The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past

by Dixon, Norman

  Connor’s shoulders slumped in defeat.

  “Then that’s settled.” Jamie gave a smile and a wink. “In the mean time, what do we do about the watchers? It’s why we’re here after all.”

  “We prepare.” Sophie squeezed Randal again, silently wishing Bobby were with them. No, she mustn’t tread in those thoughts. He was gone, they were gone.

  “I’m with Sophie. We gear up for the worst possible event.” Connor wrung his hands. The look of disappoint over Sophie’s decision was evident in the whorl-like wrinkles around his eyes.

  “What is the worst possible event?” Jamie asked. “Horde? Organized army like we ran into out west? Or something else?”

  “How about both for starters,” Connor said. “We can defend this place against many outcomes. It was designed for just that purpose. So we do what we’ve always done. We prepare as Sophie has suggested and we hunker down. We keep knocking them down as they come to watch. It’ll help thin them out, if anything.”

  “I want scouts out there,” Jamie said with a finger on her chin.

  “You’re in charge, Jamie. Only a few of us dinosaurs left now,” Connor said with a hint of sadness in his voice. “They’ll listen to you. You’re our mother. They will fight just as hard, if not more so, than they did for Baylor. Make the call. I’ll do what I can to help.”

  “Winter will be here before long. I want the area scouted and the crops harvested. We’re down a few but not out. I’m not about to let this all go to pot.” She leaned close to Connor. “There’s fixing to do and I can’t do it on my own. I need you, old man.”

  “Anything you say, Jamie.” Connor scratched his bearded face.

  “When you walk the southern fences tonight, you circle back and you go on that wall.” Jamie grabbed Connor by the shoulder. “You get up there and you talk to him. I don’t care if you don’t trust him. We need him, Connor. We need him more than you know. He can help, but in order for him to do so I need you to talk him down. For Christ’s sake, you were both doctors in the old world. Different subjects, but learned men. Fucking act like it, or you’ll have a lot more to be pissy about than Sophie’s decision.” Jamie nodded.

  Connor let out a long sigh, slapped his thighs, and shuffled out the door.

  “Thought he was going to get off without doing his part,” Jamie said.

  “He’s a good man.”

  “I know, dear, I know. But sometimes good men need a push in the right direction. So few of them left.” Jamie wrapped her arm around Sophie’s shoulder. “What do you say we have something sweet with a cup of tea?”

  “I could use that right about now.” Sophie fell into the embrace. She didn’t know how Jamie kept upright most days. All that she’d been through over the years, and now Baylor and Bobby—her strength was a miracle in every sense of the word. Sophie hoped she’d be just as strong one day, but it was so hard. The world never stopped tightening the screws.

  * * * * *

  Pathos One laid the rifle across his lap. He massaged his aching shoulder and rolled it back and forth to loosen the muscle. He’d dropped ten today, their bodies now piled about the dark green tobacco plants. The last one, a little girl, actually crawled atop the others as if they were a perch. Pathos One blinked away the image, but it was forever branded into his gray matter, singed and seared by the cruel iron of this new age.

  “How many?”

  Pathos One turned to see Connor’s tired face. He hadn’t seen much of the man since they’d arrived. He spent most of his time holed up in his little cabin tinkering with things. Pathos One moved his gear so the old man could take a seat.

  They stared in silence for a long while, staring out over the hills as the night enfolded the Blue Ridge Mountains, casting blazing stars onto the tapestry of deep blues and black. The moon was near full and she shone with a cold silver light.

  “I’m always amazed that there’s still time for beauty in our world,” Pathos One said.

  “If there weren’t, what would be the point, stranger?”

  Pathos One let his silence answer the question for him. The trees swayed in the wind. Their multicolored leaves, harkening the fall, were hidden by the growing darkness. A low moan carried on the wind.

  “We have another watcher,” Pathos One said. He hefted the rifle again, hoping the full moon would provide enough light to paint his target.

  “They keep coming and we keep killing them like mosquitoes, the damn things. At least they’ll provide good fertilizer for next year’s crops.” Connor cleared his throat.

  “Death is the fuel of life, is it not?” Pathos One eased the rifle against his aching shoulder.

  Connor patted the stranger’s leg in agreement. “You get to be my age, stranger, you’ll have seen a bit more than you’d have liked to. Know what I mean?”

  “I think I’ve already hit that point.”

  Connor whistled. “No, not quite there yet. Not by a long shot. I don’t just mean the tragedies, or even the victories. I mean the little things, the nuances, the way a bird swoops low over a pond to snatch a fish. The way a seedling first breaks through the soil, and the feeling of pride that settles over you. You live long enough, you start to see things differently. I thought I had you pegged. Thought you were just like so many other rough hangers on. The stubborn fucking cousin that would refuse to move out when asked. Had plenty of them, aunts and uncles too. Fucking Irish Catholic guilt. Fucking Irish period.” Connor removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  Pathos One settled the rifle on a one-armed man in a tattered raincoat. The moon revealed a lone bear covered in dried gore.

