Left, center, right, mark, column shift, mark. On and on Bobby’s thoughts ordered the Creepers about, moving them to the hilltop, structuring them. Howard felt their human ends. He plodded up the death covered hill. The train caught the last of the sun’s light like some waiting god, all sharp talons and twisted imagery, with a flock of worshippers at its charred feet.
* * * * *
Bobby sat atop the train. His feet dangled over the edge. Rows of neatly stacked monitors stretched throughout the infinite space of his mind. He heard Baylor huff next to him, but he kept his focus on the thousands of rotting minds that surrounded the train.
“The cars are unlocked,” Baylor said. “This is crazy, kid, fucking crazy.”
“You’re the only one that’s crazy,” Bobby said. His eyes were closed as his hands found the familiarity of his Remington. He traced the synthetic stock with his fingertips. The weapon kept him centered and he used it as a talisman as he maneuvered the Creepers. He cleared a path from the head of the beast all the way along one side and for thirty yards of track behind it. He began to pile Creepers beneath the beast’s head. Their writhing, worm-ridden bodies pressed against the unforgiving steel. Bobby added more, lining the sides. He ordered them to take hold of the gears, to take hold of any available steel they could find, and he continued to add them until they began to ease the scorched and gnarled metal beast from the track.
The train shifted beneath him. Baylor cursed, grabbing hold of the iron railings to steady himself. By the light of the moon, the Creepers lifted the train from the tracks and turned it eastward.
“Engine might be shot, but there’s enough of them to get us home,” Bobby said. Sweat broke across his brow. He swayed with the Creepers as they moved, one hand held up as if he were conducting a symphony.
The Creepers followed their master’s commands, and by the witching hour, they had the train back together and facing east. There were many, their limbs snapped or broken off from the effort, that stared oblivious into the darkness.
Baylor leaned on his knee, staring into the dark skies of the west. Moonlight glinted off his head as he shook it. “Never going to make it to the coast, kid.”
“You going to give up that easy?” Bobby fell back, depleted. He looked into the star-speckled sky as he let the cool air comfort him. “Besides, we have all the hands we need to make it happen, but first we go home.”
“You’re right. Wouldn’t be the same without them,” Baylor said. A row of orange lights caught his eye. He reached for his freshly reloaded pistol.
“Don’t. That’s what’s left of Wyoming Blue,” Bobby said. His eyes no longer closed in concentration but from utter exhaustion. “And my brother.”
“Brother? But they’re dead.”
“There were more than the five of us. Remember the journal?” Bobby opened his eyes. He found twin slivers of silver moonlight staring at him. “It’s a long story. Too long for tonight. We’re going home.” Sleep took Bobby far away.
Baylor shook his head. The lights drifted closer, finding a path between the packed Creepers.
* * * * *
Bobby greeted the dawn with a smile. He stood on the tracks before the train with the army of Creepers surrounding him. Baylor mingled with the women from the caravan. Old friends apparently, but Bobby would get to know them later.
It was a long way back east under the power of the dead. He was waiting for his brother, and as the sun’s rays warmed his cheeks, he began to worry he would not show. He could use the bond given to them by their mothers to find him, to talk, but he wanted this meeting to be face to face. A final goodbye. Something he didn’t get to give to Paul, Bryan, Pete, or Ryan.
Howard’s narrow frame came into view. He stumbled along the tracks, unaware of his surroundings. He was too busy tapping at a device in his hand to notice anything at all.
“Won’t you come with us?” Bobby asked, but he already knew the answer to the question by the look on Howard’s face.
“No, there are many of our siblings left out there. I’d like to find them, to know them as I know you. I owe it to my father and mother, to all of the parents that gave everything so we could survive.”
“If you change your mind, just follow the tracks.” Bobby extended his hand and Howard did the same. He felt all his older brother’s conflicting thoughts, but he let them be. They were Howard’s demons and Howard’s alone. He shook his hand with a heartbreaking understanding that he would never see his brother again.
“They need to know the world can be changed. My father always preached it to me, as if he hoped by brute force I’d listen, but I never did. Not in the way he wanted me to. I had to taste the ashes in my mouth before I could understand the fire he always warned about. Maybe that’s the way of things, Bobby. Maybe we’ll never listen until after we’ve made our own mistakes, created our own regrets.” Howard dropped the device into his pocket and shook Bobby’s hand once more. He clasped his brother on the shoulder and turned to go.
“Remember what I said: leave them but never forget them,” Bobby said. His eyes held a somber peacefulness.
Howard nodded. “Until we meet again, Bobby.”
“All aboard! All aboard! Next stop North Carolina! Let’s go, kid. We got plenty of daylight to burn!” Baylor whistled from above.
Bobby grabbed hold of the beast’s damaged spikes and pulled himself up. He brought the Creepers close and set them to work. They piled against the train and each other. The gears and wheels screeched and groaned. The field was left to the scavengers behind them.
