“Can I count on you to focus. To stay with me?" Ecky pointed into his own eyes and then Bobby’s.
“Yeah.”
“You sure? I know spells of yours are almost as legendary as Baylor’s supply train.”
“Sir, you can count on me, sir,” Bobby snapped a stern salute. He held his form straight and rigid.
Ecky laughed, waved a hand in dismissal and said, “Bobby, those days are gone. You are not robot. You are not slave. You are free. World is open to you now . . . I only wish was different world. I wish it was like world when I was young man, but that is all in past now.”
“What was the world like for you?”
“Not now, Bobby. Story better left for another day. And there will be plenty days to get through. So sleep. I can see it on your face. We haven’t had much rest, you especially. Sleep. I watch." Ecky took up the CAR-15 and slipped his head through the strap. The matte black weapon sat diagonal across his chest, barrel to the floor.
“But.”
“No, mister, you don’t get to stay up late this night,” Ecky said with an air of humor. “Sleep and sleep well. Nothing will harm you tonight. I got sharp eyes and even sharper aim. Sleep well, Bobby, may be best rest you get for rest of life.”
Bobby didn’t hear the last part. The moment his head hit his pack, sleep covered him with its heavy cloak.
CHAPTER 12
Randal Beckenridge had seen much in his time as a marine. He fought in Afghanistan and Iraq as a middle-aged man. They almost didn’t let him, though, due to his age, he was well into his thirties at the time, but he was persistent . . . and a little crazy. They couldn’t refuse. He fought in the First War, crushed countless skulls of the undead with Tilda, had seen horrors to last many lifetimes, had even earned the nickname Ol’ Randy for his survivability, but none of it prepared him to dig the boys’ graves. One of them was a small hole at best, just deep enough to fit half a body . . . how had it come to this? He thought. Murdered by their own.
Ol’ Randy had seen dead children before, but they were nameless casualties of an errant bomb strike on a muddy village. He could rationalize it to an extent, he had to, or he never would’ve made it through the war, let alone life. But this . . . this was different, in a way these were his boys, his children, he had seen them grow, taught them to survive, and here he was burying all, but one. The pain gnawed at him unmercifully, chewing his sanity in its gritty teeth.
The boy was so light, a feather in his huge arms, yet something so small, and only hours ago so full of life, had held the power to change the world. Five risks, five chances to turn the tide against the undead, five secrets, and now only one remained. Ol’ Randy wiped the budding tears from his eyes with a cold, dry hand. Had he and the Crannen’s killed the boys . . . no, he couldn’t think that.
As he laid Ryan’s body on the newly fallen snow he knew the world had shifted once more, as it had more than a decade ago when the dead decided to take over. He picked up the shovel and started to dig. That was what they had done, right? He asked himself, pressing the shovel into the snow. Why had it taken so long for them to decide to walk again, after all, they’d always been there. Perhaps they wanted to turn a tide of their own, shake things up a little. Ol’ Randy’s hands shook as the shovel struck rock. He had to think about the unanswerable in order to keep his mind from turning to despair.
But he was hard pressed to do so.
Even if Bobby made it, a statistical impossibility, even with Ecky’s help, there was no structure now, the chances of him finding a place to settle down were slim, and the hope contained in his DNA, well, Ol’ Randy didn’t want to think about it. He got to digging, the two freshly covered graves to his left, taunting him all the while.
“You sully our sacred earth with their vileness,” Pastor Craven said from behind him.
Ol’ Randy continued to dig. He was well aware of the five men surrounding him. Guns drawn while keeping a safe distance. After all, it was he who had trained them. And while he had their skills at his call, he did not have their spirits, their immortal souls, no matter how much blood they shed together, no matter how much loss they’d suffered . . . he could not contest the will of God. He wouldn’t ask for it either. Which was one of the main reasons for keeping the secret. They wouldn’t have understood the boys for what they were.
Ol’ Randy picked up Ryan’s body and laid it gently in the grave. He bowed his head and spoke to God. He asked the Good Lord to take care of Ryan in death as he was unable to in life.
