After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation

by Brett D. Houser

  Marilyn went to check on the horses, but she didn’t have to go far. When she walked out into the field and whistled, Cherokee came across the pasture with the other horses following. After petting and reassuring them, she came back to where Sonya and Chase watched. “Anybody up for a walk? I want to see the house.”

  At the house they found board games. There was Monopoly on a board that Chase thought was at least twice as old as they were. There was Parcheesi, too. He had never played it, nor had Sonya, but Marilyn showed them how. When they grew tired of board games, they explored the outbuildings, looking into a storage shed Chase had missed the first time through. There were trunks of old clothes, and even though it felt a little invasive, they dressed up in them and had a formal lunch. After changing back they returned to the abandoned farmhouse but not before searching for and finding all the ingredients for s’mores. He had looked again at the pictures of the grandkids and wondered what it had been like to have grandparents like those who had lived here. He didn’t know his mom’s parents. When she had married his father, she had broken off contact with them. He had always had the feeling she was ashamed of them. She had never said anything, but he was pretty sure she had grown up poor. His father’s parents were still alive, but they had been cold, almost indifferent to him. They had given him cash in a card for every birthday, but that was about it. He had never thought about it before, but there were no pictures of him in their house.

  Marilyn and Honey disappeared into the nearby trees to prepare for the night. Chase, who hadn’t slept well or long enough the night before, took a nap. When he woke, he found that Sonya had been gathering flowers and had surrounded him with them. He didn’t think she considered the funereal aspect of what she had done, but he couldn’t help but see it. He said nothing about it, though.

  As night approached, he gathered wood and set up a fire in the middle of the barnyard. A lot of the wood was still wet from the previous night’s rain, but he found some dry old boards in one of the outbuildings that would probably be able to get it started. It would smoke a lot, but that was kind of the point. Before it became fully dark, he gathered some bundled newspapers from the abandoned house to start the fire. As he wadded them and placed them in the base of the stack of wood, he took the time to read the headlines and the dates. The papers were old, almost historically old. He only recognized a few names and events. Most of them had probably been pretty important at the time, but now they meant nothing. When he had placed the last crumpled ball, he struck a match and put it to one of the yellowed pages. The smoke began to rise.

  Part Three: Ideas So Wrong

  There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

  -George Orwell

  Chapter 20 – Marilyn

  The fire was larger than she would have built for herself while camping, and entirely unnecessary, but also right. She had been to many bonfires with church groups growing up, and this reminded her of those. Not of camping. Not of the few hurried fires they had built on the road. Marilyn tried not to think of the dead likely gathering at the gate. The creepers would not be their problem. She tried not to think of the Collectors who surely must see this mass of smoke against the darkening evening sky if not the light of the fire itself. Instead, she concentrated on perfectly browning her marshmallow. The bag had been unopened, but the expiration had passed. They were still good, though, as were the graham crackers even if they were a little stale. The chocolate had stayed good. Marilyn wondered how long before everything good from before the sickness was gone. Then they’d have to go back to the old ways and learn to do without a lot of luxuries.

  Sonya and Chase seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was something about their good mood that was a little brittle, maybe a little forced, but there was something genuine there, too. Marilyn was glad. In another setting, in another place, they would have time to work on this. But not here, not now. She pulled her marshmallow back from the fire, inspected it, and decided it was done enough. She placed a piece of chocolate on a graham cracker and, using the graham crackers as clamps, pulled the marshmallow from the stick. She bit, and it was delicious. Honey watched her closely, but Marilyn told her s’mores were just for people.

  “Do you think they’ll come tonight?” Marilyn asked Chase after chewing and swallowing.

  A look of annoyance crossed Chase’s face, but then he seemed to become resigned. He sighed. “I don’t know. They might. It would make sense if they did. They would know we’re here. If they wait until morning, we might skip out.”

  “So Honey and I should leave pretty soon, right?” Marilyn asked.

  “Probably,” Chase answered. “If they don’t come, stay away. They’ll be here in the morning if not tonight. Then follow us as best you can. Stay out of sight.”

  “I won’t be able to keep up, you know.”

  “I know. But I have faith in you. Get a good idea of direction. I’ll try to leave you some clues if I can. Eventually you’ll be able to track down their base by watching their activity. Then wait. I’m not sure for what. Wait as long as you want. If you get tired of waiting, leave. No rescue missions. I’ll have to make something happen from the inside, and I’m pretty sure I can do it.”

  Sonya stood and walked to Marilyn, sat down beside her and put her arm around her. “You can leave now if you want. Back to the camp. Chase and I have no idea what our next few days will be like, but we know what yours will probably be like. It’s going to suck being out here alone.”

