After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation

by Brett D. Houser

  They moved through the trucks, Sonya peering around to find her Dad’s truck and Chase looking for lagging creepers. As they passed near one truck, a violent pounding began and a creeper’s decayed face appeared at the driver’s side window. They both jumped back, but the creeper was trapped. The heat of the cab was decaying it much more quickly than the others.

  They were moving too slowly for Chase, but he couldn’t rush Sonya. She was working her way as quickly as she could, stopping at every red truck briefly. They had covered most of the parking lot and were approaching the fuel island awning when she stopped. “That’s it,” she said. She was pale, and her hand holding the pistol pointing upwards was shaking. He was afraid she would drop it.

  “Go on,” Chase said. “Go check it out.” Sonya wasn’t moving though.

  “I’m scared, Chase,” she said, her voice shaking. “If he’s in there, if he’s changed, I can’t handle it. You’ll have to open the door. Just do that, please. And if he is—in there, put him down. Please.” Her voice had trailed off into nothing.

  Chase wanted to be angry, but the naked fear on her face stopped him. He tried to imagine what she was feeling. He stepped past her and grasped the door latch. He pulled, but it was locked. He turned back to her, and with one shaking hand she was holding a key out to him. “I always carry an extra, even when I’m not on the road with him.”

  He took the key from her and unlocked the door. Before opening the door he checked the window. If her dad was in there, if he had gone creeper, he would be at the window by now. Seeing nothing, he pulled the handle. He was further reassured when the door opened and there was no overwhelming stench of decay. He turned to tell Sonya it was safe, but she was already pushing past him and scrambling up into the cab.

  As Sonya went through the truck, Chase turned and watched for creepers. He saw none, but he didn’t like his limited field of vision. A creeper could be on them quickly before he could see it. He dropped to the ground to look under the trucks. He was unsurprised to see what were obviously the legs of a staggering creeper several trucks away. He spotted several more farther away, closer to the main building. He had known clearing them all out would be impossible before they began. But while the cluster of trucks limited his vision, it also hindered the creepers’ ability to navigate. He guessed they could sense him, but they couldn’t find him. He stood and prepared himself for the eventuality that one would. His staff was at the ready, and he was alert and listening. In the distance, the reassuring sound of the ATV was still receding. They needed to get moving soon before she ran out of running room. Over his shoulder he told Sonya to hurry, please.

  “His stuff’s still here,” she said, her voice barely reaching him from the depths of the sleeper. “His gun, too.” The cab behind him shook with her slight weight as she climbed back into the cab. When she spoke again, her voice was clearer and he heard her plainly. “I think I found something.” When Chase turned to see, she was holding up a large pistol in one hand and a spiral bound notebook with a black cover in the other. “He wrote it all down,” she said, and where there had been only fear there was now a glimmer of hope.

  On their way back through the maze of trucks, Chase had to take out two more creepers. When they reached the open area between the trucks and the trees, he breathed a sigh of relief. The field was still clear ahead of them. He couldn’t see Marilyn, but he could still hear the ATV and could see the crowd of creepers in the distance. He and Sonya trotted across the field, not bothering to go into the trees this time. They climbed into the Humvee and Chase drove to the end of the driveway, cutting the wheel to the right toward the dead end when he reached the road.

  “Go ahead,” he told Sonya. She rolled down the passenger side window and pointed the shotgun to the sky and squeezed off one shot. Chase continued to the end, entered the gate that marked the end of the road and the beginning of the driveway for the house that sat there. He cut through the yard and circled around until he was pointing back out toward the main road. The sound of the ATV drew nearer, louder, and finally Marilyn appeared, Honey running along behind her. Marilyn rolled up next to the Humvee and cut the motor. Her cheeks were flushed and she was smiling.

  “That was fun! I had forgotten how much fun riding can be. Seems a shame to leave this here. Maybe I should ride it back to the ranch, or we could load it up on the trailer and drag it back,” she said breathlessly.