Patting the muddy earth with the shovel Ol’ Randy turned to face the Pastor. He leaned on the shovel, eyeing Tilda, the sledge hammer rested on the snow just out of his reach. As much as he wanted to, he could not fight these men, hell, some of them are still boys, his thoughts cautioned.
“You murdered the future you son of a bitch,” he said in a rasp. So it had come to this: his own turned on him just as they turned on the future. He would not be able to convince them otherwise. “God with not forgive you that sin. They were innocent.”
“There were demon spawn! And to think, dear Randy, we cared for them, sheltered them, and this is how they repaid us.” The Pastor pointed to the blood covering his overalls, Lyda’s blood. Her body had been laid out in the church. Most of the Settlement still did not know that their doctor was dead. “Such terrible slaves of the Devil . . . those boys. Look how they repaid you,” he gestured to the freshly packed earth continuing, “Hmmph, and it was you, after all, who rescued them from, what was it again? I seem to have forgotten in my old age.”
Pastor Craven laughed loudly, raised his voice several octaves so the men surrounding them could hear, and said, “Road bandits, cannibals, yes, that’s what it was. Saved them from the savages so they could murder our dear Lyda in cold blood.”
“They were children, you bastard!" Ol’ Randy went for Tilda but a bullet cracked the snow in front of him. He stared at the edges of a low building and barely, just barely, made the outline of the man hiding there. “Shot like that, Jackson, I’m impressed, but you always paled in comparison to your father. But I suppose that’s what comes with being a coward!”
The Pastor held his hand high in dismissal. “They killed our dear Lyda. They have disrupted our lives, lives that not only you, but I as well, have toiled tirelessly for.”
“I killed her. You leave my boys out of this. Ain’t a single one of ’em done nothing to deserve this. You’ve killed the future.”
Pastor Craven’s laughter danced wickedly on the cold wind. “Is that what I’ve done, Randy, well, the way I see it is, I’ve saved our little slice of Heaven. Those were not boys . . . they were not human. I’ve seen the blood, I’ve seen what lived in it. But there are questions I still require answers to, questions that only you can answer.”
Ol’ Randy feigned another move towards Tilda. Another crack, this time off from the left.
“I will not give you the warrior’s death you so crave, Randy. You do not deserve it."
“You can’t kill me.”
“As much as the Lord wants me to, no, I can’t kill you. Not yet, at least, there are still answers to be gained, and wrongs to be righted. By my count we have four dead enemies, one dead doctor, a missing engineer and a missing demon.”
“You’re the demon. You, and the rest that lost sight of progress. Your misguided beliefs will be our downfall.”
Ol’ Randy collapsed to the ground, snatched up Tilda in the same motion and spun low towards Pastor Craven. He felt the bullets rip through his right leg, then his left, but his large frame was already moving, and his aim was true. Tilda’s heavy, solid steel head shattered the Pastor’s kneecap and nearly tore the leg off.
Pastor Craven crumpled to the ground, a wailing mess.
His men closed in around him, stood over him, but Ol’ Randy didn’t flinch. He watched them form a wicked halo over him. So this was it, he thought, the world is truly done in, and by its own hand.
“Well, boys, get to it! Your pare
nts’ hearts are breaking in heaven,” he prodded, the Crannen twins snarling at his words.
“Too bad you won’t get to say hello for me where you’re going, Randy,” Jackson said, aiming down the barrel of his rifle. He racked the bolt and tensed on the trigger.
“NO!” the Pastor managed to scream. “Information . . . he has information! This is not over yet." Pastor Craven crawled towards them, his destroyed leg trailing limply behind.
“Take him to the brig,” Jackson said, then added, “and get his wounds tended to.”
Ol’ Randy burst into a fit of laughter. He thanked Bobby wordlessly with his bellows. He felt no pain, in fact, he felt a bit of relief. Without Lyda’s expertise the Pastor would most likely lose his leg. Sure, there were others Lyda had trained in case of such an event, but they were not her, and they were not nearly as schooled as the late doctor.
“Better get the old man a cane. Start prayin’ too, specially you, Jackson, God’s gonna’ want some penance, he’s gonna—”
The butt of Jackson’s rifle crashed on Ol’ Randy’s head.
