they were unloading camping gear to take up to the roof.  Lisa nodded from where she was pulling out the ammunition boxes.  She watched Drew pulling out big fluffy sleeping bags and made a face at him.  Smiling he switched places with her to pull out the heavy ammo boxes while she stacked up pillows.

Once they had everything on the roof, they opened a window on the first floor and used a couple of two by fours to secure the door they’d busted down.  Shaun’s foursome waited impatiently for them to get all their gear up.  Once everybody was ready Shaun wrapped a heavy chain through the handle on the rooftop access door multiple times before securing the chain with a D-Ring.

There was still a little daylight left so they found themselves once again staring at one another.  LeBron was particularly interested in how this other group seemed to have the rooftop sanctuary down pat.  They had a large tarp spread out over multiple sleeping bags resting on top of inflatable beds.  They even had a little battery powered heater and a few iPads to play games on.  Their weapon situation consisted mostly of civilian style rifles and sidearms.  Although since this was the good old USA the civilian assortment of weapons was on par with the military grade weapons Drew and crew were all sporting.

“You guys been doing the roof thing for long?”  Drew asked curiously.

“How about we all just focus on living through the night.  You can ask all the idiotic questions you want to in the morning.”  The woman sitting on the sleeping bag next to Shaun said.

“Absolutely.  See you in the morning over a nice big bowl of bitch flakes!”  Lisa hissed stepping forward to smack some sense into the woman.  In the dying light of day Lisa’s facial expression clearly showed she was about to kick the crap out of this roof dwelling freak.  She let Yue call Drew an idiot because Yue was his sister.  She wasn’t going to stand by while this annoying skank did it.

Lisa moved so fast that Drew barley caught her before she’d made it to the woman.  The woman who was now standing behind an embarrassed looking Shaun.  Drew wrapped his arms tightly around Lisa and picked her up to carry her back to their side of the roof.  The woman stepped out from behind Shaun and flipped Lisa off.  Lisa leaned back and kicked as hard as she could.  Her booted foot connected solidly with the surprised looking face behind the extended middle finger.

Drew hit the gas and ran backwards to the other side of the roof.  He had to fight to keep his balance against an enraged Lisa.  She really wanted down.  That would not be a wise move.  On the other side of the roof the woman was whimpering around the blood pouring out of her broken nose.  She was avoiding eye contact with Lisa.  Yue sighed.  It was going to be a long night.

Lisa calmed herself down without the help of the pill Harley offered up.  The sun setting contributed to her ability to settle down.  Despite what others on the roof may think they weren’t a tribe of idiots.  As soon as dusk hit their mouths shut and their movements ceased.  No one got off their sleeping bags expect for the changing of the guard and the occasional bathroom break.  For the first time in a long time Drew was relieved when night came.  He didn’t know how long he’d have been able to keep Lisa from doing something stupid otherwise.  If she did something now it’d go from being stupid to being openly suicidal.

Harley squatted down by the ledge running around the roof. Gazing down at the moonlit parking lot below he was happy to see it wasn’t as bad as it’d been in Asheville. There were still plenty of shadowy shapes making their way towards the building though.  Shaun came and squatted down beside him.  Silently they watched as the building was surrounded. Harley began to get a vague sense of seeing themselves from the ground.  They were once again seeing what the crawlerz were seeing.  The images seeping in and leaving them feeling dirty.  The more crawlerz that showed up the harder it was to focus.

Harley decided this was a great excuse to self-medicate.  If he could discover a pill that blocked the freaks down below from mind raping them, he’d be a hero.  He grinned thinking that no matter how many drugs he had to take he was willing to make the sacrifice.  Even if he had to skip from drugs to drinking to smoking a little something.  He was willing to do whatever it took to help his friends.  In the spirit of science he actually spent a couple of seconds trying to identify the pill he pulled out of the Ziploc bag before dry-swallowing it.

Catching Shaun staring at him he pointed at his head like he’d just taken a migraine pill.  For all he knew he might’ve actually just taken a migraine pill.  He’d been collecting random pills out of medicine cabinets since this whole apocalypse thing started.  A lot of them turned out to be bogus.  In the event that happened he had no problem slamming another one.  His only rule was that he didn’t take any blue pills.  Everything else was fair game.  Also, sometimes he took the blue pills.

Shaun caught him digging through the bag of pills a second time less than twenty minutes later.  Harley couldn’t stand it.  There were ants crawling around in his brain stabbing him with tiny swords.  The pain wasn’t unbearable. It was just so annoying that it was right next door to unbearable.  He looked back over at Shaun.  The disapproving look that‘d been on Shaun’s face had been replaced by one of understanding.  Based on that look if Harley wanted a lab partner for his pill-based approach to staying sane he didn’t need to look very far.

Making a conscious effort to ignore the psychic itching Harley did a slow circuit around the roof.  He stayed back from the side as much as he could while still sneaking some quick peeks down.  The crawlerz knew that there were normal humans here.  Harley wasn’t sure how he knew that they knew.  He suspected it had a lot to do with the itching in his brain though.  This didn’t feel right.  It felt like the ones below were a lot stronger than normal.  He hoped not all the crawlerz out there were building up this much creepy psychic psycho power.  Like the ability to leap two stories in the air and beat their way through concrete block walls with their fists wasn’t enough.

A couple of the ones on the ground had jumped to see if they could reach the roof of the three-story building.  The ones Harley had seen attempt the jump hadn’t made it past the second-floor windows.  Even seeing them make that massively unnatural leap had been unnerving as hell.  It looked like something out of a movie.  It was absolutely supernatural looking.

The sound of glass breaking drifted up to them from below.  The infected were breaking into the building to try and get to them.  Anticipating the creatures would attack that way they’d secured the stair doors on all of the floors.  It was horrifying being on a building with those things swirling all around the base of it but as long as they couldn’t get up it was all good.

The sound of glass breaking from the general direction of another building unnerved Harley.  For the first time he realized there were at least two buildings with roofs that were probably too close for comfort.  Trying to watch the ledge on every side of the building at the same time he made a beeline to talk to Shaun.  A brief whispered conversation upgraded the look of concern on Shaun’s face to full-on panic.  The sound of more glass breaking from all around was freaking them both out.  The infected on the ground were still bouncing up as high as the second-floor windows like the parking lot was a gigantic trampoline park.

“They wouldn’t go into the buildings they don’t sense humans in, right?”  Shaun whispered.  He was looking for some kind of reassurance they weren’t all about to die.  The crawlerz down below had a pretty amazing vertical leap.  Hopping across the fifty-foot gap between the builds was entirely in the realm of the possible for them.  Harley just shook his head.  How was he supposed to know what kind of tactics a mob of brain-dead killer cannibals might try?

“I’m making sure everybody’s awake.”  Harley finally whispered back.  He patted Shaun on the back and jogged over to where his group was pretending to sleep.  Everyone except Drew anyway.  He was fast asleep with his arm thrown over Lisa.  Lisa looked up at Harley as he jogged over.  She was pretty sure it wasn’t her turn to stand watch yet.  She’d given up on falling asleep anytime soon with all the bad vibes being thrown off by the demons down below.  It was both amusing and annoying to her that Drew could sleep through practically anything.

“I need everybody to be on their toes.  We’re worried the infected may crawl up the other buildings around us that aren’t locked down. If they make it to those roofs, they might be able to jump over here.”  Harley whispered to Lisa.  Her eyes grew comically large as Harley smiled reassuringly and began to move on to the next sleeping bag.  She grabbed him by the arm before he could leave.

“How likely are you thinking?”  She whispered.  She was thinking that she might as well get up and get ready to guard the roof.  No way was she falling asleep anytime soon now.

“It’s probably nothing.  I just heard some glass breaking and thought it might be something for us to look out for.  On a just in case kind of basis.”  Harley whispered back.  He was wondering why they were whispering.  He’d just seen them through the mind’s eyes of their besiegers.  He could whip out a bullhorn and get everyone to do the hokey pokey and it wouldn’t make much difference.

A barrage of shotgun blasts and the crack of a hunting rifle shattered the ominous silence.  The sound of the weapons discharging came from where Shaun’s group had setup their tarp covered penthouse.

“Let’s go!”  Harley shouted.  At least he didn’t have to worry about whispering anymore.  The whole idea behind keeping quiet was so they wouldn’t attract more than the local crawlerz who sensed them.  After the twenty-one-gun salute that’d just gone off they’d have every night walker in town headed their direction.  As dermatologists like to say when handing out the latest acne body wash at thirty bucks an ounce it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

Under the tarp a crying woman was cradling the body of the other woman from Shaun’s former foursome.  Based on the limp way the woman’s head was hanging the foursome was now a threesome.  Shaun was standing over the group with his shotgun.  There was a dead woman lying on the roof next to the tarp.  The parts of her body not covered in blood and bullet holes revealed the skeleton like appearance of a crawler.

“What happened?”  Harley asked Shaun.

“I heard Sam scream.  I was too late.  It was already on her.  I shot them both.  I don’t know where it came from.  I’m guessing from the roof of another building maybe?  Maybe it climbed straight up the wall?  If they broke a window on the floor below and stood on the ledge they could jump and catch the edge maybe?”  Shaun rattled off all the thoughts bouncing around in his head.  They should’ve sounded crazy.  Unfortunately, they were right in line with what everyone else was thinking.

“Watch out!”  Yue yelled and started blasting away at the sky.  A second later a crawler hit the roof and rolled right through the middle of all of them.  They all spun to see where it’d gone.  Before they could even find it the other man from Shaun’s group went flying off the roof with a long-haired old woman holding onto him.  Even as they fell, she was single mindedly tearing away at any exposed skin she could find.

“Backs to the wall!”  Harley yelled before turning and sprinting for the short wall with the roof access door in it.  He seemed like he was pretty sure it was a good idea, so they all followed him at full speed except for Shaun and the woman crying over her dead friend.

Scrambling to fling the boxes of extra ammunition closer to the wall no one initially noticed Shaun and the woman hadn’t come with them.  Slamming himself against the wall so hard it knocked the breath out of him LeBron screamed for Shaun to hurry up.  There was nothing attacking them right now.  He hoped it’d just be the occasional lucky long jumping champion type crawlerz who made it on the roof.  They could deal with that maybe.

“All I want is one night where nothing wakes me up trying to kill me!”  Lisa proclaimed fervently.  Her voice was trembling with raw emotion.  Like everyone else she was exhausted.  They were staring down a long night of watching out for flying monsters landing on the roof with them.

Harley pulled two road flares out of his pack. He continued to dig around until he found a bag full of those dollar store glow sticks.  He tossed the glowsticks to Drew and lit up the road flares himself.  He tossed the first flare into the air towards the other side of the building.  The second one he tossed in a long arc towards the patch of darkness not lit up by the first one.  The flare bounced off a crawler in mid-air.

“Kill it!”  Yue yelled opening fire.  She was being careful to not shoot Shaun.  Shaun had dropped to his knee and was fumbling around with his own pistol.  The terrified woman Shaun was protecting saw what was going on. She left Shaun squatting in the middle of the roof to make a run for it.  There was nowhere for her to run but her fear-soaked brain couldn’t seem to recognize that.