  “I don’t think we have time to load it up and hook the trailer,” Chase said.

  “I left them quite a ways back,” Marilyn protested. “It wouldn’t take that long.”

  “I’m not worried about them,” Chase said. “I’m worried about the ones in front of us.” He pointed down the road. A wall of creepers was coming toward them. The leading edge of the horde had already passed the driveway where the trailer was parked.

  “Oh,” Marilyn said quietly, the color draining from her cheeks. She climbed from the ATV and scrambled into the backseat of the Humvee, calling Honey in behind her. Her voice was tense, and Honey moved quickly.

  Chapter 14 – Marilyn

  As safe as Marilyn usually felt with Chase at the wheel, this time had been different. Chase had taken off as soon as Marilyn had climbed in, but was unable to make the main road, or even the cut off they had used the first time they had visited the truck stop. He had been forced to take a steep ditch and then drive over a wall of brush and small trees that had grown up in a fallow field. He had muttered under his breath about getting stuck or hitting something hidden by the growth in the field. When at last they had come out into the open field they had used last time to get to the main road, there had been creepers waiting.

  The noise they had made, the sound of the gunshot and the ATV motor, had drawn an incredible number of creepers from the interstate. Even during the short time they had been there, the creepers had pushed out onto the secondary road and into the surrounding countryside. When at last they had cleared the worst part of the crowd and the crashing of bodies against the Humvee had stopped, Marilyn was finally able to ask whether they had found the truck or not.

  “I found it,” Sonya said, turning back toward Marilyn. “And I found this.” She held up a black spiral-bound notebook. “My dad kept track of a lot of stuff in this. Where he had been, shortcuts, easier ways in and out of places, and sometimes just weird stuff that happened. I didn’t get to read much of it yet, but at the back he wrote pages and pages of stuff. It looks like a real diary, with dates and everything, and the last entry was written after I started out from home. Do you know what that means?” Marilyn started to answer but Sonya rushed on, “It means he survived the plague. He’s immune, like me. Like us. And he survived for a while, too, because down here it all started a few days sooner. Maybe even a week or more. I told you he was smart and tough.”

  Sonya’s excitement was contagious. Marilyn didn’t have as much invested as Sonya, but she felt a sudden hope. And wasn’t this what all of them had been working toward? She looked to Chase, who was still concentrating on driving. The creepers were worse, and worse farther out from the interstate than they had been before. “What do you think, Chase?”

  “I think it’s a good sign. We’ll go over the notebook and see what happened, try to figure out where he might be now. If he took off for home, we get to turn around and try to trace his route. We may end up back in Omaha. But I don’t think so.” He grunted as the Humvee slammed into a creeper he hadn’t been able to avoid. “His pistol was still in the truck. He would have taken that. There was a barricade of highway patrol cars and military vehicles at the end of the road for the truckstop. Did you see it?” Marilyn shook her head. She had only had eyes for the creepers who had been trying to get her. “When we get back to the ranch, we’ll read the notebook, figure out what we can, and decide what to do then. But we do have more now than I thought we would.”

  Something occurred to Marilyn. “Do you think we can stay at the ranch much longer? The creepers are getting worse. It seems l
ike they follow us a little further each time we come back to it.”

  “I think we’re okay for at least another night, especially if we stay in, stay quiet,” Chase said. “Maybe longer than that. The ranch isn’t the best defended, but those pipe fences are strong. If we had to stay longer, I’d say we could plug some of the gaps, make it even better. But I don’t think we should stay longer. We stay in one place too long, we’ll get comfortable. And if Sonya’s dad’s journal doesn’t give us a direction to go, I’ve got an idea that we need to head to Tampa area. We need to find out more about the Collectors Audrey was talking about. Well, I do anyway. I’ve been thinking, and based on what Audrey said, they sound like they might have the best answers on what happened and why. At least better than the Chief’s guesses.”