* * * * *
Not everyone possessed the mental capacity to survive in an orderly fashion. There were no lines, no forms, no protocol, and most certainly no sanity in Post First War America. Even the war’s name spoke of starting over, and it carried all the baggage that went with starting from scratch in the absence of law and order. Law and order that had taken thousands of years to build. Now it was all lost, with only one known exception: the Settlement. Within the confines of the carefully planned survivalist bastion existed a measure of Pre-First War American law, some might call it a frontier sense of justice, but it was something, a shining badge in the face of much lawlessness.
When men were taken by the drink, by isolation, and by their lesser desires they were dealt with. Make no mistake, even though the Folks observed their form of Christianity, they were still human.
Every facet of their micro-society had been planned from square one, and the brig was one of the first things the Crannen’s proposed. Pa Crannen had been adamant about creating it, while the others, even his wife, were somewhat skeptical, but his warnings ultimately won out. They’d been thanking him silently ever since. Countless lessons had been learned over the nearly, two decades since its inception, and along with the lessons were the trials, for the more serious offenses, but overall the brig was a monument to the little bit of the old world that survived.
“Look what they did to me, boy,” Ol’ Randy said, as Cale dressed his wounds. He’d taken four shots, all went clean through his legs, no shattered bones, the hardy veteran had suffered much worse. He ran his hand over the dent that covered a good portion of his face.
Cale bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say. Everything had changed when he went to sleep the night before. Normalcy was gone.
“Oh, come now, son, don’t tell me yer gonna’ buy this horseshit, I taught ya’ bettern’that.”
“You did, but . . . but murder. Lyda—it just doesn’t make sense.”
“The world doesn’t make sense, boy, but right is right." Ol’ Randy could see that his challenges unnerved the young man. Good, he thought calmly, someone had to plant the seed of doubt against Pastor Craven’s forthcoming elegant twist of the truth. While Ol’ Randy could take whatever the murderers of the future had in store for him, he wouldn’t let them mangle the boys’ innocence, nor Ecky’s for that matter.
Cale looked beyond the walls of the brig. He didn’t respond right away as he seemed to be warring with his thoughts, with memory, and with his own, somewhat misguided, beliefs. Facing Ol’ Randy once more he said, “Do you remember my parents?”
Ol’ Randy was caught off guard by the question. He was about to respond with a simple no, then he realized that the question was rhetorical. He remained silent and let the young man speak, watching a painful memory that marred the still-soft skin and peach-fuzzed face.
“Of course that would be a miracle in and of itself, sir. You didn’t know them, none of the Folks knew them, shit, I barely knew them. But their sacrifice got me here and I helped a great many people survive a potentially painful death in turn, just as the Folks, and you,” he jabbed a blood-covered finger at Ol’ Randy and continued, “gave me a chance.”
Ol’ Randy tried to find some measure of where the young man’s thoughts were headed, but in those dark eyes he found only confusion, a conflicted faith, the ideas of others, and a few of Cale’s own battling one another, a young mind not yet made up.
“So I have to believe, despite what I’ve heard, and despite the aftermath I’ve seen . . . that you gave them a chance. I have to believe that you, and the Crannen’s gave them a chance for a reason. I have to believe you are the better man, that you followed God’s will . . . where we have not.”
Cale finished dressing the wounds. He gathered the blood-soaked bandages and turned to face his wounded mentor. “I will pray that they make it, sir,” he said with a wink and smile.
“Good, boy,” Ol’ Randy replied. But he knew Cale wouldn’t be swayed so easily, and maybe the boy never would. He leaned back on the cot, staring at the unpainted stone walls, and sent his thoughts to the Almighty. He would not fight them. His days of fighting were now over. So comfortable was Ol’ Randy that he drifted off to sleep almost instantly, even the loud clang of the cell door being locked did not disturb him. His thoughts were one with the Lord, and one young boy braving the Colorado winter.
