The next morning when the clan had emerged from the trailers, they’d done so to find most of the people attacked the night before had turned to surgers. They’d spent that morning fighting for their lives against their demon possessed friends. They’d lost even more of the clan that morning. They realized then how lucky they were most of their trucks could be opened and closed easily from the inside. They’d rigged them like that since a lot of them ended up sleeping in the trailers during gigs to save money.
The state troopers post that kept turning them back had been attacked as well. The remainder of the troopers tried to turn the clan back around again. Blaze had just blasted the horn and driven right through the bullets. One driver caught a bullet in his shoulder, and one truck pulled over with a flat tire but everyone else made it through the gauntlet.
They’d learned to only drive during the day to avoid the crawlerz. At night they always slept inside the locked trailers not emerging until the sun was up. They had some webcams and small holes they’d drilled in strategic places to let them check if it was safe or not to come out. There were plenty of times they had to beat down a surger or two in order for the driver and his escort to make it up to the front of the truck. A few nights had been like living through a nightmarish hailstorm as the crawlerz pounded on every inch of the trailers trying to find a way in.
They’d come up with the porcupine look to keep surgers off the fronts of the trucks when they were moving. The long poles worked to sweep most of the charging surgers off their feet before they could leap for the drivers. One trailer they’d lost had been filled with crawlerz when they opened it. The people inside had turned into surgers or ripped apart. They’d lost another two people when they sent them to investigate. There was no definitive reason for it having happened. Someone had either hidden a bite or a crawler had managed to rip its way in somehow. Maybe through the latrine hole they had under the mounted toilet in each truck.
“That’s about it. Pretty much the worse road trip ever. That dirt bike thing we did to you was something new. I thought you’d just pull over and let us take your crap. Would’ve been way smarter than running into a tree. We do this act where we set a globe on fire and ride around the inside of the globe on the dirt bikes, so we have some pretty good riders. Enough about us though. How’d such a diverse trio of siblings wind up out here on the road?” Charani leaned forward and put her chin on her fists to listen. All the others who’d been half-listening to Charani tell their story leaned in to listen as well. This was what passed for entertainment in this brave new world.
Yue told their story occasionally pausing for Drew to pitch in. Their audience was spellbound as the story played out. At both their mothers and fathers deaths there were the typical words of condolence. Drew had a hard time accepting the condolences of the people who’d just tried to kill them to steal their ride. Charani seemed particularly interested in the family living on the boat when they got to that part of their story. Anything that resembled a long-term survival strategy was valuable intel. The fact that the infected couldn’t swim was news to the clan as well.
Once story time was over Yue asked what was next. Charani leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She started talking with her eyes still closed. She used her pointer fingers to massage her temples while she spoke.
“What’s next’ is the million-dollar question. You said you wanted to join a group of survivors. You’d be hard pressed to find a group more interested in survival than this one. We’re on our way right now to a place even more remote than the last one. We can’t travel too far since the longer we’re on the road the more likely something goes wrong. For now, feel free to socialize. I’ll have different people teach you different things as we travel. You’ll follow our rules or be punished. That’s about it.” Charani signaled she was done with them by leaning back and hitting the button for the bottom of the recliner to shoot out. She almost tagged Drew in the chin but he jumped back out of the way in time.
“Too bad you didn’t move that fast when I smacked you with my knee.” Harley said to Drew. Drew looked back and saw the big man had a big grin on his face. It wasn’t an ill-natured grin at all. Now that Harley wasn’t trying to be intimidating it looked like he might not be so bad after all.
“Yeah that came out of nowhere. I was going for Blaze and didn’t even think about looking over at you. My mistake.” Drew said standing up to be on eye level with the big man. Harley was sitting on the seat of one of the dirt bikes. He was so big he made the bike look like a kids toy.
“Ha. I love the way you pikers say Blaze. His real name is Louis Percival. Now that your part of the team and whatnot I can tell you that. You see a couple of rubes on the midway though you make sure to call him Blaze. For some reason he really thinks it sounds cool. My real names Richard Rickenbacker. I have a theory that we all ended up here just so we could give ourselves
