There were no pits this time, but there weren’t that many dead either, nor Creepers for that matter. As he studied the field, he caught a lone rider heading towards the tracks.
“Mr. Baylor!”
“I see the fucker.” The train lurched ahead as Baylor dumped more coals on the fire.
The rider rode through the aftermath and stopped on the tracks. He turned his horse to face the train and sat tall and proud on the saddle. He was an old man, balding, with patches of white hair clinging to his pink scalp. There was a pistol on his hip and a long rifle in the holster on his saddle. He raised neither.
“Are you seeing this shit, kid?” Baylor howled from below.
“Yeah!” Bobby squinted, blinked to make sure.
“He’ll make a good hood ornament!”
“Maybe we should stop!”
“Forget that!”
“No, I’m serious! Look around. There are none left! Think for a second! Hoss, Price, the rest of your men, they all turned too quickly,” Bobby said, recalling the sudden shift. And as he did, the answers dawned on him. Coupled with the lack of bodies on the field, it all fell into place. “They’re building an army as they destroy! Look!”
The train screeched, slowed to a crawl. Bobby heard the metal clang as Baylor climbed up through the beast’s mouth to stand beside him.
“For what? It doesn’t make any sense.” Baylor rubbed the soot and sweat from his face. “Fuck, kid, this is—”
“Insane. We ask the old man in our way. If he flinches during the exchange, he dies. If anything, he dies. He’s alone, that’s for sure. No other riders hiding out there, too flat, too open, and no storm or plateau to mask them.” Bobby laid down and peered around one of the barriers. He caught Baylor’s nod as the man jumped below once more.
“This is crazy, kid. Fucking crazy. Not even enough of us left to be running into shit like this.”
Bobby agreed. He kept his rifle trained on the lone rider. From the Settlement, to the wild people, to the cultists, all the way to the army they were approaching, it was the living against the living. The Creepers were merely in the way, or a way to land the bigger punch. But if it turned out to be true, that this army was comprised of the dead, did it mean that Bobby had a sibling on the other side? Ol’ Randy’s notebook and the Doctor’s words…
The possibility of other children left things wide open, though, in the end, they were the enemy. They’d killed unprovoked. What did that say of him? After all, he’d used the very same weapon. Just because he deemed himself justified in the application of the weapon, did that make him any different?
Bobby fell into the art of breathing. He watched the old man sit smugly on his horse. Bobby planted the crosshair firmly on his chest.
The train crawled painfully slow through the scarred landscape. The buzzards fed by the hundreds if not thousands. There were other opportunists as well. Bobby tried to read the Creepers, but they weren’t giving much of anything. They were too old, left to wander the desert until they succumbed to the elements.
* * * * *
Baylor eased the train ahead farther, farther, until he finally stopped it inches from the unfazed man. The beast huffed steam in thick jets. The man’s horse snorted and the wind stirred, but all else was quiet. Baylor climbed to the top of the beast and stared down at the man.
“The purveyor of supplies, the man I’ve been hearing about for years as far as Mexico, the train man. What is it they call you again?”
Baylor rested his hand on his pistol.
“The Mad Conductor. That’s it. You got another name too, but I seem to have forgotten it. You were wise to stop. Looks like the boys gave you hell but you proved the victor. Nicely done. She might be right about you after all. Mighty fine tool you have beneath you.”
“Your boys are wandering the desert like Moses and them, about a couple hundred miles back. They don’t need to worry about dying of thirst either.”
“Now why’d you go and do something offensive like that?”
Baylor drew his pistol and cocked the hammer. “You attacked me unprovoked. I want to know why.”
The old man laughed. “You think death scares me? I’ve been through the same shit as you. Those of us left are all in the same boat. I been at this since the fall, and now we’re finally starting to put things to rights. Save your bullet for a more worthy target, Mr. Conductor. You see down those tracks, where the earth starts to get green again? You’ll find the most amazing thing the world’s seen since the great Roman Empire. A standing army that will turn the tide once and for all. An army and a woman who will set things straight, but you have to be strong.”
“That so? I’ve seen a lot of strong people come and go in my days. I seen some thought they couldn’t be touched, some who were reckless, and others thought themselves too crazy to die. All of them were strong. Were. It doesn’t make a difference. Death is all.”
“The man of many hats. You smack of preacher. Bet you were a preacher in your former life, before we all started doing the dance. Weren’t ya?”
“I don’t pray.”
“Don’t have to pray to be a preacher.” The old man pulled a pouch from his saddle bag and began to roll a cigarette. “Thought we almost lost these for good. Smells of Virginia, the Carolinas. Sweet south eastern tobacco.”
Baylor’s hand tensed on the pistol.
“In fact, I think I owe you a little thanks, even a measure of praise for keeping old habits alive, Mr. Conductor. This part of your crop, is it not?” The man offered up the cigarette as if it were the sacrament of old.
“Lot of folks growing things round that way. Hard to tell.”