The acrid odor of gun powder smothered the fresh air they’d been bathing in before the attack.  The lingering smoke from their weapons refracted the green light from the glowsticks and the red light from the flares to create an otherworldly ambiance.  Dead bodies lay scattered in pathetic little heaps at random places around the roof.  On the periphery of all this oddness Shaun was chasing the crazy woman in big circles around the perimeter of the roof.

Chapter 31:  The Never-Ending Night

“If I ever hear you say anything about a roof being the best place to spend the night again, I’ll smack you.”  Yue hissed tiredly at LeBron.

“Please do.”  LeBron said.

They went back to watching Shaun continue to run around after the woman from his group who’d obviously lost it. He’d caught up to her once already.  She’d bit him based on his cursing.  He’d screamed at her that she’d be biting people for real if she didn’t follow him back to the wall.  She’d screamed that he killed their neighbors. She followed that revealing comment up by yelling that they were going to all die if they didn’t get off the roof.

Next thing they knew the crazy lady was trying to unchain the roof top door.  Drew was staring at her helplessly when Lisa stepped in and shut the woman up with a well-placed rifle butt to the head.  The woman stumbled backwards a few steps glaring hatefully at Lisa.

“I’m getting off this roof.”  The woman yelled.  One of her hands snaking its way up to the dainty looking pistol in her shoulder holster.

“Don’t shoot her!”  Shaun huffed finally making it over to them.  He obviously wasn’t getting his steps in every day.  He needed to do some serious work on his cardio.  He ducked down low to the ground to avoid being shot when LeBron and Harley stepped out from the wall with weapons lowered.  They proceeded to blast away at a three-foot-tall shadow that’d just pulled itself over the lip of the roof.  The adrenaline pumped child hadn’t made it all the way to the roof on its leap over.  If it’d made it then it would most likely have taken out one of them before they even saw it.  Especially with the crazy lady drama distracting them.

“We don’t have time for this.”  Yue heard Drew mutter before raising his pistol to aim at the woman.  Yue put her hand on his pistol to push it down.  She wouldn’t have minded seeing the woman lying on the ground. She just didn’t want her big-hearted brother to have to live with the pain of doing something so extreme.

“What’s your name?”  Yue asked.

“Wendy Thomas.”  The woman answered.  She was waving the little pistol around at all of them.  Yue knew if she didn’t get the woman to calm down soon then one of her companions was going to perforate her.

“Hey Wendy.  Why don’t you turn around and point the gun the other way before someone gets hurt?”  Yue asked softly.  Well, she thought she asked softly.  It was more medium loud than soft.  Their ears were battered by all of the recent gunplay at close proximity.

“Screw you!”  Wendy screamed swinging her pistol to point right at Yue’s face.  Shaun jumped to tackle Wendy to the ground. He ended up with a bullet to the shoulder for his troubles.  Wendy started pulling the trigger as she went down.  Yue dancing out of the way as bullets slammed into the roof access wall behind her.  On the ground a bloody armed Shaun slammed Wendy’s hand into the ground until the pistol came loose.  He grabbed it and shoved it in the back of his pants.  Waving off Drew’s apologies he tried sitting up to contain a wildly thrashing Wendy.

Harley’s shotgun came to life as a monster came cartwheeling towards them from out of nowhere.  The lithe creature moving so quickly Harley’s shots missed it entirely.  It bounced over the top of them and disappeared on top of the access door structure.  Drew and Harley immediately stepping out from the wall to try and get an angle on it.  Yue, LeBron and Lisa all trying to cover them and look behind them at the same time. They now had threats coming at them from both sides.  Not to mention there was a another building that the creatures could start jumping from at any time.  Hopefully that one was locked up better.

“You see it?”  Drew asked.  He was staring through his gun sights at the top of the shack.  Whatever had jumped up there must be lying on its stomach biding its time.  That was another scary part of all this.  These creatures absolutely could stalk them.  They’d run into plenty that didn’t just rush at them in a straight line.  As far as tonight went the ones that jumped from the other roof were probably the smarter ones.  Otherwise, they’d be down below with the others impotently raging at the concrete ceiling above them.  That meant every one of the monsters that landed on the roof was even more dangerous than the average crawler.

A white hand appeared on the edge of the roof access shack they were focused on.  Drew and Harley opened up on the hand and the shadowy blob behind it.  For no apparent reason Drew dropped his rifle and fell to this knees.  Harley stopped shooting to see what was going on.  He thought maybe a crawler had snuck up behind them.  The sound of more shots came from over by the wall.  Swinging his head wildly Harley saw Yue standing in a classic firing stance with her weapon aimed at a very dead looking Wendy.

Harley was trying to piece it all together when he was tackled from behind.  Falling hard to the ground he felt his assailant groping his way up his back.  The crawler ended up hunched over his battle pack.  Harley pretty much never took it off when he was awake and out of the truck.  Rolling hard to the right he tried to smash the piggybacking crawler unconscious on the ground.  All he accomplished was dumping the crawler on top of Wendy’s corpse.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw his companions rushing to help him.  He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

He was wearing a pair of tactical gloves he’d found in a military surplus store.  That was a good thing. When he grabbed the crawler by the neck it managed to bite down on his fingers before he could get it under control.  The bones in his pinky and ring finger snapping loudly as the monster whipped its head around trying to get through the glove to the flesh underneath.  In the heat of the moment Harley didn’t even realize the fingers were broken.  The Tylenol with Codeine tablet he’d swallowed earlier helped with that too.

He got his hands around the skinny thing’s neck and held it steady while Lisa put her pistol to its head and killed it.  Harley rolled off grimacing in pain.  He curled up in a tight fetal position on the ground.  While he’d been holding the monster down it’d been kicking the hell out of every part of him its feet could reach.  He took an excessive amount of damage to his crotch.  He was at a level of pain that was about the closest a man could come to claiming to know what childbirth felt like.  He couldn’t bring himself to even think of getting to his feet yet.

Yue checked on everyone while LeBron and Lisa stood watch.  Lisa was facing the access door in case the crawler up there hadn’t actually been killed.  LeBron was facing out in the other direction.  Shaun was breathing.  Yue assumed he’d passed out from blood loss.  He was actually still bleeding.  She’d come back and bandage him in a minute.  She rushed over to Drew who was sitting Indian style with his hands pressed to his chest.  She pulled out her knife and sawed away at his shirt.

Once she had the shirt out of the way she could clearly see the massive black and blue mark on Drew’s chest.  She touched it and he squealed like a pig.  His eyes opening wide at the pain from even her gentlest touch.  Lisa walked over to stand beside her and asked if he was ok.

“Yeah.  I think his rib may be cracked but it doesn’t look like the bullet went in any further than that.  Probably thanks to all this other crap he was wearing.”  Yue said.  She felt like they should wrap a bunch of bandages around Drew but didn’t really think it was the right time to have him strip down and get medical attention.  More infected could fall out of the sky at any moment.

“Who shot him?”  Lisa asked thinking she already knew the answer.

“Wendy.”  Yue said sadly glancing over at the corpse of the crazed woman.  She knew she shouldn’t feel bad killing someone who’d just shot her brother, but she did.  Lisa spit on the woman’s dead body and turned her attention back to watching for incoming.

“We’re not going to survive up here.”  LeBron said loudly enough so that they could all hear him.  With Shaun bleeding out on the ground, Drew struggling to get a decent breath of air and Harley lying on his side whimpering Yue couldn’t really argue the point.  The sun hadn’t been down that long.  No way they were going to survive the entire night out here.

“What are you thinking?”  Lisa asked.

“We open the access door and spend the night in the stairwell.  We’ve got extra boards and screws and chains.  We secure every door the best we can and hope they don’t beat their way in.”  LeBron said.

It was a Hail Mary.  There was a decent chance the stairwell was already full of the monsters.  Although the fact that the door wasn’t being pounded on from the stairwell side was a good sign.  They needed to get that chain off and get in there.  Yue looked sadly at Wendy lying cold and dead on the tar covered roof.  She’d just wanted to get the door open and make a run for it.  She’d basically been about five minutes ahead of where they were all at now.

Yue walked over to where LeBron was surveilling the top of the access structure.  He was watching in case they hadn’t killed the one who’d jumped up there earlier.  They’d flung a bunch of hot lead in that direction when the hand popped up.  Until he saw a body though, he wasn’t taking any chances.  Yue heartily approved of that approach and told him to keep at it. She needed to work on trying to get the chain unhooked so they could get in the stairwell.

She’d just gotten the chains disconnected from the D-rings holding them together when Lisa, Drew and Harley all lit up a crawler.  The skinny, long legged monster leapt across the gap between buildings like a stuntman in a scene out of superhero movie.  The long arc of its jump had been perfectly visible this time.  It was easier when they were all focused and knew where to look.  Before it’d even landed it was taking hits as the defenders on the roof went fully automatic on it.  Harley and Drew might have just been spraying bullets into the night sky with their injuries, but Lisa looked like she was trying to win a prize at the range.

Lisa’s sudden calm in the face of danger had a little bit to do with wanting to impress the people she was with and a lot to do with not wanting to look like Wendy.  She’d witnessed how unattractive it was to run around like a freaked-out idiot.  She’d made a promise to herself right then that she wouldn’t be the weak link in this team.  She didn’t have her dad around to protect her anymore.  She refused to just lean on Drew.  At the moment Drew needed her more than she needed him anyway.  She wasn’t going to let him or herself down.

Moving quickly Yue opened the door to the stairwell and went inside.  She’d gathered some of the glow sticks together.  She snapped the ones that weren’t glowing yet and tossed them one by one down the stairs.  Holding her flashlight and her pistol she waited to be attacked.  When nothing attacked her, she ran outside to start grabbing more supplies.  She asked Harley to go grab Shaun.  Lisa was already helping Drew into the stairwell.  LeBron started to help grab supplies, but Yue told him to stay on guard.  Realizing no one was watching the other side of the roof Yue gave up on gathering supplies and stood sentry instead.  She knew the others would be out soon to finish grabbing everything.

Shaun and Drew were ditched on the small landing right below the roof access.  They were propped up against the wall halfway between the roof and the third floor.  Lisa making sure Drew had a gun in hand in case a crawler made it into the stairwell while the rest of them were on the roof gathering supplies.  Working quickly to sling their crap inside they got the door shut before any more monsters showed up to rain on their parade.  They looped the chain through the sides of the push bar and cinched it down as much as they could. It was the same thing they’d done to the doors on the other levels.

Harley used the drill and some concrete screws to put up a two by four.  It took him longer than usual with his broken fingers.  When that was done, they ran another short length of chain from the two by four around the other chains to make sure they stayed tight.  Last thing they could think of to do was screw in some hooks to the door itself and run some more chain around those.  The battery for the drill died about halfway through all that.  Considering they’d only been charging it in the truck for a few hours that actually wasn’t bad.

Two doors later Harley couldn’t fill his wrist anymore.  They had hand tools they could use as well as the drills, but they were nowhere near as efficient or fun.  Harley would’ve probably just said screw it and given up but every single door on every single level was now being pounded on.  He was making LeBron do most of the work anyway.  All it was going to take was one smart crawler to get the other ones to pull instead of push and they were screwed.  It was super unlikely that was going to happen. On the off chance it did Harley and LeBron were killing their wrists to upgrade the security of each of the doors.