  “I won’t leave, and I don’t mind,” Marilyn said slowly. “I can stay away from the creepers. Honey will help me with that. I can probably dodge the Collectors, too. Being alone and quiet is what I’m pretty good at. But not waiting. That will be almost the worst part. The worst part will be not knowing what’s going on with you.”

  They sat and talked a bit longer. No one roasted any more marshmallows. Chase threw more wood on the fire from time to time, and the wet wood hissed and smoked until it dried enough to burn. At last Marilyn rose. “I’m going to get my gear together. Enjoy the fire,” she said. She hoped the last sounded sincere, but she was afraid it sounded petulant. Sonya stood with her, and Marilyn could see the tears in Sonya’s eyes. She hugged Marilyn. Chase stood and did the same. At last she pushed them away. She turned and walked toward the house. The barnyard was lit well enough by the fire that she didn’t need a light. Before entering through the kitchen, she looked back. Sonya and Chase were sitting next to each other by the fire, their heads down. She had misgivings about his plan. Lots of them. But she didn’t have a better one, and she just had to trust. Trust in Chase, trust in herself, and trust in God.

  The Collectors came just after dawn. The night in the brush hadn’t been too bad. The day before she had found a large cedar tree with fairly large branches extending laterally. Midway up, about ten feet off the ground, she had placed boards from the abandoned farm across two branches to make a small platform, just big enough for her to lie down. Honey had lain on the ground at the base of the tree. Sleeping had been fitful. She covered her face with a cloth to keep off the mosquitos, but then she had grown hot. Still, it wasn’t much worse than other nights she had spent in the woods.

  She had heard the motors even before daybreak. They had wandered around a bit before locating the gate and the abandoned farmhouse. She had heard shouts and gunfire at the gate. A lot of gunfire. The creepers must have gathered thickly at the gate to warrant so much gunfire. Then she had heard the vehicles pull into the barnyard. Chase and Sonya must have come out at that point. She wished she could see more of what was going on. She could hear voices when the engines turned off. She thought one of them was Chase. She heard heavy footsteps on the old floorboards of the house, and what she guessed to be boots on the stairs. They were searching. She lay perfectly still. She looked down at Honey, who looked up at her. Marilyn made a down motion with her hand, and Honey sat quietly. Then Marilyn heard voices growing nearer to her position. Two
different voices. When they drew near enough, she could make out words.

  “Do you believe that story about the Subjects getting the other one?” a muffled voice asked from one side of her position.

  “Don’t see why not,” said another voice a little further away. “We know they were at the truck stop. Lot of Subjects there. And even if they’re lying, so what? The mad doctor will be glad to get even two more immunes.”

  “Been pretty slim pickings lately, that’s for sure.” Marilyn thought the voice had a strong southern accent. The other one sounded like he was from somewhere up east. Marilyn couldn’t decide if it was New York or Boston. She hadn’t heard much of either.

  “Two’s good. Let’s get outta here. I think we wasted enough time. I want to get back and get out of this suit.”

  The receding footsteps in the brush told her they were leaving. Not long afterward, the motors started and the vehicles pulled out. Marilyn climbed down from her perch and cautiously approached the barnyard, Honey leading the way and sniffing at the ground. The vehicles were gone, leaving only their deep tracks in the mud. Marilyn looked around for the horses, but the activity of the soldiers must have driven them off. It was easier this way, she told herself. She wanted to say good-bye to Cherokee, but the horse might try to follow her. That wouldn’t work. Even if Marilyn was to ride after the vehicles, she might draw too much attention on horseback. She and Honey could hide pretty easily. Hiding a horse was another story. She listened, and in the distance she could still hear the motors, receding away to the east and south. She adjusted her backpack, put her arm through the sling of her rifle, picked up the staff Chase had left behind, and started walking.

  At the end of the lane a mass of unmoving creepers covered the drive. The soldiers had not closed the gate. She did. The tire tracks lead to the east, and if she listened, she could still hear motors receding. She followed the road until she saw the first walking creeper. She put it down with Chase’s staff, but she knew eventually she would have to give up the road. The second creeper she saw was already down, but it appeared it had been struck by one of the trucks. It was trying to move, dragging itself along with one arm. Its back was broken, and the other arm dragged uselessly, broken as well. She dispatched it, although she didn’t have to. It posed no threat. She wasn’t sure if it was a form of mercy or just a matter of propriety. It probably wasn’t suffering in terms she could understand. It just seemed wrong to leave it like that.

  When she came to a crossroads, she wasn’t sure which way to proceed. The sound of diesel engines was long gone. She studied the road, looking for any kind of indication of which way to go. She at last found some clumps of mud on the road going south. That would have been her guess, anyway. She and Chase had discussed that the Collector base was probably in or near a larger town, probably the Tampa area.