Bobby watched his brother wave from the hilltop as the Creepers pushed the train along, farther and farther from the bloody field. He never took his eyes off Howard—a lone figure silhouetted against an intensely deep blue sky that ran forever. His brother held up a closed fist. Bobby sighted it with the rifle and quickly dropped the scope as he glimpsed the detonator.
A massive fireball erupted behind Howard, rippling the tracks and earth like a roaring wave. The flames licked the heavens. Bobby fell over from the shock of the explosion as he was buffeted by waves of superheated air. When he popped back up and sighted the hilltop, he found Howard standing with arms outstretched, basking in the warmth of what he'd laid to rest. Howard’s silhouette waved and skipped along, his shoulders no longer burdened.
Bobby watched his brother go. He watched him take the tracks along the rolling black river until Howard was no longer in view. He stayed with him even farther, lingering in Howard’s mind, a constant quiet companion, until the distance became too great and the connection was broken.
EPILOGUE
The dead man stood in the tobacco fields as he had for the past several days. The bodies of those that came before lay hidden behind the deep, dark green leaves of the coming harvest. The dead man did not budge or sway or show any signs of life beyond that endless stare. Birds pecked at the remnants of his face, and one even absconded with a sundried eyeball. Leaves stirred in the wind, but the dead man did not. Rain ran down his rotting visage, soaked the rags that covered his dead flesh, but the dead man never budged.
He watched.
Pathos One drew a bead on The Creeper’s broken face and readied a shot, but Jamie’s voice stopped him.
“Thought I’d find you up here. Can’t you mourn with the rest of us and leave it be?”
Pathos One shrugged off the intrusion and breathed out. He fired. The round caught the Creeper low in its mouth, shattering brittle jaw, jostling it, but was of little consequence to it. It continued to stare up the hill from the lush tobacco fields, unmoving.
“Shit,” he hissed as he settled his aim once more. He fired again. This time the Creeper dropped instantly as greasy, yellow and black putrescence splattered the beautiful green leaves.
“I’ll not mourn them until I have good reason to,” Pathos One said stiffly. He bit the cork from a bottle of vintage whiskey and slugged it back. He’d regained an affinity for the stuff since the trek east. It wasn’t he
althy, but it helped him regulate his emotions.
“Suit yourself. It’s best to make peace so you don’t lose yourself to the pain.” Jamie rested her hands on her wide hips. Her breasts threatened to escape the confines of her long patchwork dress.
“There is no pain, Jamie. They’re not dead. I know it beyond a doubt. That boy—” Pathos One jumped up as another Creeper took up the mantle of the watch.
“What is it?”
“We’re being watched.” Pathos One held his shot this time. “Started earlier in the week.”
“What do you mean watched?” Jamie shrugged off a shiver as worry dappled her blotchy cheeks.
“Exactly that, Jamie, watched. It’s just like Bobby. I can’t explain it. When I saw him move them, when he laid waste to that Settlement, the way they moved, the way they looked at things, at me, at him.” Pathos One lowered the rifle and found Jamie’s wide eyes. “There was this sense that it wasn’t them looking through their eyes, but him. It was eerie, and it’s what I feel now.”
“Do you think it’s them?” Jamie’s voice was on the verge of cracking.
“No.” Pathos One shook his head. “That’s what worries me. There were more, many more than him, and what do we do when they can do what he did?”
“I have to get Connor. He needs to know and maybe he can help,” Jamie said, her long dress fluttering as she turned.
“We need Bobby. We need him bad. I don’t know how much longer they’re going to let me blank them while they’re on their watch. They’re out there somewhere. Bobby said it didn’t have a long range. So they’re out there. Probably just beyond the tree line on the other side of the field.” He fired and dropped another one. Moments later a woman in a blood-covered dress, armless, a host of rotten organs hanging from her open stomach, continued the watch in place of her comrade. “You see?”
“Oh dear. Connor needs to know and you need help up here, stranger.”
“Is that all I am,” Pathos One quipped.
“It’s how I will always know you. Regardless of what I now know about you and your names and reasons for them, to me you’ll always be the stranger we picked up on our annual trip west. Does that bother you?” She smiled.
“If we were in the old world, it would have driven me mad, but in the present it doesn’t matter in the least. Get the good doc. We need to start formulating a plan.”
Jamie crossed herself and left with a curt nod.
Pathos One licked his lips and lowered his sights on the dead woman.
* * * * *
The boy hardly knew him and now he was gone. She was sure of it. So many months had passed, so many friends dead, and now they were back home, each of them alone, locked in their own private hell. They hid their scars well, though, when the dark hours came. That time when the boy was asleep and nothing stirred but the cool mountain breeze. During those times, she let the tears fall. Many a night she spent sobbing into her pillow, at a complete loss as to how she would carry on for the child, for herself, for the rest of their group. It just didn’t seem possible on those long sleepless nights, not possible at all, not to her, but then dawn would come and chase away the chill and Randal would stir and begin to babble and she would remember him, and remember what he gave so they could carry on.