While they worked on securing the doors Yue and Lisa saw to Shaun and Drew.  Drew was awake and coherent now.  He was in a ton of pain but what else was new.  Just another Tuesday for him.  Shaun was awake but groggy as hell.  He was also pale enough to audition for the lead role in an Anne Rice novel.  Yue had removed his shirt and cleaned the wound as well as she could.  She’d bandaged him up and was trying to get him to wash down some antibiotics with a big jug of warm drinking water.  The more he drank the less likely he was going to die.  It wasn’t like they could hook up an IV machine to him.

The irony of that being that they were doing all this in the stairwell of a medical complex that was probably full of all kinds of supplies they could use.  Even if they survived until the morning though they wouldn’t be able to risk going inside the building.  Every shadowy corner was going to have a crawler lurking in it by first light.  They were just going to have to make do with what they had and hope it was enough.  She didn’t see herself pushing the point and risking the lives of her brothers to save the life of some random dweeb they’d run into on top of a roof.

Even as she thought that she knew she’d be one of the first ones to go through a window in the morning looking for an IV bag if she thought they needed one.  She’d shot an uninfected woman tonight.  A terrified woman who’d just lost her nerve and wanted to get off the roof.  Wendy had shot her brother, so Yue felt justified in dropping the hammer on her.  That feeling of justification couldn’t fully assuage her guilt though.  She hated that it’d come to that.

Drew was staring at her from his uncomfortable seat on the concrete.  He could tell she was hurting.  The stairwell sounded like the inside of a drum with all the crawlerz beating away on all the doors on all the floors.  Her big-hearted brother stood up despite the pain he must be in and hugged her.  He held her while she cried.  Eventually they both sat back down again.  Leaning against the wall with Yue on one of his shoulders and Lisa on the other Drew passed back out.

Chapter 32:  Wake up Sunshine!

They slept together like a pack of wolves on the wide ledge.  Sleeping bags spread out all over the place as they each failed to stay awake.  The stairwell lit up in an eerie green glow from the slowly dimming glowsticks.  On top of the noise from the crawlerz assaulting the thick doors on each level there was the psychic hot flashes to deal with.  It was like they’d occasionally see or feel what the crazed attackers trying to get at them were feeling.

This forced psychic connection was bad when they were awake.  It was infinitely worse when they slipped off into a restless sleep.  The second they fell asleep they connected infinitely more intimately with the monsters trying to get at them.  As soon as their eyes closed the walls came down and the crawlerz thoughts rushed in.  They dreamed of rending flesh, of snapping necks, of the delicious rush from warm human blood filling their mouths.  At times it’d get so intense they’d snap awake screaming.

It wasn’t a pleasant way to spend the night.  They huddled together.  They clung to one another for warmth and support.  Their minds ripped slowly apart by the nonstop psychic onslaught.  The endless night dragging on and on until finally interrupted by the mundane trilling of Drew’s iPhone telling them they’d made it.  They’d lived to see yet another dawn.

The pounding on the doors subsided but didn’t stop completely.  There must be levels where the stairwells were shielded in darkness.  Stifling yawns, they gathered their gear to walk down the flights of stairs to the ground level.  Standing on the floor Lisa wondered out loud why they hadn’t just slept down there instead of up on the much smaller ledge towards the top.

“If they got in then we’d have been buried down here.  Up there the ones we killed would’ve slowed down the ones coming behind them.  We’d also have had the roof as a last resort.”  Drew answered.  She’d already figured all of that out and just been joking about sleeping on the bottom floor.  Seeing the look on her face Yue jumped in to end the conflict before it got started.

“Yep.  By sleeping on the extremely uncomfortable ledge, we increased our life expectancy by a whole two to  three minutes if they broke in.  I’m with Lisa.  Next time we go for comfort.”  Yue said.  She smiled at Lisa and they fist bumped.  Drew stood there looking confused.  LeBron and Harley both grinning over his confusion.

Limping out into the bright morning sunlight they blinked away their exhaustion and went to make sure the truck was ok.  They could feel the weight of a thousand warped minds focusing on them from the surrounding buildings.  The massive frustration expressed by the twisted thoughts of the monsters trapped in the buildings by the bright sun.  There were occasional flashes of movement as the monsters struggled against that sun phobia.  They wanted nothing more than to break out and consume the humans below.

The truck was fine.  They hadn’t really expected it to be damaged.  The only thing they’d been scared of was crawlerz breaking in to use as a den to avoid the sun.  The cage had done its job and kept them all out.  They cautiously confirmed nothing had slithered underneath the truck to spend the day.  Once the undercarriage was declared danger free Lebron, Lisa and Yue went to carry stuff from the building back to the truck.  Drew wriggled painfully up into the cab and passed out in the sleeper section.  He’d meant to stay awake long enough to beg someone for some drugs for the pain, but his exhaustion had taken control.

Shaun sat outside leaning against the wall of the building his crazy coked out cousin had died on top of.  He was rudderless. He was feeling extremely weak from the loss of blood. Most of his strength was being used just to cope with the pain that kept surging up in his arm.  Yue had asked him if he wanted to get in the truck and rest while they humped the gear out of the building.  He’d asked if it was ok if he just sat down in the sunlight for a little while instead.  Nodding with understanding she’d watched him wander over to the wall and sit down leaning against it.

“I’m all for feminism and everything but how come the girls are doing all the physical labor lately?”  Lisa asked.  Yue thought maybe Lisa needed to go take a nap as well.  She was snapping away at everyone non-stop this morning.  Then she looked over and saw that she was just trying to make a joke.  The big bags under her eyes a clear clue as to why everything she said was coming out sounding a little bit bitchy.

“Cause the boys keep getting themselves hurt.”  Yue answered back.

“Hey.  I’m standing right here?  I took a frag to the shoulder less than a week ago.  Harley’s relaxing in the truck and all he did was break a couple of fingers.”  LeBron said.  He was still having a lot of issues using his right arm.  It’d made the battle on the rooftop the previous night even more exciting for him.

“Not to mention the bullet that hit Drew didn’t even make it into his body.  Just cracked a rib and ricocheted somewhere.  I think she just had like a .22 or something.  He could totally be helping.  Big wus.”  Yue added.

“I get it.  We’re all hurting.  Pretty much any of us would be sitting in an emergency room in the old days.  Now we just slap on a Band-Aid and grab a fistful of pills out of Harley’s pill bag.”  Lisa said.  They were back inside the stairwell now collecting more of their gear.  They opted to leave the two by fours up on the wall instead of taking them with them.  They didn’t want to risk any crawlerz getting into the stairwell with them.  They had extra building supplies already on the truck anyway.

It took a depressingly short amount of time to move all their worldly goods from the stairwell back to the truck.  It took them longer to get Shaun up into the cab.  At some point he’d passed back out.  They’d found him unconscious on the ground after they finished loading the truck.  No one had noticed him collapse.  Yue bent down with everyone watching and felt around for a pulse.  She couldn’t figure out how to find a pulse so put her hand over his mouth instead.  She let herself relax when she finally felt him breathing.  That was good enough for her to render her professional medical verdict of ‘not dead’.

They drove around town after getting Shaun shoved in the back with Drew.  The two of them taking up most of the space.  Yue had it in her head they needed to find some kind of adult Pedialyte.  She’d been laser focused on an IV bag of saline or whatever until Lisa pointed out none of them knew how to administer an IV bag of anything.  At that point she’d flipped over to wanting Gatorade or Pedialyte or just a big bag of sugar to pour into the water they were trying to get an unconscious Shaun to drink.

They scored a big zero on finding a place to ransack that didn’t look like they’d be ripped apart by crawlerz as soon as they went inside.  The obvious places for food and medical supplies had all been looted already.  Yue asked Harley for a couple of pills to give Drew.  She’d already given him her last antibiotics.  The massive bruise spreading across most of his upper body seemed a little severe for the over-the-counter pain meds she had left.

Harley was getting more and more protective of his stash as the bags of pills kept getting lighter.  She had to show him the bruise on Drew’s chest before she could pry away a couple of his pain killers.  The fact that Harley was obviously high as a kite wasn’t super reassuring either.  It did explain how he was able to use his broken fingers to drive with so easily though.  From a first aid perspective they’d just taped the two fingers together with a pencil in the middle as a splint.

Harley himself was on cloud nine.  Spending the previous night having those slimy things slipping through his thoughts had fully fueled his desire to escape through the rapid application of pharmaceuticals.  As they rode around town, he was starting to struggle with keeping the truck on the road.  Every time he scraped by a car or had a really hard time turning down a different road, he felt Yue’s eyes boring into the side of his skull.  Trying to come up with a way he could just get high and ride around in the truck all day he asked if any of them wanted to learn how to drive.

Even in his altered state of mind it was a little insulting how quickly all three of them volunteered to do whatever it took to get him out of the driver’s seat.  Harley brought the truck to a stop in the middle of the street by pressing the brakes way too hard and looked over at them.

“Surprised you want anybody to move with two women up in your lap.”  Harley said grinning lasciviously at LeBron.  The Oxy making him forget the obvious.

“One’s my sister and Lisa’s basically my sister-in-law so not quite as great as you’re making it sound.”  LeBron said.

“Sister-in-law?  You know something I don’t know?”  Yue joked poking LeBron with her elbow.  Lisa batted her eyes around tiredly with a small half smile playing at the corner of her lips.

Harley passed out in the driver’s seat.  Yue told everyone to be quiet while she rummaged around in the big man’s jacket.  She confiscated three bags of pills from him.  She hid them in her bag instead.  LeBron told her Harley was going to kill her if he found out.  Yue snapped back that she wasn’t trying to sit around and watch Harley overdose.  Especially not while he was driving them down the interstate at a hundred miles per hour.

They let the snoring giant sleep for two hours then woke him up.  Yue had volunteered to stay awake while Lisa and LeBron got some sleep.  Mostly because she was a horrible driver.  She’d never even learned how to drive a stick.  She had absolutely no confidence she’d be able to figure out how to drive this truck in the few hours they had to learn.  Lisa and LeBron were both much more likely candidates.  Lisa had actually driven all kinds of tractors and an old pickup truck at her uncle’s farm the summer before everything fell apart.  She was going to be first up for the truck driving tutorials once Harley was awake.

They couldn’t wake Harley up.  They also couldn’t easily move him out of the seat he was in.  Especially since the strongest person in the group was passed out in the back nursing a fractured rib.  Shaun was still out cold. His medical treatment at this point revolved around periodically checking to see if he was still alive.  LeBron would just whine about it only having been a week since he got fragged in the arm if he was asked to help move the monster of a man.

“It looks like it’s up to the girls to save the day again.”  Lisa said in a not so excited tone of voice.

“Yay.  Girl power.  How the hell are we supposed to move him?”  Yue asked.

“You’re not.  He’s just too  big.  We’re going to have to make him move himself.”  LeBron said cryptically.  The two girls looked at him thinking he had some brilliant idea up his sleeve.  They’d already tried slapping, yelling and even blasting the air conditioner.  Harley hadn’t even flinched under the assault.

“What’s the move then?”  Lisa asked.  LeBron shuffled around until he could reach down to the floorboards and grab the jug of drinking water sitting down there.  It wasn’t a high-tech solution, but it beat sitting there watching Harley drool on himself until it got dark. They needed him awake before an army of crawlerz came out to kill them all.  Lisa took off the lid and happily dumped the room temperature liquid on Harley’s head.

