Drew tripped over the bed slamming Bart into the wall by accident. He got up and dragged him into the panic room right as the first strike sounded against the bedroom door. Inside the bathroom they shut that door and used the duct tape to seal it off. They had devised more wooden locks for this door. They dropped the sections of two by four into the locks and then all huddled on the ground trembling as they heard the bedroom door getting smashed in. LeBron had grabbed his dads flashlight and clicked it off before carrying it into the bathroom with them.
They held each other in the darkness listening as the crawlerz slunk around their home seeking the victims they sensed must be there somewhere.
Chapter 17: A Time to Panic
The crawlerz were in a frenzy. While they huddled in their makeshift panic room with their guns aimed at the bathroom door the house was being ripped apart. Just because the crawlerz only came out at night didn’t mean they were super graceful about it. Whatever evolutionary impacts it had on controlling adrenaline bursts must not help any with seeing in the dark. Either that or the psycho killers just went all rock star mode when they got frustrated trying to find people in the house.
A hand smashed through the drywall separating Yue’s room from the bathroom. They watched as the crawler’s hand bounced up and down in the hole it’d created. It got entangled in electrical wire which it then ripped out of the wall. The whole bathroom wall shook immediately after the wire disappeared when the crawler threw itself against it. Dust drifted down from the ceiling as they watched from the floor in disbelief. The crawler was hitting the wall like it was being shot out of a cannon. The drywall was cracking and popping off of the broken wall studs.
The wall stopped shaking abruptly. The sounds of a wall on the other side of the room getting ripped apart hinted at a brief respite from them being found and killed. They lowered their weapons relieved they weren’t going to have to start shooting immediately. The bathroom door flew into the bathroom slamming into the wall. A large shape filled the doorframe. It caught the bullets from all four of their weapons. It still managed to take one step forward before crumpling to the ground.
“Time to go!” Bart yelled.
Drew was already prying the plywood off the bathroom window. They’d loosened it up when they came up with the plan for the panic room so it shouldn’t take him too long to get it off. They’d also lined up their go bags on the bathroom counter right by the window. Meanwhile their next set of problems were thundering up the stairs at a million miles per hour. LeBron and Yue ran into the master bedroom and started laying down fire in the narrow hallway. They were blasting away every time they saw something move. The plaster dust and darkness conspiring to ruin any chance of visibility. Bart was pulling himself along by the wall to go help them.
Drew had given up on gently levering the plywood off the window like the original plan had called for. Considering the ridiculous amount of noise his family was making behind him silence was pretty much out the window anyway. They needed to get themselves the hell out of the window before the upstairs became crawler central.
Drew slammed his hammer into the board multiple times until it finally loosened up. He pushed it hard and the plywood ripped out of the wall leaving the window open for them to climb out of. He quickly tossed all four of their bags out the window onto the porch roof.
“Let’s go!” Drew yelled over the deafening roar of guns in the room beside him. Picking his rifle up off the bathroom counter he ran back into the master bedroom to usher everyone along.
Yue was standing alone in the hallway firing her pistol. Bart was attempting to help LeBron to his feet. A small shape lying face down on the ground beside LeBron turned out to be a dead kid. Drew gulped realizing they were going to have to shoot kids. Either his brother or sister had already had to kill one.
“I’m out!” Yue yelled falling back and digging in her pocket to find another magazine. Drew stepped into the space she’d just vacated. Everything made more complicated by how dark the room was. Looking down the hallway he realized that Yue and LeBron must not have even been able to really see their targets. All you could see were blurs in the darkness. If it moved, you just had to shoot at it.
“Go! Get out! I’m right behind you!” Drew yelled shooting down the hall at a man shape that’d popped into view. As he fired the flash from his round going off briefly illuminated the hallway. The short section of carpeted bungalow was lined with the dead. LeBron and Yue had been busy. Drew shot until he didn’t see anything moving then took a step backwards to run back in the bathroom.
He tripped over the body of the dead kid and landed face first in the corpse of the crawler they’d killed earlier. Thinking he was going to need a few gallons of hydrogen peroxide and some steel wool he hopped back to his feet. Completely disgusted he was suddenly twisted in a vicious circle when something grabbed him by the back. That something pulled him backwards until they both fell down. Drew spun in the air and got his hands around the things neck. He started slamming its head into the floor.
The crawler who’d grabbed him was a teen about the same size as Drew. It ignored being choked and having its head