  Marilyn sat back. Chase was still interested in finding out what had happened. Sonya was flipping through her dad’s notebook, but the jarring of the Humvee prevented her from reading it. Marilyn wondered why she was here with them. She could have stayed at camp. She didn’t care what had happened, really. That was Chase’s thing. She had thought that finding Sonya’s dad was her reason for coming, but that wasn’t really it, either. Of course, she wanted to help Sonya, but her help had been needed back at camp, too. She closed her eyes, stroked Honey’s back, and tried to find that place inside herself where it had been clear to her that she needed to be here. The roughness of the ride, the remainder of the adrenaline from the ATV adventure, and the stress of the escape from the creepers from the interstate wouldn’t allow her to center. She sighed and opened her eyes. Maybe later. Maybe this was just the crash after the excitement, but going to Tampa seemed to her to be the worst possible thing they could do. Honey licked her hand once and whined. Marilyn wondered if the dog had read her mind.

  Back at the ranch, Cherokee again met them at the gate, although she stood at a distance because of the creepers waiting there. There were four. Chase, Marilyn, Sonya, and Honey all got out. Chase told Marilyn and Sonya to bring their guns, but cautioned them against firing unless absolutely necessary. More noise would just draw more creepers. Instead, they worked as a group to herd them together and then Chase dispatched them one by one with his staff. Marilyn realized she would have to come up with a similar weapon. She had just gotten used to the idea of standing back and shooting them, but that wasn’t always going to be the answer. They loaded back into the Humvee without saying a word.

  Chase pulled the vehicle to a stop in front of the bunkhouse and they climbed out, Sonya clutching the notebook like a precious tablet. She rushed into the building. Marilyn and Chase watched her go.

  “Do you think there’s a chance her dad is still alive?” Marilyn asked.

  Chase shrugged. “I think there’s a better chance now that we know he’s immune. But I think weird things happened down here. May still be happening.” He turned to follow her inside. “You coming in? It’s past lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry. I think Cherokee, Honey, and me are going to find someplace quiet and think for a little while,” she answered. She knew he wanted them to stay under cover, but she couldn’t face the thought of being inside, of being trapped in the bunkhouse with them for much longer. She needed to be alone, and she needed to be outside. Chase looked like he wanted to say something, but he must have seen the need in her eyes because he nodded once before following Sonya inside.

  Wherever she found had to have shade. The rainclouds from the day before had gone and the sky was clear and deep blue, but the sun was beating down harshly. The humidity was crazy, too. After the excitement and the ATV ride, Marilyn decided she needed to wash and change. She still hadn’t moved her clothes from the trailer into the bunkhouse, so she went to the trailer and found her clothes and a bar of soap and shampoo.

  She filled a five gallon bucket from a rain barrel and went around behind one of the outbuildings and stripped down. The water was cool and instantly refreshing. She realized she had forgotten a towel, so after washing she stood and waited to dry. The drying was slow in the humidity, but she didn’t mind. She had dried this way on many of her camping trips deep in the forest where a towel was just something that took up space in her backpack. After dressing, she found a bridle for Cherokee. She wasn’t really sure she needed it, but Cherokee didn’t balk when she put it on. She climbed onto Cherokee’s back and decided to do a perimeter check, just in case. Honey followed along.

  The owners of the ranch had made opening the gates from horseback easy. She rode the outer fence, moving from one pasture to another, avoiding the corpses of the thoroughbreds that dotted the fields. Honey ranged out and back, chasing the occasional rabbit or following some trail. They didn’t encounter any creepers, for which Marilyn was grateful. She had no easy way to dispatch them. At last she came to a grove of sassafras in a field that had the look of being less tended than the others. She dismounted and took off Cherokee’s bridle and the horse wandered off to graze, staying fairly close, though.