He shifted around some and moaned a little bit but was about to go right back to snooze land.  Lisa grabbed him and yelled at him to move.  Between the three of them they were able to get him out of the seat and splayed out across the console.  He fell back into a deep sleep and became a whole lot of dead weight.  Not having much of a choice they left him bent over the console while Lisa slid into the driver’s seat.  It turned out if you could drive farm equipment you could figure out a big rig.

Thankful there wasn’t a trailer attached Lisa worked on getting the hang of driving the truck.  Other than having to do it with Harley’s legs getting in the way it wasn’t that rough.  She figured most of the training with these trucks had to do with driving in traffic.  She wasn’t going to have to worry about that anytime soon.  She also wasn’t going to have to back a trailer perfectly into a truck stop parking spot.  As long as all she had to do was drive forward at a moderate speed, she was feeling pretty good about it.

Lisa got back on the highway and they drove through the North Carolina forests and small towns in a generally northern direction.  They’d crossed a scary looking bridge to make it into Virginia when Harley finally woke up enough to figure out that he was spread out across the console.  After a quick break for everyone to stretch and take care of any other urgent needs they got back on the road.  They were making good time and hoping to make it to Purcellville before being forced to pull over and find somewhere safe to spend the night.

With Harley in the passenger’s seat Lisa was able to put some more pep in her driving.  She went from moderate speed to slightly faster than moderate speed.  She’d made a big deal about how she was going to be able to go faster with Harley’s legs out of the way.  Yue was still waiting for that to happen.  Harley nodded off again after fruitlessly searching his pockets.  Yue made sure to avoid eye contact with him while he was trying to figure out what’d happened to his contraband.

Harley passed back out, but Shaun woke up.  He’d no sooner opened his mouth to ask what was going on when Yue put her hydration plan in motion.  She started handing him water bottles that she’d mixed up powdered drinks in and cajoling him into chugging them down.  She’d crushed up some of the pills she’d taken off Harley and put them in the bottles for good measure.  Not that she wanted Shaun sleeping anymore but a little pain relief and some random antibiotics wouldn’t hurt him.  Her biggest concern was making sure he got a lot of liquids into his system before he fell back asleep.

Sitting up to drink the water Shaun thanked them all for saving his life.  After the obligatory responses he asked them where they were headed.  He’d asked them the previous night when he told them they were headed to Fayetteville.  After a brief hesitation Yue told him they were headed to Weathertop.  Shaun was silent for a few minutes and everyone thought he’d fallen back asleep.

“Why Weathertop instead of Fayetteville?”  Shaun asked curiously from the back.  He evidently hadn’t passed back out yet.  Yue took that as an opportunity to give him a refill on the concoction she was making him drink.

“We know people there.  My boyfriend actually works there.”  Yue replied.  They were only a few hours from where their resident conspiracy theorist Harley had indicated the base should be.  Yue wasn’t sure how much she should tell Shaun considering they might all get interrogated as soon as they arrived.

“OK cool.  My uncle’s probably there too.  Wendy and I were going to Fayetteville since it was a little closer.  To be honest Wendy wasn’t on great terms with her dad or we’d have already been at Weathertop.  Instead, we spent the last year eating our way through a lifetime’s worth of supplies.”  Shaun said.

“Bomb shelter?”  LeBron asked.

“Even better.  Our neighbors were Mormons.  The church makes them keep a year’s supply of food and money on hand in case of emergencies.  Not only do they make them keep it, but the church also instructs them to share it to help their community in times of need.  All their kids were away on a mission, so they had my sister and me plus a Mormon couple they knew come stay with them.”  Shaun explained.

“There’s going to be a lot more Mormons in the world when this is all over with.”  LeBron joked.

“Not them though.  They let us in and showed us where all the supplies were then they left to go find their kids.  The ones they’d sent out on a mission right before the airports and everything closed down.  A mission trip in Northern Africa.  They walked out holding hands and singing hymns.  It must be nice to believe in something that much.  Especially now.  That may be what sees them through more than the stockpiles honestly.”  Shaun said in a faraway voice.

“You’re not going to try and convert us, are you?”  Yue said half-jokingly.  The story was making her miss her mom.

“No.  That’ the latter-day saints that come knocking on your door as far as I know.  My cousin and I were both lapsed Catholics.  The only thing she brought with her was a duffel bag full of drugs. Drugs she was most definitely not interested in sharing with the community.  She didn’t get along really well with the Mormon couple we were shacked up with.  With the drugs and the screaming and everything.  I was kind of the peacekeeper in the group.  Then we started running low on supplies and Wendy started sensing those things around us at night.  We decided to roll the dice and take off for Fayetteville after listening to that message on the radio a couple hundred times.  Which is how we ended up on a roof with you guys.”  Shaun wrapped up his story then apologized for talking too much.

Yue had been nodding along with Shaun’s story.  It rang true even though she sensed he was leaving some pieces out.  That explained why the couple with Shaun had been quiet.  It explained why Wendy had been the insane freak that she was.  Shaun coming from money didn’t surprise her.  He had an air of sophistication around him that she associated with the highly educated.  For Wendy to have had access to a year’s worth of drugs they must’ve either been rich, or drug dealers.  He didn’t seem like a drug dealer.  Not that she’d know a drug dealer if she saw one.  Not a lot of call for that kind of investigative skillset at IHOP.

Chapter 33:  Is this the Secret Base?

“It’s not really a secret.  You could read about it on Wikipedia.  It was built to be a fallback base for the government.  Like during 9-11 or the Cuban missile crisis they’d have the vice president, and all those other important old government dudes go sit there.  That was all the official stuff on it.  The secret stuff on it was the good stuff.”  Harley explained to the bemused group seated around him.  The big man fairly glowed with enthusiasm when talking about conspiracy theories.

“Aliens don’t seem so far-fetched really considering we’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  I think just knowing that it’s used as a fallback for the government bigwigs makes it an option for us.”  LeBron summed up.  Harley’s eyebrow had gone up in offense at the aliens jab.  He decided to let it slide since he’d been about to tell them again about his alien theory.

Not that Harley minded looking silly.  When you were built like a pro wrestler people tended to avoid making fun of you.  At least to your face.  They also tended not to get too close to you.  For that reason, he didn’t mind whipping out the silliness every once in a while.  He felt like it made him more approachable.  With the exception of Shaun, he considered everybody in the truck to be a close friend.  He was still planning to kill Yue’s boyfriend if they ever actually found him, but they could cross that bridge when they got to it.

“Aliens or not we should be getting pretty close.  Seems like we’ve been driving forever now.  Even if Lisa was going like ten miles an hour for the first hundred miles.”  Drew joked.  The medicine must be helping since he didn’t howl with pain when he laughed.  Which was good because howling with pain also made him hurt.

“Head’s up.”  Lisa announced slowing down slightly.  Everyone stopped talking to stare out the windshield at the vehicle up ahead.

The closer they got the easier it was to identify the vehicle as a military Humvee with a really large gun mounted on the top of it.  The crew manning the Humvee were dressed for the part.  They were wearing black fatigues with body armor from head to toe.  They were well armed with sleek looking black submachine guns.

“Just drive up and stop or what?”  Lisa asked.

“Let’s drive up and stop.  Based on the size of that gun I don’t want to deal with the ’or what’ scenario.”  LeBron answered immediately.  Everyone else nodded and murmured their agreement.  The gun looked like something that’d been ripped off a World War II battleship.  It’d turn their ride into swiss cheese without even trying.

Lisa rolled up to within twenty feet of the checkpoint and stopped.  The man on the big gun kept the weapon aimed directly at them.  It looked like it could shoot a bowling ball from this angle.  Lisa was sure that was a massive exaggeration but until it was pointed elsewhere that was going to be the visual stuck in her head.  The guards managed to look bored even though they were wearing face masks.

“Why are we being stopped by Cobra Commander’s shock troops?”  Drew asked.  He was leaning forward out of the sleeper section.  Noting the large weapon pointed at them he went ahead and lay back down.  If this turned into a fight, they were going to lose big time whether he was sitting up or laying down.  Might as well die comfortable.

“Refugees please turn the vehicle off and exit.  Leave all of your weapons in the vehicle.  Failure to comply will be met decisively.”  The faceless man in black barked out from his position in front of the Humvee.  The man behind him continued to casually point his weapon in their direction.

Not having any other real options, they hurried to comply.  They stripped off their main weapons and exited the truck.  On the ground LeBron let the men know that they’d left two wounded in the cab.  That news wasn’t taken well.

“Did you not understand the meaning of the word decisively?  Wounded and the sick aren’t allowed past this point unless they can show us the wound.  If it looks anything like a bite mark, we shoot them.  If they don’t come down out of the truck, we shoot them.  We expect you to do as ordered or we will shoot you.  There’s this whole thing going on where wounded people suddenly turn into superfreaks and kill everybody around them.  Now get your two buddies down here on the ground.”

“Alright give me a minute.”  Harley said worming his way back up into the cab.  The men on the ground followed his every move with the barrels of their weapons.

“If I shoot you all and leave your bodies in a ditch no one will care.  There isn’t even any paperwork I have to do.  Don’t do anything that makes me, or my men think that you’re about to attack us.  It will not end well for you.”  The masked man who was apparently the leader reiterated.

Yue was starting to get worried.  These guards were wound pretty tight.  If the smallest thing could set them off, then they were screwed.  Getting Drew and Harley to both keep their mouths shut would be almost impossible.  If these guards searched them, she was sure they’d find enough hidden weapons to fill up an armory.  Yue couldn’t even blame Drew and Harley alone for that since she personally had two pistols tucked in her waistband.  She had more knives hidden on her than she could even count.

Knives and guns were everyday accessories.  She felt naked and exposed with her AK-47 sitting up in the truck instead of hanging off her shoulder where it belonged.  She couldn’t believe the guards were taking survivors weapons away from them.  If you‘d survived on the road up until now you had to pretty much be badass.  Unless your neighbors happened to be wealthy Mormons like Shaun’s.  His party of four had been trimmed down to a party of one the first night on the road.  If they hadn’t turned up Shaun would’ve probably died with the rest of them.

Yue tried to engage the guards in conversation while Harley, Lisa and LeBron worked on getting Drew and Shaun out of the truck.  The guards ignored Yue’s attempts to talk to them. They did ask her to step back when she got a little too close for their liking.  They were all focused on the circus that was Harley trying to lower a pissed off Drew down through the opening without dropping him.  Leaning Drew up against the side of the truck once they finally got him down, they let him stand there.  Wondering why they hadn’t let him sit down Drew stood there smiling at the guards aiming guns at them.

“What happens next?”  Yue asked trying once again to get the guards talking.

“Why are you here?”  The guard asked glancing over at her briefly.  Yue feeling a little offended that they didn’t see her as a threat compared to Harley and the others tried to keep a smile on her face as she answered.