“I think it’s yours.” The man flicked a lighter and began to puff. The wind pulled and stretched the smoke into thin wisps. With the cigarette dangling from the corner of his cruddy mouth, he said, “And this.” He shook the lighter. “I’m amazed it still works. Sucker has to be at least twenty-two years old. Fella thought it wise to seal these up long ago. Bet he’s dead now.”
“I’m going to ask one more time. Why was I attacked unprovoked?”
The man laughed again. “Shit, Mr. Conductor, your little trade runs are provocation enough. You see, this land is not free to roam without paying a price. Now the currency can be a lot of things: resources, weapons, women, food, a lot of things, or it can be your life, your pledge of service, your part, if you will, in what’s to come. We need men like you. Good men. Strong men. We need people that know more than killing. Are you up for such a job?”
“Been doing fine on my own. Answer the question!”
“You weren’t attacked. You were challenged. Think of it like dipping a toe into cold water. It was just a test, Mr. Conductor. Back there—” the man pointed with the cigarette— “back there she’s waiting in all her glory. You let me aboard and we ride to them on peaceful terms and you become one of us. You help build something new, something that will last, or you can become one of them.” The man’s hand moved in a flash, drawing the pistol and firing. A Creeper thirty yards out fell over.
Baylor’s hand shook. He was fast, but not that fast. He never even had a chance to register the movement.
“Which is it?” The man smiled as he holstered his weapon.
“I got another option, asshole. We ride up on your people with your rotting corpse dancing on one of these spikes.”
“Mr. Conductor, I thought you better than to stoop to bragging like som—” The man’s chest exploded out of his back. A fist-sized hole appeared where his heart used to be. The cigarette clung to his dry lips as he fell from the saddle.
“Let me know when he turns.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Bobby said, racking the bolt.
Baylor took the ladder down without another word.
* * * * *
Bobby stared out at the sun as it neared the horizon. A wavy orange haze spread over the field, an illusion of fire. He jumped down. The horse stared at him, snorted, rocked back and forth, its hoo
ves clopping on the rough hewn track. Its caramel and black coat bent to the contours of its powerful body.
He held out his shaking hand. The horse licked his empty palm and snorted again, angrily thumping the tracks with its front hooves. He stroked its side as he rummaged in the saddle bags. He found a rough cube of salt and offered it up. The horse took it gladly. Bobby patted its flank. A row of ratty looking scalps hung from the saddle. He began to rifle through the rest of the bags, keeping his eye on the finely polished lever action rifle that rested in the holster on the opposite side. He found a box of bloody bullets in multiple calibers, dried meat, bottles of water, tobacco, and a tattered book with the cover long since torn off.
Bobby slipped the book into his waistband. He untied one of the bags and dropped the bullets inside. He slipped the Remington over his shoulder and pulled the lever action rifle from the holster, then stared at the gun in awe. It was very similar to the one he learned to shoot with, but it was a higher caliber. The brass shone in the late afternoon light like molten metal. Opening it up, he counted the rounds, and was shocked to find them covered in dried blood that flaked off at his touch. It didn’t make sense to put such a dirty round through such a pristine weapon.
He laid the old iron sights on the silhouette of a Creeper on the horizon. It had been some time since he fired without the aid of a scope. He fired. The Creeper became one with the earth, and a monitor winked out.
Bobby stood over the dead man, waiting for him to return. He pulled the man’s pistol to remove the rounds and found another set of blood covered bullets. The bullets in the dead rider’s bandolier were equally bloody.
“What’s going on?” Baylor asked from the train.
Bobby held a bullet up before his eye. “I know how they are making their army.”
“Pretty obvious, kid. Not rocket science.”
“No, take a look,” Bobby flipped the bullet to Baylor.
“Progress my ass.” Baylor shook his head. “While we’re out here trying to beat them back, some other mother fuckers figuring out how to increase the spread. Maybe we don’t deserve to win anything back. Maybe we are doomed and rightfully so.”
A monitor flicked on in Bobby’s head. The man offered up not a word. No panicked shouts, no pleading, but a flood of images knifed through Bobby’s mind. He swayed, then steadied himself, remembering the march on the Settlement. He’d been so focused on getting Ol’ Randy back that he’d just added numbers. He wasn’t thinking about them. At least, not on the level he did now, and he was finding it harder to go back to that robotic kind of thinking.
“You all right, kid?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said uneasily.
“He talk to you?”
“No. Just images, but vivid.”
“If I didn’t know any better, and I don’t, I’d say you’re human and that’s the problem. Jesus freaks had you running their game and not living. You been out on your own, got a taste of the world and, well, the good parts grew on you. Not a bad thing.”
“Maybe.”
“Fuck maybe.” Baylor jumped down. “Forget maybe. Look, kid, where we’re going, what we’re heading towards, it could be it. But it has to be done. I…” Baylor looked away. “It’s all fucked, Bobby. All wrong. We were supposed to be on the beach around a fire enjoying our little victory. You should be playing dad. We shouldn’t be dealing with this. I shouldn’t have put you in this position, this situation.”