* * * * *
Pastor Craven witnessed the face of God in that blinding white pain. He felt that angelic breath as the heavy steel hammer shattered his knee. And God spoke to him in a series of vivid images. They reassured the battered man he was on the right path. That justification settled all the chaos rumbling within his withered old frame. God had spoken, spoken clearly, and those words propelled the Pastor beyond the searing crunch of broken bone, bruised skin, and torn connective tissue.
With the Good Book tucked under one arm and a crutch under the other, the Pastor hobbled towards the church, much to the dismay of those that warned against it.
“God has spoken! God has spoken to me! Raise the bell! I want everyone in attendance. Not a woman or child missed . . . every last one of our citizens. I want them all! I must commit the Almighty’s words to their memories!”
Pastor Craven shouted to no one in particular, but they all heard his commanding voice. Everyone stopped what they were doing and followed in his wake like the Piper’s rats. For a little while at least, the threat of the undead was forgotten in the sudden swell of emotion.
The crisp air burned his nostrils, but neither the stinging pain, nor the daunting gray shroud that blocked the sun could dissuade him from his course.
He felt the Folks flow into the church behind him. Strangely, he heard not even a whisper.
“Look at her,” Pastor Craven said, his back to the congregation. He stood before Lyda’s blue-lipped corpse. He studied her pale, folded fingers, keeping his gaze from the bloody hole in her head. The wooden box she lay in painted a scene of some frontier whore put to rest after a particularly wild night.
“She brought life into our world, she saved life, where otherwise there’d be only death. She was, literally, the hands of God. For God worked through her delicate fingers, mending wounds, delivering babies, and even sacrificing her own for what was perceived as the good of our Settlement.”
A sweep of angry mumbles worked their way through the congregation.
“Oh yes, God hears your cries, God heard dear Lyda’s and now she rests with her little boy and her husband in God’s empire. We were lied to.” The Pastor swung about, shaking the Good Book over his head, his eyes fiery, lips cracked, face gravely pale, he railed at the top of his lungs, “WE WERE LIED TO BY OUR OWN! BY OUR MOTHER AND FATHER! THEY BROUGHT THE DEVIL’S WORK WITHIN THE SACRED BORDERS THEY HELPED CREATE!”
The congregation gasped collectively. While many of them held this belief they had never spoken it aloud.
“Yes, but it wasn’t only the late Crannen’s that deceived us. Even one deemed our greatest protector against the horde has turned against us. Look at him!" Pastor Craven pointed to the open doors.
The Crannen twins held the wounded veteran at gunpoint. They had him chained to a wheelchair, but not even that could remove the brightness that lighted his eyes.
“Why don’t you tell them what you brought back?”
“God will not forgive you, Pastor, say your piece and be done with it,” Ol’ Randy said humbly.
“It is you who God will not forgive, you,” he shouted, stabbing the air with a finger. “For you allowed, no, you carried the very foundation of the Devil within our walls. You sought to spread that undead corruption to our very citizens.”
“Burn him!” an old women shouted.
Ol’ Randy shook his head. How quickly some rumors and religious fervor changed years of perception, and how quickly rationally clear thoughts were obliterated by the falsity of distorted truth.
“No, God does not want that." Pastor Craven hobbled in front of the coffin. He laid the Good Book on her chest, making a mental note to remove it later, before she went to ground. “God wants us to wipe the Devil’s smear from our world. One of the wretched still remains and only that traitor,” the Pastor jabbed a bony finger at Ol’ Randy. “Only our once beloved protector can tell where to find him. Speak now! Speak for God demands it!”
The congregation turned to Ol’ Randy and shouted, “SPEAK . . . SPEAK!”
Ol’Randy took a deep breath and remained silent.
CHAPTER 13
It wasn’t the bone biting cold that stopped Bobby in his tracks. It wasn’t the few shadowy figures shambling between gutted cars, and it wasn’t the elk crashing through the trees on the town’s edge. It was the clarity with which the night revealed itself. With the moon full overhead, and not a cloud to mar its silver beauty, the sun’s reflected light opened the night, undressed it. Bobby had never witnessed shadows cast in the middle of the night. During his few winters such long shadows were reserved for long summer days, but now those days were behind him.
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