“We’re looking for sanctuary.  We want to be part of the force taking back the country.  Honestly, I’m willing to fight and work all day long.  I just want a safe place to sleep at night.”  Yue answered.  She avoided mentioning Jeff.  They didn’t know for sure what his status was here.  He’d been arrested and dragged back to this base.  His voice on the radio and declaration of being in charge of the effort seemed to contradict that he’d been brought back here to be imprisoned.  They still needed more information before they went around telling everybody they were best buddies with Jeff.

“Not many places in the world I’d call safe anymore.  This place is probably safer than most.  If you get put on the force though you’ll be right back to sleeping out on the road.  You’ll have some really nice gear to keep you safe though.”  The guard answered.  Harley was lowering Shaun down now which was turning out to be a little easier.  Shaun just shut his mouth and let himself be tossed around until he was standing next to Drew.

“The force?”  Yue asked.

“Yeah.  Star Wars jokes aside it’s the people being sent out to start clearing major cities out.  Anyway, before you get to any of that you have to be cleared by us then sent down to the refugee station in Fayetteville.  That’s where you can officially join up.  You’ll be assigned a job based on what skill sets you have and what’s needed.  For now, I need you and the rest of your crew to lay face down on the road so we can restrain and search you.”  The guard raised his voice on that last part so everyone could hear him.

“Do our wounded have to?  My brother’s got a fractured rib from a stray bullet.  This other guy here caught a stray in the shoulder.”  Yue pleaded.  Drew lying on his chest being searched wasn’t happening.

“I got hit by a grenade.”  LeBron pointed out quickly lest anyone forget.

“Sounds like you guys need to work on your aim.  Yeah.  Whatever.  Anybody who’s wounded can just sit up and we’ll search you that way.  Do us all a favor though.  Go ahead and get rid of all the extra weapons you have on you.  You get them all back if you decide to leave.”  The guard said eyeing them all up and down.

They sat or lay on the ground after unloading all the weapons they’d ‘forgotten about’.  It was a pretty impressive pile.  The lead guard went around with zip ties securing their hands behind their back.  He wasn’t overly aggressive about it, but the ties still hurt.  While he was patting them down a troop transport truck pulled up. A couple of similarly uniformed men got out.  They walked over carrying a stack of empty duffle bags.

“We’re going to stick all of your stuff in a bag and label it with your name and social.  You’ll get it back when you get down to Fayetteville.  While you’re here you’ll be issued a flight suit to wear.  You’ll be required to sit in a quarantine facility for the first two days.  That’s to make sure you’re not infected.  A doctor will come around and check you over towards the end of the quarantine period.  By the look of some of you we may need to send the doctor a little earlier.  Any questions?”  The man started to spin around and leave.  The ‘any questions’ part of his little speech had obviously been rhetorical.

“How exactly do we get down to Fayetteville?”  LeBron asked.

“We have a few different ways to get you there.  Just understand you’re giving up some of your freedoms by walking onto this base.  We can’t have everyone running around waving guns in the air and trying to hoard supplies.  There’s a chain of command and you’ll need to follow it.  Kind of a martial law situation.  I hope you’re all ok with that.  Any more questions?”  The man sighed loudly when Drew raised his hand.

“Is this the same top-secret base they keep the aliens in?”  Drew asked.

Ignoring Drew, the men helped everyone to their feet and walked them over to the transports.  Once there they cut off everyone’s restraints and had them get in the transport.  Fifteen minutes later they had everyone’s extra weapons shoved into their bags.

“What about the truck?”  Lisa asked.

“You have anything in it you need?”  The man asked.

There was another delay while the men gathered the requested personal gear out of the truck.  Once everything was finally in the right bag, they were told to say goodbye to the truck.  The drab truck had about had it anyway.  Harley had been worried the cage was going to fall on them every time they hit a bump for the last few days.  It still felt a little weird to just leave it sitting in the middle of the road like that.

They drove for a while.  A guard sat between them and their bags full of weapons.  The truck stopped for a few minutes then drove into what sounded like they were driving in a tunnel.  A few more stops then the sound of a large door opening for them to drive through.  Once they were through the sound of the door closing again.

They were ordered out of the truck and marched over to a very utilitarian row of rooms.  The motel six would’ve looked like the Ritz compared to these rooms.  The bedding and furniture were very retro.  Not to be stylish but because these particular rooms hadn’t been updated in over fifty years.  They were in one of the most advanced communication’s hubs on earth and the rooms they were being assigned for their quarantine period were outfitted with big old CRT screens.

“I hope they’re color at least.”  LeBron said.

“I don’t care as long as the water in the shower is hot.”  Yue said.  She was practically drooling as she stared at the bathroom.  The only person more excited about the shower than her was possibly Lisa.  Not that the boys weren’t looking forward to being clean for once as well.

“You’ll be assigned two to a room.  Men and women are separated.  You’ll be locked in your room.  If any of you would rather have your own room that’s fine as well.  We all know if you don’t turn in the first five minutes after being bitten then you’re probably good to go. This is just a precaution.  Something happened to one of the big ships they thought was safe so now they make us do all of this.  You’ll get medical attention and dinner in a few.  There’s a phone in each room.  Pick it up and dial zero for any questions.  Your flight suits are laid out on the bed.  Please change into those once you shower.”  The man finished rattling off the same speech he’d given numerous times in the past.

Lisa and Yue slipped into their room immediately.  Everyone else took their cue from the two of them.  They quickly paired up and went into their rooms for a long luxurious as hell shower.  The men in the hallway locked the doors behind them and walked back out the corridor to the thirty-foot-high parking garage the truck was parked in.  There were a few other military trucks parked inside as well as some golf carts.  A twenty-foot-tall stack of crates on one side of the garage was just a sample of the supplies and gear that’d been stockpiled in the massive underground fortress.

The men climbed into one of the golf carts lined up against the wall and headed back to their own barracks.  On the way there they passed another golf cart that was taking dinner to the newest residents of the quarantine wing.  The welcome wagon would also take digital pictures of the new arrivals.  Those pictures would be run through the computer and reviewed by base security.  There may not be a public internet anymore, but this was the internet for most government data anyway.  The biggest power draw for the base was keeping the massive servers in the data center up and running.

Chapter 34:  The Brady Brig

Showered and enjoying a huge bowl of pasta drenched in a bland red sauce Yue felt like she might be at the Ritz.  A feeling of security blanketed her way better than the threadbare comforter.  Lisa had passed out in the bed next to her already.  A hot shower, a full stomach and the euphoric feeling of safety overwhelming her.  Yue totally got it.  She’d forgotten how awesome it felt to be clean.

They’d tried turning on the TV to see if there was anything good to watch.  After working the knobs and dials they got the antique turned on but couldn’t find anything to watch except black and white static.  Yue thought not finding anything on TV was probably a good thing.  If an old reality show or something had popped on, they’d never have been able to leave this room again.  The tiny space was a shag carpeted slice of heaven.

The one thing not working for her was the phone.  With Lisa asleep and the welcome wagon gone for the day Yue had picked up the ugly green handset off the old timey rotary phone on the nightstand.  Not sure if she’d ever actually used one of them before Yue dialed the zero on the phone. She watched impatiently as it slowly clicked back over to where it was supposed to go.  She waited anxiously until an automated voice answered.

The voice gave her the options for medical assistance, general questions or to speak to a person by dialing their last name.  She’d spent the next ten minutes rotary dialing Jeff’s full name only to be disconnected.  The system didn’t appear to like phones from the 1970’s.  Why they’d install a system that didn’t work from the phones in the room was beyond Yue.  They could’ve at least had it default to a human operator for the rotary challenged like her.  She’d gotten over that little setback by wallowing in her current state of euphoria.

She woke up the next morning completely disoriented.  Looking over at the bed next to her she saw Lisa’s head sticking out of the covers.  She sat up too quickly giving herself a head rush. The Brady Bunch interior of the cramped room reminded her where she was.  Excitedly she jumped out of bed to go pee in a toilet that actually flushed and wipe with actual toilet paper.  It was the simple things like that she was going to miss the most when they inevitably ended up back on the road.

The one wall had curtains hanging down over it that made it look like there was a window.  She checked to make sure and confirmed that the curtains were hiding a really nice view of the wall.  She tried the door and confirmed it was locked.  The room might as well have bars on the windows. It was basically a prison cell.  Then again, she guessed it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to let people quarantine in unlocked rooms.

“Is there anything to drink in here?”  Lisa asked from the bed.  She’d woken up when Yue started screwing around with the curtains covering the non-existent windows.

“It’s like magic right?”  Yue said walking over to the sink and filling up a glass of water.  She carried the water over to Lisa and made a big deal of presenting it like a bottle of the finest wine.  Lisa sniffed it and announced it an excellent year before guzzling it down in a single swallow.

Once they were both back on their respective beds Yue brought the conversation around to asking Lisa what she thought they should do next.  That led to more gushing about the beauty of modern plumbing. Taking another shower was way up there on both of their lists.  Yue mentioned she couldn’t get the phone to work.

“Trying to booty call Jeff?”  Lisa asked slyly.

“I just wish I could talk to him.  We need to know what’s going on.  It’s my fault we’re stuck in here.”  Yue replied.

“You mean stuck in this room with the room service and the hot showers and the lack of things trying to kill us every seven seconds?”  Lisa asked sarcastically.  She had a point.  It wasn’t like this place was a bad move for them even if Jeff wasn’t here.  On top of the food and the safety the base offered it may also help them find some sense of purpose.  Joining a group fighting to take back the country sounded a lot better than squatting in a basement living off scraps.  Staying alive was still goal number one.  She was cool with them fighting for the country, but she didn’t want any of them dying for the country.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of breakfast.  Powdered eggs, pancakes and coffee consumed their attention for the next ten minutes.  Then around noon another knock on the door and they were getting checked over by a female military doctor.  Lunch was delivered while the doctor was still there.

“How do you people eat so much?”  Lisa asked staring at the containers filled with beans and chunks of some kind of meat.

“You both show signs of malnutrition and dehydration.  Other than that, I think you’re fine.  I assume you’ve been living off whatever you could scrounge?”  The doctor asked curiously.

“Yes ma’am.  Have you seen the others from our group yet?  They’re a lot more banged up than we are.  Other than all of the concussions I’ve done pretty good.”  Yue said earnestly.  The doctor smiled disbelievingly at the way Yue minimized the head trauma she’d had.

“I’m going to check them out next.  I’ll come back and let you know.  I guess I don’t really need to worry about patient privacy forms and all that anymore.”  The doctor said smiling. She waved off their avalanche of appreciation and told them she’d be back in a few.  The armed man escorting the doctor let her out then locked them back in the room.  They sat back down on their beds to wait.

An hour or so later they were having a whispered conversation when there was a light knock on the door.  They’d been wondering if the doctor had forgotten her promise, so the knock was very welcome.  Yue jumped up to open the door before remembering that it was locked from the outside.  Instead of running over to the door, she awkwardly yelled it was ok to come in.  She was on pins and needles. She was worried the doctor had taken so long to come back because one of her brothers was having some sort of complications.  Considering they’d basically slapped a few Band-Aids on top of bullet wounds it was highly probable there could be some lingering issues there.