“Baylor,” Bobby said, feeling weird by dropping the Mr.
“Don’t lay it on me. I can’t take that to my grave.”
“If it wasn’t for you taking me in, I’d be wandering. You took a chance and saved my life.”
“And you mine. We’re even. At least we were, and now I’ve gone and pulled you into a situation because I’m selfish. Because no matter how much good I try to do, I always find a way to fuck it up.”
“You’re family, and I hate you for doing it,” Bobby said, staring at Baylor with all seriousness. “But I love you too. You gave me a home. I’m not about to see it destroyed.”
Baylor pulled Bobby close and hugged him tight. “It shouldn’t be like this.”
“But it is. And we have to deal with it. Ol’ Randy always said you leave your problems be like you let a Creeper live and they’ll both come back to bite you.”
Bobby maneuvered the man in front of them.
“Keep him still,” Baylor said. He pulled a long blade from his boot.
Bobby watched as the man he’d come to love hacked the dead rider’s limbs off. He watched unaffected by the brutality. He watched Baylor tack what was left of the corpse and drive it down on the head spike. Bobby broke his hold as Baylor stepped away. The rider’s mouth clacked as he bit the air.
“They’d turn us into them. For what? Territory? They want my shit, my home, all that I’ve built and worked for, because that’s what they do, people like them. They take. Can’t do a thing for themselves. Like fucking Reggie.” Tears flowed from Baylor’s eyes. “I can’t allow it. I didn’t allow it. Fucking kid, he—” Baylor sobbed, falling to his knees.
Bobby stood motionless. He’d grown used to the ebb and flow of Baylor’s emotions, but he’d never seen this side of the man before. Usually it was psychotic rants followed by words of wisdom or friendly banter. Never had he seen the man collapse. Cry, yes, but not this. He didn’t dare move.
“My son, Bobby. My boy. Raised him right, but he never wanted to listen. He never wanted to do what was right, always wrong, but he was my son,” Baylor screamed. “I can’t anymore!” He drew his pistol and emptied it into what was left of the rider. The newly formed Creeper snapped and growled, six massive holes exposing its dead insides.
“My boy, he was like them,” Baylor spat. “He left home when he was a little older than you. Just up and left. I looked everywhere for him. I stopped going to work, stopped eating, stopped living. Night after night I kept thinking that if I could just find him I’d be able to change him. I’d be able to make him understand.
“Night after night I came up empty. I thought he was dead. I thought he’d succumbed to the lifestyle he’d been leading. Playing thug, emulating whatever fool got into his head. We can’t be changed, Bobby. Even family won’t change. We are who we are and Reggie was Reggie.” Baylor pulled a root from his pocket and chewed. His eyes were wider than ever, that wild animal look, as he paced, smoking gun still in hand.
“Then it happened. People biting people. Stumbling around. I watched it happen before my very eyes. The city was a strange place at night and it helped mask the truth until it was too late to stop it. I was out looking for Reggie, hoping I’d find him before it got too bad. I couldn’t give up, Bobby. He was my son, my son! Creepers were all over, walking into traffic. People thought it would pass. They locked their doors and kept going, kept running. When it got too bad, I hunkered down at home.
“Sirens and choppers and screams. It was all fucked, but somehow I still thought I’d find him. I had hope. But I didn’t find him. He found me. He came home. And it was then that I knew I had truly lost him. That I had to let him go. Like I said, you gotta let shit go.” Tears poured from Baylor’s wide eyes. “This is letting go.”
Bobby felt the tension rising within himself. He felt the tiles of the water treatment plant crack as he smashed the Creeper into oblivion before Ecky’s eyes. He felt Bryan’s blood hot on his face. He remembered the shock of watching Ryan die, and as Baylor spoke, he let them go. He let all of them go. Life had taken such a turn that grief was forgotten in favor of survival.
“He stumbled to the door. I remember his weak knocks, random bangs. I could see his silhouette through the curtains. I didn’t want to look. I couldn’t look. It was my boy. I didn’t have to. I just knew it was him. I knew that was what life had to offer me. A reminder of my greatest failure. I knew it was him, Bobby. My Reggie…”
Baylor stared into the past. He held the pistol up against his wet cheek. “I couldn’t look. I sat by the
door until my body went numb. Until it went dark and the light came again. All the while he kept banging, kept walking into the door, over and over, moaning. My boy! I dared a look then. And in the light of morning, I realized, Bobby, I realized it wasn’t Reggie. No, it wasn’t Reggie. Reggie was dead. This wasn’t my boy, this was whatever took him from me. It wore my son’s face but it wasn’t him, couldn’t be him. My son never came home.” Baylor pulled the trigger over and over, slowly. The click of the empty chamber punctuated his words. “He never came home…”
Bobby wiped the tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. It had to be done. Had to be done. Had to be done. It’s different now. Take that horse, Bobby, and ride away. Get away from me, get away from here. Follow the tracks back east. I wasn’t right for what I did.”
“No.”
“You really are fucking crazy, kid. You know that?”
The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past Page 12