She left flowers on an empty grave. A small wooden marker reminded her of the lie she told herself, but it was necessary. Otherwise she’d sit atop the wall like the stranger and stare and wait and decay while her child aged without her. She couldn’t do that. She owed Bobby’s memory that much, and so Sophie kept going, gutting it out, like the love she’d known only the briefest of moments in her wild life. Those few, but ever powerful moments that propelled her onward.
She walked with Randal hand in hand, her body canted at an angle to accommodate his height.
He kicked at the long grass while shouting, “Gasss, gasss, gasss?”
“Yes, honey, it’s grass. Green grass.” Sophie squeezed Randal’s tiny hand to affirm his keen observation. He had his father’s serious gaze. She could see so much of Bobby in their son, or was it her longing that applied those features for her comfort? She picked up the pace, not wanting to dwell on that thought.
“Geen gasss,” Randal yelled.
“That’s right.”
Sophie followed the path around Connor’s cabin. Rough wooden beams, beaten and stripped by the unseasonably long winter, dominated the single window structure. Wires and reclaimed pieces of technology covered the cabin, like thousands of multicolored snakes. All manner of dish and antenna and other instruments covered the low angled roof, like some robotic porcupine. She could hear voices coming from the open door.
The sun was setting and the air was thick with pine smoke. Guards and scouts milled about, but most of the others were locked up in their homes.
“I don’t trust him, Jamie,” Connor said in his familiar New England accent. Sophie always found it endearing, but the others seemed to be annoyed by it.
“Man saved me, saved my girl, and that baby. He fought for us, fought for Baylor!” Jamie cried, a loud slap followed her words as her fist collided with Connor’s counter.
“Baylor’s dead for all we know,” Connor shouted back.
“He may very well be, but that doesn’t change what’s happening out there!” Jamie turned, catching a glimpse of Sophie with Randal in her arms as she stood in the doorway. “Good,” she said with a huff. “Tell this nutney about the stranger. Tell him everything!” Jamie waved her hands in the air.
“He already knows. Don’t you old man?” Sophie said.
“I do. Just said I don’t trust him. Doesn’t mean I discredit everything that he’s done for you all. Can’t a man have his opinions, woman?” Connor lowered his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His bushy eyebrows arched like the arms of some cartoon wolfman. “I’ve been up there.” He gestured out the window, towards the wall. “I’ve sat with him and observed. I know the story in great detail, and I spent many nights with Baylor on the subject before he went back for the boy. The skeptic in me says something weird is going on, but the chances of what the nut in me thinks is going on—” Connor opened his arms wide— “are pretty fucking good.”
“Who’s watching us?” Jamie gave a resounded sigh.
“Why are they watching us?” Sophie added as she hugged Randal tight to her breast.
“Because of him.” Connor nodded at the boy.
Sophie half turned her body as if to protect Randal from the implications. “No, not my son.”
“He may be that, but he is also something else. Just like his father, just like the rest of them. We still have no clue what those people unleashed. Hell, I don’t even know what the little guy is working with. Beyond the initial sample, I just don’t know. When he was an infant, the blood showed me the immunity, but there’s more work to be done. A lot of hard work, and it will require more blood.”
“He’s not a damn pin cushion, Connor. He’s my son.” Sophie kissed Randal on top of the head.
“As I am well aware, my dear, well aware, and I’d just as soon inflict great physical pain on myself than harm him. But we need answers, and in order to do that I need him. And I’ll need one of them, maybe more.”
“Out of the question.” Jamie shook her finger in Connor’s face. “Not going to happen. With Baylor gone, seniority falls on me, and I’ll not have them inside our camp. Too many mistakes can be made. They’re unpredictable.”
“I disagree. They’re very predictable. Absolutely so. You see, just the other day I was walking the southern fence with Sophie and young Randal and we had several visitors. You know what I noticed as we walked?”
Jamie rested her hands on her wide hips.
“They were completely dormant. Shut off. No moaning, no scratching at the fence, nothing at all. The second the little guy exited stage left, they were back at their old tricks. Let me find out why.” Connor stood. Grabbing Jamie by the shoulders, he stared into her eyes. “Let me hel
p us, all of us. This is our chance. Chances like this don’t come along often. Maybe once every couple hundred years. We finally have a weapon to use against them. Let me find out what the connection is. I love you both and love this brave little boy with all my heart. Let me do this. I won’t let you down and I won’t harm him.”
Jamie turned to face Sophie. “As his mother, it’s up to you.”
Sophie bit her lip. Little Randal stared up at her. His chubby innocent face knew not a single word they spoke. He did not yet know their world. Sophie was silently thankful for that. She couldn’t bear to open his eyes until it was absolutely necessary. She wanted him to remain an oblivious child forever, but knew it could never happen. However, she was damn sure she wasn’t about let it happen earlier than it needed to.
“No,” she said.
The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past Page 27