“You guys have really been through the wringer.  I’m ordering X-rays for everyone except Lisa.  We don’t have an MRI machine here or I’d add that to the list.  I don’t think there’s a huge need for antibiotics but if we see any foreign materials in the X-rays you might get a round of that.  In the old days I’d have given you all a prescription after what you’ve been through.  Pfizer isn’t mass producing this stuff anymore though, so we need to ration it.  Otherwise, we’re back to attaching leeches to drain out the bad vapors.”  The doctor finished with a smile.  The leeches and vapor talk had totally gone over Lisa and Yue’s heads, but they gave her some courtesy laughs anyway.

“Does that mean we’re done with the quarantine?”  Yue asked.

“Nope.  One more day.  Someone will come to pick you up to take you to X-ray in the morning.  Once I get a copy of everyone’s X-rays, I’ll review them and write up my orders.”  The doctor said as she edged towards the door.

“What kind of orders?”  Lisa asked.

“I’ll prescribe some medicine to be issued from our stockpile if anyone needs it.  We may also need to do some surgery to remove any bone or bullet fragments.  Casts if anything is broken.  You’ll stay here until you’re off of medical hold.  Once I clear you then you’ll be moved to the common area to wait on the next transport to Fayetteville.  At least that’s how it’s been handled so far.”  Smiling one final time the doctor exited the room.  The lock clicking with finality after she left.

“I wonder what’s for dinner?”  Lisa asked.

With nothing to do but sit around the room and worry about what was going on with the other members of their group the hours really dragged by.  There was only so many times you could take a shower or try to figure out the TV.  Lisa played around with the phone but couldn’t get it to connect to a live person either.  When the food fairies brought dinner, they both ate it out of sheer boredom.

When the clock in the room said it was past eleven at night they went ahead and tried to fall asleep.  It was more difficult than Yue would’ve thought.  They were clean, well fed, and laying in beds with clean linens in a highly protected bunker.  That’d been enough the previous night to shove them right over the ledge into sleepy town.  They’d probably slept more the first night after arriving at the base than they’d slept the previous week out on the road.  Especially if you only counted restful, undisturbed slumber.

Spending the night in a stairwell surrounded by crawlerz telepathically sharing how badly they wanted to sink their teeth into your face and start chewing sucked.  The same could be said for attempting to sleep in trucks while random guns kept going off.  Their new situation should have lent itself well to a solid night of slumber.  Maybe they should’ve done something besides sit around and eat all day.  They weren’t physically tired. To make matters worse the comparatively large amount of food they’d eaten that day made them both feel bloated and more than a little nauseous.

They were both still sleepy when the food fairy came tapping at the door with their breakfast.  They’d barely had time to choke down the meal when there was another round of tapping on the door.  This time it was a soldier who’d been assigned to drive Yue and the others over to the medical bay to get X-rays done.  He was driving a large golf cart that could hold up to twelve people if they were all skinny.  That wasn’t a problem since they’d all been adhering closely to the apocalypse fitness regimen.  A random can of probably expired mystery meal a day combined with at least an hour of running for your life.

The soldier driving the cart didn’t have too many words for any of them other than Yue.  He had lots of words for Yue.  Which was why Yue made sure to sit in the very last row.  She wanted to put plenty of distance between herself and overly flirtatious guard.  She daydreamed of running into Jeff while they were driving down the long concrete corridors.  Initially it made her smile thinking of him pulling rank and dressing down the macho driver.  It quickly went from there to just seeing Jeff’s smile again. What she wouldn’t give right then to have him swooping in for one of his highly awkward hugs.

The interior of the base was painted and furnished in the drab utilitarian style the military prized.  Yue got that function was prized over form.  She understood the people who designed the base had budgetary limits.  Even considering all that the lime green color scheme was unforgiveable.  It was obviously a leftover from an age where they lacked even the smallest bit of taste.  Someone at the secret base supply depot must’ve gotten them a Black Friday special on a bunch of paint no one else on the planet wanted.

While they were waiting on X-rays Yue noticed Shaun taking a few seconds to stop and casually talk to Drew then slide over to talk to LeBron.  They laughed a little bit then Shaun sat down in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside Yue.

“Hey just laugh and smile like this is small talk.  I need you to get this info over to Lisa too.  It might not be a big deal, or it might save your life.  I owe you guys big time but I’m only going to be able to tell you this once.  If anybody asks you tell them Wendy got knocked off the roof by a crawler and a couple of us got shot on accident when we tried to rescue her.”  Shaun said intently.

“Ok.”  Yue said.  She didn’t know what else to say.  Her brain was busy turning over the reasons that Shaun thought what he was saying might be important.  A couple of ideas started to spark up.  She shoved them back down as Shaun smiled and left her to walk quickly over to the other side of the room.

They had their X-rays taken.  It was surreal getting a normal medical procedure performed.  It made Yue feel sad and nostalgic.  She almost teared up when the technician asked her to put on the heavy lead vest.  The sadness must’ve struck the tech as fear since he hurried to reassure her that the X-ray wouldn’t hurt her at all.

Back in the room with Lisa she almost forgot to pass along the cryptic message from Shaun.  They wasted a few minutes bouncing around some ideas then promptly dismissed it.  Lisa wanted to know if Drew had mentioned her while Yue was with him in the medical bay.  Hating her brother for being an insensitive forgetful thoughtless idiot she smiled and lied about all the questions Drew had asked about how Lisa was doing.  She had to keep from overdoing it as not even the lovestruck teen would believe Drew would ask too much.

That afternoon they got their orders.  Drew was pronounced fit to travel.  The doctor had already bandaged his chest tightly and shown LeBron how to take the dressing off and reapply it as needed.  Harley had his fingers in a much more professional looking splint now.  The doctor had passed along that the pencil idea was ingenious though.  There was a healed hairline fracture in Yue’s skull.  Not much they could do about that.  Shaun had an infection and needed an IV.  Everyone except Lisa was given a wristband that’d keep them from doing any manual labor for the next week.

Other than Shaun they were all set to head over to personnel and get checked in now that they’d passed through quarantine.  Shaun was going to the medical bay to get an IV and pick up a prescription then he’d be joining them.  Mikey or Gus would’ve been able to tell them they were now cogs in the military machine.  A bureaucracy that highly favored the hurry up and wait approach to basically everything.

Yue was working on the best way to casually ask if anyone had seen the guy who made the announcements on the radio.  If Jeff really was in a position of power here, she was sure he’d have swooped in to save them by now.  The fact that he had yet to make an appearance had her extremely worried.

Chapter 35:  The First Daughter Didn’t Make it

The barracks they were taken to after filling out their processing forms were much more modernized.  The cart driver who taxied them over to their new digs had been talkative in a good way.  Not like the guy who’d driven them to the medical bay who’d been talkative in a creepy way.  The rooms they’d stayed in for quarantine hadn’t been used in forever.  The driver thought they originally might’ve been used for keeping political prisoners in.  Given the décor matching the time frame of the cold war it made sense.  That whole section had been sealed off until recently when they’d needed somewhere to stick people for quarantine.

There was a separate barracks for the men and the women.  The only exceptions were for husbands and wives traveling together.  Yue tried tossing out brother and sister and was shot down.  Lisa stepped on her toe to shut her up.  If Yue got to go with LeBron and Drew that’d leave Lisa by herself with a bunch of strangers.

The soldier on duty must’ve overheard the argument.  He walked over and let them know that he’d put the duffel bags containing their personal items on the bunks he was assigning them.  He also told them the trick would’ve been telling personnel they were married.  Instead of a bunk they’d be relaxing in one of the family suites.  Noting that it was too late now he gave them all a quick tour before going back out in the hallway.

The men’s and women’s barracks were long rooms separated by a common area with couches and a few TVs.  It was meant to be a place to socialize and wind down after a day doing whatever it was soldiers did all day on a secret base.  There were video games and vending machines scattered around as well.  The vending machines were all empty.  There were a few other men and women sitting around wearing the same flight suits they had on.  That marked them as fellow refugees waiting on the slow train to Fayetteville.

Shaun walked in while they were sitting around talking.  Dinner was delivered for the people on bedrest. Lisa joked that they couldn’t possibly go a few hours without shoving food down their throats.  She didn’t understand how come the soldiers stationed here weren’t all the size of houses.  Then one had walked by who was a little larger than the others.  Drew wiggled his eyebrows at Lisa when the man walked by causing her to snort and laugh hysterically.  Young love and all of that.

Shaun had gotten a full IV bag into his body while the rest of them had spent their time in personnel filling out forms. He’d gotten to skip the personnel office for the day.  Yue and LeBron were freaking out that they were on some sort of watch list.  The new President had ordered a group of elite soldiers to kill them after all.  It seemed like that sort of executive vendetta would leave a paper trail.

“Feeling better Shaun?”  Yue asked as Shaun walked over to talk to them.

“Feeling good.  They pumped me full of the good stuff.  I’m actually going to go check on something.  I’ll be right back.”  Shaun said.  He walked past them and continued on towards the men’s barracks door.

“Should’ve told him there’s a bathroom out here.”  Lisa said.

“Yeah, that good stuff must be looking to come out.”  Drew joked.

They talked some more as they pushed the extra food around on their plates.  Harley eyed everyone else’s portions until most of them relented and shared their extras with him.  When Shaun came stomping back out of the barracks looking a little frazzled, they all turned to look at him curiously.

“You guys get all your stuff back except for your weapons?”  Shaun asked them.

Everyone nodded.  They’d been pleasantly surprised when they went into the barracks and discovered their gear on the bed.  They still had to wear the flight suits but at least they’d gotten their personal gear back.  Their weapons would be returned in Fayetteville was what they were told.  Nothing to really be upset over.  Unless of course the crawlerz managed to breach this base like they had the one in South Carolina.  This one had been built back when the cold war was in full swing though.  It wasn’t going to succumb to a bunch of adrenalized crazies punching it really hard.

“Were your wallets in there with your licenses?”  Shaun asked pointedly.

Drew shrugged.  He’d noticed his wallet right away.  He’d considered tossing it out about a million times.  He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  LeBron still had his too.  A quick survey of everyone at the table revealed all the men were still carrying theirs.  Lisa and Yue had both lost theirs along the way.  Probably because they didn’t have the same fascination with carrying wallets in their pockets as men did.  It finally dawned on Harley what Shaun was getting at.

“You saying they already knew our names and everything before we went to processing?  They were just checking what we told them against the info they already had?”  Harley wondered aloud.  His fascination with government conspiracy theories leading him to think of all kinds of sinister scenarios.

Before Shaun could answer two hard looking men walked in and looked around the room.  Yue slunk down in her chair thinking this was it.  Their names had popped up in some database. Now they were going to be whisked away to some forgotten part of the base and executed.  She wondered if they’d be killed in the same room Jeff had been executed in.  Looking across the table she saw Drew slide his chair back from the table. He looked like he was getting ready to attack the armed commando looking dudes with the plastic spork he’d used to eat the vegetarian chili they’d been served for supper.

Everyone around the table tensed up.  The moment they’d all feared looked like it was crashing down on them now.  The President was still pissed.  He’d sent his goons to collect his pound of flesh.

“Shaun Thompson?”  One of the men asked.  Shaun stood up and nodded.

“Is Wendy with you?”  The other man asked.  He’d glanced back and forth at Lisa and Yue before letting his gaze settle on Shaun.

“Is she here?”  A voice called out from the entrance to the room.  A man walked in Yue and Drew instantly recognized.  It took the others a few more seconds.  The man didn’t look the same as he had before this had all started.  The apocalypse had aged him greatly.  He also hadn’t been on the news as much as the President.