  “Suppose what I’m trying to say is, any man that will take up the defense of his new home can’t be all that bad. I think you’re one of us. At least you seem to be, stranger. I’m not one to admit my wrongs, ’specially not to a freshman, but here I am,” Connor said, hands out wide. “They ain’t coming back. I wish it. I pray it every night to the lord almighty, but he stopped listening a long time ago. So now I toil. I keep going, keep helping as many as I can, so I don’t dwell. You need to pass this duty off to one of the younger lads. You need to take a break.”

  “She sent you, didn’t she?”

  Connor laid a hand on the long rifle and eased it down. “She did, but that’s not the only reason I’m here. You spent time with the kid. You have knowledge of what he did first hand.”

  Pathos One felt a chill settle on his spine. Something in the old man’s words set him back. “I did. He tried to explain it, but it was all very esoteric to me, though I could understand what he meant. But why, Connor? What’s going on? What’s this all about?”

  “Like I said earlier, you’re needed elsewhere. We need that brain, we need those hands, and I need answers because we’ve got problems.”

  “What kind of problems?” Pathos One rolled back his hood and met the old man’s gaze eye to eye.

  “There’s a watcher along the southern fence,” Connor said, his voice cracking.

  Pathos One jumped to his feet. “Show me.”

  The stranger and the old man climbed down the steep ladder and hurried across the weeded path towards the southern fence. Streaks of sliver glinted off the cold perspiration on the back of their necks.

  Pathos I – Traveling Historian of the Dead

  November 18th, 2041

  Pathos I Journal Entry [7889]

  I watch the snowflakes daub the corpses, whites contrasting with brown-grays. This morning’s watcher was some kind of first responder in his former life. The yellow stripes on his jacket have grown pale from age. I settle my breathing and drop the crosshairs over him. He stands atop what was once a pile but now has grown into a small mountain. It is the same on the other side of the camp and has been for months now.

  The watchers keep coming and we keep killing them.

  The scouts have come and gone over the past few months with nothing to report. No one in the forests surrounding the area. The watchers come north over the hills bu
t never follow the same path. There is no explanation for their behavior. It is beyond anything we’ve seen over the decades of this war. So we hunker down, continue life as usual, harvest the crops, and prepare for an attack that may never come. It is a terrifying existence, but hasn’t it always been since we lost it all?

  The nights never get easier. Sure, some might give in to sleep easily and wake when necessary, as has been documented of soldiers in various wartime scenarios over much of human history, but not all of us possess the ability to rest with ease. I am one of the latter. The nights are hard, lonely, and often unforgiving, even with Jamie’s efforts to comfort me. I wake defeated every morning, and it takes some time to shake off the torment.

  But something about this brutally cold morning is different. At first I can’t quite put my finger on it. The crosshair bobs over the Creeper’s horribly weathered face. The deep, shadowy sockets, hiding raisin-like eyeballs, stare uphill, as one would stare at an empty world. The Creeper emits a low predictable moan as I ready my response.

  But the Creeper’s moan is soon joined by another, and another, until the hills are reverberating with the sounds of thousands. I think this is it. This is the attack we’ve been waiting for. I fire up the warning siren and drop the watcher, checking my ammunition as the sound of them begins to set my teeth on edge.

  Men and women snap to attention all around the camp. Soon many rifles join me on the wall. I can’t pinpoint the sound at first. It is too jarring. I’d been through completely overrun cities and heard sounds similar, but never like that. There was a kind of organization to it, as if someone were carrying a tune.

  Then I see them, a few pale bobbing dots along the snow-covered tracks. As they come into focus, I try to tell myself that I’m ready. We all have that gut check moment. I can feel it sweep over everyone on that wall.

  The moans roll in waves that resemble a song from long ago, a song I heard the night of my senior prom. And then I realize that we were not under attack at all.

  I realize our missing pieces have returned.

  The Creepers trudge up the track, slipping and fighting the snow as they carry the weight of the beast on their backs. Their moans echo far and wide off the hills, but they no longer embroider fear on our flesh. Instead they inspire hope.

  Baylor and Bobby’s hoarse voices shouting along with the moans inspire something beyond hope. They are fact, living and breathing. They are prayers answered, miracles, whatever you want to call or claim their presence at that moment to be. A long tassel of dark hair covers Bobby’s eyes and Baylor looks damn near unrecognizable but…

  They’ve come back to us at last.

  The Creepers Book Three

  New Breed

  Coming Spring 2016

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Norman studied Cartooning & Illustration at the School of Visual Arts. He lives on Hilton Head Island with his wife and their two daughters. He has been known to dabble in pen and ink as well as digital art. You can follow him on Twitter: @normandixonjr