  She sat down with her back against the rough bole of a large tree. Honey came and nudged at her hand, and Marilyn felt it was as much to make sure Marilyn was okay as to beg for attention. After Marilyn reassured Honey that yes, she was okay, Honey wandered off again. There had been horses in this field at some time because the ground under the trees was torn up and no grass was growing. It was slightly damp, but not muddy. The soil was sandy and the rain had soaked in. She considered trying to meditate, but decided this wasn’t really a safe location to remove her attention completely from the surroundings. Instead, she just tried to enjoy the peace, but that eluded her as well.

  Chase wanted to go to Tampa. Since she had joined them, they had avoided large cities. The small towns had been bad, the larger towns infinitely worse. She told herself she wasn’t afraid of the creepers, but she knew it wasn’t completely true. Still, it was a fear she could deal with. More than anything, she feared finding people alive. Every encounter with people had been fraught with unknown danger. At least the creepers were simply motivated and simply dealt with. But people were another thing entirely. She was only able to sit a short time before her troubled thoughts forced her to her feet and into some kind of action. Any kind of action. She clucked her tongue at Cherokee, and the horse came to her immediately. Honey looked up from what appeared to be a particularly interesting scent and came over as well.

  Marilyn put the bridle back on Cherokee and mounted, scrambling a bit to reach the horse’s back. She thought she should probably find a saddle, but riding bareback made her feel closer to the animal. She continued riding the outer fence along the side of the ranch away from the road. She wasn’t going to go there. She knew there would be creepers waiting, and her activity was likely to draw more. She made the turn at the back corner and started toward the road, planning on cutting back toward the bunkhouse when she reached the halfway point. That was when she heard the helicopter.

  She looked around and didn’t spot it. She might still have time. She kicked Cherokee into a gallop and charged across the pasture. She pulled the horse up at the gate and leaned down to open it, taking a moment to scan the sky. Honey caught up with them then. In the distance out to the east she saw the chopper, a distant speck on the horizon. She watched it for a little bit, and when it didn’t seem to move, she realized it was because it was coming toward the ranch. She wondered for a second why she felt so threatened by the approaching helicopter, but the thought didn’t clear away her sense of urgency. She left the gate open behind her and trotted Cherokee the short distance to the bunkhouse. She dismounted and ran inside. Chase and Sonya looked up at her, startled, from the small table in the kitchen where they had been head to head over the notebook. Marilyn took a breath to speak, but she didn’t have to. The sound of the helicopter was now very audible through the open door behind her.

  Chapter 15 – Sonya

  In the stifling heat of her Dad’s truck, Sonya had known exactly where to look. She had gone to the cabinet where he kept his gun and his notebook firs
t. She had paused for a second before opening it, though, and looked around the small space of the sleeper. Everything was neat and orderly as it always was. He had always been clean and had kept everything in just the right place. She had taken a deep breath, and even in the heat had smelled his aftershave, the detergent in his clothes.

  The sleeper had been another home to her, maybe even more of a home than the one back in Omaha. This was where she had been happiest, spending time with her father on the road. She almost lost the sense of urgency she had felt outside, but she knew she had to move quickly. Getting to the truck had put Chase and Marilyn in danger, and the longer they stayed, the more dangerous it became. She opened the cabinet and found the notebook. Tucked under it and partially hidden was his pistol. That concerned her. She wondered if he would have left without it voluntarily. She knew that technically he wasn’t supposed to have it (he had told her that he didn’t officially clear it with the state of Florida), but had felt the risk of getting caught carrying it in the truck was worth the risk of getting caught not having it if he needed it. The road, even before the creepers, had been a little dangerous.

  She flipped through the notebook, scanning her father’s neat, compact handwriting. The dates jumped out at her, and the fact that he had started each entry “Dear Sonya,” caused a lump to rise in her throat. She climbed out of the truck, she and Chase went and picked up Marilyn, and they went back to the ranch. There were problems, but Sonya hadn’t been able focus on anything except reading the notebook and finding out what had happened to her father.

  At the ranch she went directly into the bunkhouse and sat at the table to begin reading. She hadn’t gotten very far when Chase came in. “Anything helpful yet?” Chase asked. She shook her head.