Yue was struggling to understand what was going on.  Her first instinct had been that the President was looking for them.  Then the Wendy comment finally sank in.  She combined that with Shaun’s frantic state of mind lately.  Not to mention his odd ask for them to say Wendy got killed jumping off the roof.  The final puzzle piece snapped into place when it finally occurred to her Shaun’s last name was Thompson.

President Thompson stood in the middle of the break area looking frantically around the room.  He made eye contact momentarily with Yue.  She saw a brief flash of surprised recognition in his eyes before he continued to scan the room.  He finally walked over to Shaun and hugged him.

“Where’s Wendy?”  The President’s tone was sad but hopeful.  He was preparing  himself to get bad news, but he was holding out for the slim chance that he might hear something good.

“She didn’t make it.”  Shaun said simply.

President Thompson’s face collapsed.  He sat down at the closest table and put his head down on his arms.  He sat like that for a few minutes with his shoulders heaving.  Secret service and soldiers alike standing around staring at anything that wasn’t their leader crying on a table in a breakroom.  Yue and everyone did their best not to draw any attention to themselves.

Yue knew Thompson had recognized her.  She wondered if she was about to get blamed for the death of the first daughter on top of stealing state secrets.  Shaun’s words came back to her.  She was in full agreement with him now that they’d absolutely tried to save the drug addled daughter of the President.  While the President was lost in his grief she was lost in her reimagining of that night on the roof.  She wanted to be ready in case she was asked to relive it in detail for a hard eyed man with water and a board.

Thompson eventually got control of himself and stood up.  He took the neatly folded napkins one of his agents handed him and used it to dab at his eyes.  Then he turned his gaze on Yue.

“I remember you from the ship.  You’re the girl who was with Jeff.  Did you come here looking for him?”  Thompson asked.

“Yes sir.”  Yue said seeing no point in trying to lie.

“Shaun.  Was this girl with you when Wendy died?”  Thompson asked.  He was eyeing Yue suspiciously.  He was waiting for her to show any sign that she’d somehow been responsible.  She did her best to keep her face neutral.

“Yes sir.  Her and the others tried to help.  Three of us ended up getting wounded trying to fight our way over to save Wendy.  One of the infected came out of nowhere and grabbed her.  The last I saw she was flying over the side with it trying to bite her.”  Shaun said straight faced.  Yue was happy the President was watching her.  Drew probably had a completely confused look on his face.  He’d eventually catch up, but subtle lies and storytelling really weren’t his thing.  He took more of a Hulk approach to problems.

“You’re certain she died?”  The President flipped his attention back to Shaun.

“Yes sir.  I looked for her the next morning.  There were no bodies besides the infected we killed the night before.  She must have been turned by the crawler that carried her off the roof.  That’s the only thing that’d explain her disappearing like that.  It was a solid four story drop to the concrete.”  Shaun said.  He was speaking a little loudly for such an intimate matter.  Yue knew that was to make sure all of them heard the story in case they were called on to validate it.

The grieving father didn’t appear to notice the extra volume.  Yue was worried the other agents in the room might find it a little odd though.  She was also worried that even if the grieving father didn’t notice the volume shift that the scheming politician part of that father might.  She had no doubt that sharp political mind was absorbing every nuance of the conversation with his nephew.

Yue was terrified the President would find out what’d really happened to his daughter. She was also filled with admiration for Shaun.  He didn’t have to tell this lie.  He could’ve easily let the guards know who he was as soon as they arrived.  He could’ve told them what’d really happened on that roof top.  The man was honoring his word.  He was protecting them like they’d protected him.  That debt was now paid in full.  All they had to do now was survive the next ten minutes.

The key to survival in this situation was to do everything humanly possible to make sure that Drew didn’t get a chance to talk.  Luckily the President decided he’d had enough.  He exited the room with his agents.  At the last second one of the agents came back and invited Shaun to join them.  It didn’t sound like the kind of invite that could be turned down.  Shaun left with the man after shooting them a nervous smile accompanied by a devilish wink.

“What just happened?”  Drew asked once everything settled back down.

Chapter 36:  The Wrong Side of the Tracks

“We’re leaving?”  Yue asked again.  She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and sat up.  The woman who’d woken her up nodded and left.

“I knew it was too good to last.”  Lisa said from the bunk above Yue.

They’d been in the barracks for the last week waiting on their orders.  Lisa was the only one who wasn’t wearing a bracelet condemning her to house arrest.  She’d been able to get out and see the base a little bit.  According to her if you’d seen one part of the base, you’d pretty much seen it all.  Despite Drew’s constant jokes about aliens the base was about as exciting as a big parking garage.

Lisa had been put to work in the mess hall.  It required her to wake up ridiculously early and then work until way too late. It was hard work but easily beat running for your life from flesh eating freaks every day.  She kept certain aspects of her day to herself to avoid getting in a fight with Drew.  The hardest part of her day was typically blowing off the five thousand attempts to hook up with her.  Who’d have thought putting a pretty girl in a flight suit to serve food to a few hundred Marines might lead to issues?

It actually hadn’t been that bad.  For the most part the Marines and airmen were all perfect gentlemen.  She was careful to avoid flirting back.  She was nice but firm.  She was worried her ego may grow out of control with all the compliments she was getting.  It was physically demanding work.  She looked forward to the end of each day when she’d take a nice hot shower before watching part of a movie in the break area with Drew.  Life was good.  She’d known it couldn’t possibly last.

They hadn’t seen Shaun since he’d left with the President.  Yue was glad for that.  She was a big proponent of them keeping out of sight and out of mind of the extremely powerful man whose daughter she’d shot.  The other refugees kept their distance.  Yue didn’t much care and made minimal effort to interact with them.  Everyone preferred sticking to their own groups most of the time.  Not that it mattered overly much anyway.  During the day almost everyone was assigned to some sort of work detail.  As their bed rest bracelets wore off, they were each given light duty as well.

They were told to pack their stuff and meet in the break room in an hour. Yue and Lisa raced one another to enjoy one last hot shower.  It wasn’t like it was going to take a long time to pack up their meager possessions.  Arriving at the showers they discovered two other women had beat them to it.  Lisa and Yue waited impatiently while the other women finished up.

In the men’s barracks the news that they were leaving in less than an hour was met with mixed reactions.  LeBron immediately headed into the break area for a cup of coffee.  His gear was already packed.  Harley shoved his junk in his bag and followed along behind LeBron wondering why the hell they had to leave so early.  Drew rolled over and went back to sleep.

Drew was literally dragged out of his lower bunk onto the floor five minutes before they were supposed to muster in the break area.  LeBron started shoving his gear into a bag for him.  Drew decided he might as well get on board with the whole going to Fayetteville idea.  He threw his gear on, brushed his teeth and was only a few minutes late to the early morning muster.

The emphasis on being there at eight sharp soon dissipated as some sort of delay kept them from leaving until nine.  It gave them all enough time to enjoy one last breakfast courtesy of the Weathertop secret base supply caches.  In true hurry up and wait fashion they were taken by golf cart from the barracks to another hangar where they once again stood around staring at each other.

“How do you think they power this place?”  A bored Drew asked looking up at the lights. For the first time he was wondering where all the electricity for the golf carts they’d been riding around in came from.

“Solar farms outside the base maybe?”  LeBron answered.  He’d given this a bit of thought already.  Any fossil fuels would’ve given the base a finite amount of time to operate before losing power.  That wouldn’t work for a base intended to survive in the event of a catastrophe like they were living through.  The planners would’ve wanted to make sure the base was powered by some sort of sustainable energy source.

“The dams man.  Why do you think they have people stationed at Fontana?  That’s why it’s so important to keep it up and running.”  Harley said.  He’d spent more time at the Fontana dam installation than the rest of them had.  It made sense he’d have learned more about what the power it produced was being used for.

They were ordered into a transport truck and driven outside as part of a small convoy of four trucks.  One truck full of refugees and one filled with Marines.  The other two trucks were loaded with supplies.  There’d been some awkwardness in the hangar as half a dozen of the Marines had said hi to Lisa in front of an increasingly jealous Drew.  Having never really been jealous before he wondered if that meant he was even more into Lisa than he’d thought he was.

Yue was just happy Drew kept his temper in check well enough to not start a fight with a dozen Marines.  She knew Harley and LeBron would jump right in with him.  They were all still recovering from the injuries that’d qualified them for bed rest.  She didn’t want to see them get beat down in a hangar.  Marines were trained to win whether it was on the battlefield or in the bar.  She was impressed by the way Lisa deftly avoided their advances.  Having been in the same kind of male dominated situations Yue knew how hard it was to constantly turn men down.  Especially when you ran into some of the ones hiding a fragile ego behind a macho facade.  Those were the ones you really had to watch out for.

Thinking of that she wondered when they’d get their weapons back.  It was one thing to go unarmed in a massive concrete bomb shelter full of soldiers ready to defend you.  It was another thing entirely to be back out in the field with nothing to defend themselves with.  At least Lisa would have a whole fire team of Marines ready to jump in and save her if need be.

The drive was uneventful.  The day was chilly and bright with only a few wispy clouds breaking up the majesty of the bright blue sky.  A good day to be out and about in a world where shadows brought the nightmares.  The country two lane turned into a highway that brought them into a city.  The stench of death wafted out from the alleys and dark streets they drove past.  The feeling of being watched ebbing and flowing as they drove through the crumbling remains of civilization.

They eventually arrived at a small train station.  The Marine who’d driven the truck came around to help them get out.  Moving quickly the group was guided to the entrance to the train station.  They were separated into two groups.  The ones with the light duty or bed rest bracelets on were told to wait.  The other group was sent with half the Marines to start unloading the trucks.  The rest of the Marines were working on clearing the train station.

The train station itself had been secured with wire and chains covering the windows and other entrances.  The train sitting out on the tracks had to be cleared though.  Or rather the bottom of it had to be cleared.  A few shots rang out as the Marines shot at anything that looked like it might possibly be a crawler.  None of them were dumb enough to lean in for a closer look.  It made way more sense to waste a bullet than to risk getting your face ripped off.  Especially now that large bands of surgers were pretty much a thing of the past.

“Hey, you guys might want to help carry some of this stuff!”  Lisa shouted out from over by the trucks.  She sounded excited.

Ignoring the orders to stand where they were and wait for the platform to be cleared the motley group headed in the direction of the trucks.  A beaming Lisa was pointing at a stack of boxes that’d been set aside.  Yue noticed what was going on first.  She pointed at Lisa and grinned.

“Nice guns!”  Yue shouted out.  Lisa responded to that by pretending to pose like a body builder to show off her arms.

It was the fact that she was armed more than her actual arms that everyone was noticing.  She had her weapons strapped back on her body.  It was funny how that made her look normal again.  They’d all spent so long walking around with weapons dangling off them that walking around the base without them had felt unnatural.  It was like they were finally allowed to get dressed again.

A Marine standing a little too close to the beaming Lisa started giving them a speech about how they were being given their personal weapons back as a courtesy.  They weren’t expected to use their weapons unless the situation warranted it.  The train they’d be riding in was only going to be in motion during the day.  At night it stopped wherever it was and sat there until morning.  They’d be riding in cargo boxes with passenger seats installed in them.  That eliminated the windows as a weak spot.  With the front and back doors closed the cars could easily withstand the crawlerz pounding on them all night.

When the Marine was done with his spiel he leaned over and whispered something in Lisa’s ear.  She laughed and punched the handsome, tall Marine playfully in his shoulder.  Drew launched himself at the guy.  Harley snatched Drew out of the air and hugged him close to his own body.  A frustrated Drew tried to break away, but his fractured ribs hurt too much for him to do anything besides grunt in pain.  The Marine looked on with concern as Drew gasped in pain.

“Take it easy man.  I was just telling your girl that you looked like you wanted to take a swing at me.  All good here?”  The Marine asked walking over and sticking his hand out for Drew to shake it.

Lisa walked away shaking her head in anger at Drew’s response.  Yue and LeBron tired quickly of the drama and started digging through boxes to recover their weapons.  Once they had those unboxed and on, they both felt much better.  Meanwhile the Marine was telling Drew he needed to calm down.  Even in Fayetteville the men outnumbered the women by a wide margin.  He was going to need to let Lisa handle herself and trust her.

A chastised Drew walked over and glumly pulled his own weapons out of a box that had his name clearly written on it in sharpie.  LeBron and Yue quickly rallying to cheer him up.  Something was obviously bothering him.  Drew was usually much more of a go with the flow kind of guy.  It wasn’t until they were finally boarding the train that Drew said something that made Yue realize what the problem was.

“Mikey and Gus would’ve fit right in here.”  Drew said walking up the stairs into the dimly lit cargo trailer they’d be riding in.

Yue agreed.  It wasn’t just Mikey and Gus though.  It was so many of the others they’d met and lost along the way.  It was their mom and dad.  It was the loss of their way of life.  Simple things like going to school or watching a movie.  All of those things were dead now.  They were getting on a train to go join an army of murderers.  Estimating how many there were in the country they could literally end up doing nothing but murdering the infected for the rest of their lives.

They were survivors riding the crest of a tidal wave composed of the moldering corpses of their countrymen.  Assuming they survived the attempted culling of the infected what kind of life was there for them?  So far Yue hadn’t heard anything about where Jeff may be.  Her subtle jabs at unlodging any information from guards or fellow refugees about the ‘guy who’d been talking on the radio’ had been met with shrugs of indifference.

She understood now why Drew had suddenly grown so overprotective of Lisa.  He was realizing at least subconsciously that she might be his best chance at something resembling normalcy.  The constant reminder that there weren’t that many women floating around in these military installations must have gotten to him.  She really hoped the Marine was wrong about the refugee base.  She wasn’t sure how well Drew would handle being around guys hitting on his girl all day.  Even more worrisome she wasn’t sure how Lisa would handle it.  Currently she was sitting in a row of chairs by herself pointedly not making eye contact with her jerk of a boyfriend.

Yue slid into the seat beside a visibly distraught Drew.  He looked anywhere but at her.  His face was burning red with embarrassment from being dressed down by the Marine earlier.

“Go sit with Lisa.  Tell her what’s bothering you.  Quit being an idiot.”  Yue finally said after a minute or two of awkward silence.

Drew continued to sit there not making eye contact.  Looking around Yue noticed Harley sitting right behind them.  He shook his head as if to say leave me out of this and pretended to go to sleep.  She’d tried talking some sense into him.  That wasn’t working so she slapped him.  Hard.

He continued to ignore her.  She hit him again.  He kept facing straight forward.  His skin turning a bright red where she’d slapped him.  She pulled her hand back to smack him again.  His hand snaked out and caught her before she could.

“Ok.  Whatever.  I’ll do it.”  Drew hissed angrily.  He grabbed his stuff and huffily stomped up the aisle to the row of seats Lisa was in.

She of course wouldn’t let him sit down.  Deciding Drew would have to fight that battle for himself Yue pulled out Jeff’s fully charged iPad and powered it on.  Ignoring the slightly shattered screen she scrolled through some pictures Jeff had taken on it.  Mikey and Gus featured prominently in them.  The two men had died due to the information contained on that iPad.  The President had considered the notes on here so vital to national security that he’d dispatched a delta force patrol to retrieve it.

The government had gotten the iPad in their possession and never even known it.  That didn’t give her a lot of faith that there was some sort of secret database that’d alert Jeff as to where to find them.  The same government that’d sent men to kill them was the one they were volunteering now to help.  She guessed that wasn’t exactly right.  The country as they’d known it before was never going to exist again.  The people they were banding together with now were just survivors like them.  Hopefully they could rise above just trying to survive and begin rebuilding.  The goal was to kill the crawlerz not each other.  That’s what they were on the train for.  That’s what they wanted to be part of.

Epilogue

Jeff shut down his laptop and snapped it shut.  He’d just finished brain dumping everything he could remember into it.  It was the same effort he’d gone through with the iPad he’d given Yue the password to.  He slid the laptop carefully into his backpack.  You had to be beyond careful with electronics now a days.  It wasn’t like you could take it down to the Apple store if the hard drive decided to stop spinning for some reason.  If the blinky lights stopped working you were screwed.  There was no such thing as a cloud to download your backup from.

On the plus side new ones were relatively easy to find.  During the rampant looting preceding the crawlerz arrival certain stores had been targeted more heavily than others.  For the most part people wanted food and weapons before they wanted computers or PlayStations.  Not that the Best Buys of the world had escaped completely unscathed.  Most of them had been at least moderately looted.  Compared to grocery stores and large retailers like Walmart or Target though they’d gotten off lightly.

The tablets and computers were handicapped since most everything seemed to need the internet to work but there were still some items that were helpful.  Especially when you’d been given the impossible job of taking back a country infested with monsters.  The Delta captain who’d taken Jeff back had resigned when he’d found out.  He’d been disgusted that the President had elected to reinstate Jeff rather than execute him as a traitor.  That’d been quite the enlightening conversation between Jeff and Thompson.  The Delta captain and his family had disappeared without a trace a day later.

Jeff was getting whiplash from all of the back and forth.  Thompson had abandoned him on a doomed carrier after stripping him of his authority, had him arrested and then reinstated in Fontana, and then finally dispatched him to a warehouse under false pretenses so the Delta team could easily capture him.  At some point the political winds had shifted once again. The President decided it was better to put him back into his original role rather than executing him for treason.  Jeff surmised this had something to do with the military not being willing to let the survivors out there continue to suffer unsupported no matter what their elected leaders may want.  Rather than risk a coup the President had flipped once again and set Jeff up to run with that effort.

Now Jeff spent his days creating safe spaces for everyone to ride out the night while coordinating wide scale crawler clearing efforts during the day.  It was slow and dangerous work, but they were coming up with new tricks every day.  He’d only been there a couple of weeks, but the military had been carrying these operations out for months now.  Jeff hoped to speed the effort up even more by onboarding refugees to help with the fight.  The President had finally seen the logic in that which is why Jeff was in Fayetteville instead of in an unmarked grave up by Weathertop.  They were learning how to use that rabid viscousness of the infected to their advantage.

Want to hurl yourself at the side of my house at fifty miles per hour Mr. Crawler?  No problem I’ll affix metal spikes all around the walls, so you impale yourself and die.  Want to dig into the dirt covering our lair?  Cool here’s some mines for you to find.  Need to hide during the day to avoid the sunlight?  No problem we’ll make some nice safe looking hideouts for you to camp out in.  We’ll even come by in the morning to see how you’re doing.

It wasn’t exactly lining them up and mowing them down, but it was effective.  They had crews of people who spent their days hauling the corpses away to be burned.  They were developing new tactics for killing more of the infected bastards every day.  The ideas they came up with during the day were put to the test at night.  They’d most likely already slain all the crawlerz originally in the city limits of Fayetteville.  The just kept coming from the surrounding areas.  They could sense all the uninfected people moving around the city.

His escort and aides trailed behind him as he walked down the long concrete corridor of the high school turned fortress.  They’d learned the hard way nothing was crawler proof.  Which is why every twenty yards or so they had to open up a gate in recently installed chain link fence to keep moving.  Just like they were spending time coming up with new offensive tactics they were also greatly improving their defensive capabilities.

It was a slow and steady wins the race approach.  It was working but if they didn’t figure out a way to speed it up, they’d all die of old age before they’d made much of a dent in the numbers of the infected.  They were killing hundreds a day of an enemy that numbered in the millions.  It was this problem of scale that Jeff was wrestling with.  He had a meeting later that day with the top military and scientific minds both here and in Weathertop to discuss.  Another thing they’d been putting back together was lines of communication.

A key part of their strategy now involved looping in survivors from across the country to the effort.  The more people actively hunting crawlerz the better.  If they could supply those groups with supplies, then those groups could focus on the fight instead of trying to survive.  Doing all this meant ensuring there was a reliable supply line in place.  The easiest way they’d figured out to provide that so far was by train.  There was one arriving from Weathertop in a few minutes which is why Jeff was there.

He’d told his men he needed to be there to check the supplies and introduce himself to the new forces coming to support them.  He also liked letting the refugees who’d come through Weathertop know how it worked there in Fayetteville.  Most of his staff assumed he’d tire of meeting the trains eventually saving them a lot of walking.  What he didn’t tell anyone was that he mostly met the trains hoping that a certain young woman of Asian heritage was going to turn up there one day.

He stood on the platform watching the train steam its way towards him.  For no discernable reason he was suddenly buoyed by an onslaught of giddiness.  He didn’t know where the feeling had come from, but he was now certain this was going to be the day.  As the train rolled to a stop in front of him the feeling became so certain that he immediately started questioning himself.

How come he hadn’t brought flowers?

Author’s Note

Once again, I want to thank you for coming on this journey with me.  When I started this book, we were in a pandemic that seemed like it was never going to end.  As I’m wrapping it up, we’re still in the same situation.  Albeit now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  It’s a dim light that’s flickering a little bit but at least it’s there.  It’s that light that helps ease the fear.

The fear that strikes parents especially hard.  When your children are sick with a disease that’s showing up on the news it’s scary.  When your kids sniffle, it goes from being this thing they talk about on the TV to something intensely personal.  From an idea or a theory to something that’s real.

My wife and my family are all healthy. We’re doing ok through all of this mess.  We actually have a newborn who’s going to have lived the first year of his life during this pandemic.  There’s not much for it except to soldier on and look forward to the silver lining hidden on the other side of this dark cloud.  Like most people I have friends who’ve suffered greatly from this.  I’ve reached out to help where I could or just offer condolences where I couldn’t.  I see and hear of plenty of others doing the same.

The next book in this series is going to be about hope.  It’s going to be about turning the corner.  Or at least I think it is.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.  Until next time.  Thank you again SO MUCH for coming on this journey with me.  If you have the time and are so inclined, please leave a review.  Sprinkling a few stars on it would also be greatly appreciated.

Thank You!!!!

R S Merritt

February 6th, 2020

Other Books by RS Merritt

Try an excellent 7 Book series built around a Zombie outbreak:

Zombies!

Need more Zombies?  Check out the 6-Book Zournal series:

The Zournal Series

Looking for something a little different?  Try the Son of the Keeper series:

Son of the Keeper