  This road was larger than the one she had been on, the one that went by the abandoned farmhouse. In the distance she could see creepers dotting the landscape. They didn’t seem to have noticed her. She moved off the road and across a wide ditch to a fence paralleling the road. Just across the fence twin dirt tracks marked where the landowner had driven regularly. She carefully climbed over the rusted barbed wire and started south. Honey slipped through a gap in the fence and joined her.

  At midday they stopped to eat. She had found a sandy area with one small tree for shade where the grass was close cropped by some sort of absent livestock and there was a good line of sight to the road. She drank water, pouring a little into her cupped hand for Honey, and rested, eating a granola bar. She watched the creepers on the two-lane shuffle past, heading north. None of them seemed to have noticed her, which surprised her a bit. They seemed to be able to sense any kind of human life at a pretty good distance, to have senses beyond hearing and sight. But maybe even those senses started to go when the decay reached a certain level. And the creepers down here were getting very decayed. The heat and humidity was hard on them. She also had to believe they had been dead longer if this really was where it started.

  She finished her light meal and started walking again. As she walked, she considered how she had changed from the girl she had been walking home from camping to find everyone dead. Then she had been scared, and desperate. She had made mistakes and was lucky to be alive. She knew she was different now. How much of that difference had been from her experiences, how much had to do with being around Chase and Sonya, and how much had to do with her changing relationship with God? She didn’t know. She did know her relationship with God had changed. Before the creepers, she had believed, and He had seemed like a vague force in her life: strong, but without definition. Since everything that had happened, His presence had become more defined. She had felt Him in her decisions and choices in a different way. And she had known, despite what Chase and Sonya had said, that she was here until they were free or she was dead or captured.

  She would not leave them. She would find the base the Collectors operated from. She would lie back, she would watch, and she would wait. But not indefinitely. She would give Chase time to get them out, but if they weren’t out in a week, she would go in. This was what she was meant to do.

  She tried to follow the trucks, but gave up quickly any hope of finding their exact route. She felt her best bet was to continue south. She walked most of the afternoon, stepping steadily, Honey running ahead sometimes or trailing back but always returning to her side. Toward late afternoon, she stopped again. She again selected an open area beneath a small copse of trees. She could easily see there were no creepers near except an occasional straggler on the road in front of her, headed north and east, and Honey seemed relaxed enough. She snacked on a package of crackers and cheese, feeding a little to Honey, and drank often from her water. She knew she should get up and go, but as she rested a little longer than she intended, Honey’s ears perked up. Marilyn waited, and then she thought she heard motors again. The reactions of the creepers she could see on the road told her she was right. They had stopped. She watched as they stood motionless, and then as the sound increased, turned toward it. The sound of the motors came from the south and west. Marilyn lay on her stomach behind a tree, arm over Honey to keep her down. Her heart beat faster as the group of vehicles came to a stop almost directly in front of her.

  Chapter 21 – Sonya

  The night without Marilyn was strange for Sonya. Marilyn had always been there, and while Sonya had wanted time alone with Chase, when she actually got it, she wasn’t sure what to do. Sitting with him by the fire was great, but when Marilyn had left she had taken some of the joy with her. Her absence was a reminder of what was coming. They sat watching the flames. His hand found hers, and they sat like that for some time as the fire burned down. When she had thought about times alone with Chase, her imagination had gone all rosy with scenes of talking and laughing and kissing. Instead she got uncomfortable silence, the gloominess of a dying fire, and a feeling of something missing. She felt there was nothing to lose.

  “Chase?” she started.

  “Mmyeah?” he answered, not taking his eyes from the redly glowing coals.

  Sonya sat up and turned to face Chase. “Can you tell me what happened at the church that night now? We don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I just feel like that’s something we need to talk about. It changed you.” She watched his face. She had never seen so many different emotions cross anyone’s face in such a short time. She wasn’t sure she saw them all. There was annoyance, anger, fear, pride, and sadness all at the same time. But in the end, sadness seemed to be all that remained. He sighed deeply, and she knew he was going to talk. She was afraid.

  “In the dining hall, with everyone around, I felt strong. I was in the right, you know? And I knew that I had to protect everyone. And I knew, I just knew, that it wasn’t too late for Josh.” Chase squeezed her hand, but it wasn’t affection. He was fighting back tears, pushing the emotions down.

  She thought about Josh. He had been strange, different, but not
unlikable. He had pushed other people away. He had told her that before the plague he had been a loner, a nerd. Socially maladjusted. She understood that from personal experience. She knew that Josh had been lured in by the reverend, by Priscilla, by their strange ideas. Maybe he had felt he belonged, that he mattered to them. That was powerful stuff for people like him. For her, too. But he had picked the wrong group.

  Chase began again, his voice husky, but growing stronger. “When everyone left, when everyone followed the reverend and Priscilla out of the room, it was just me and him and that rifle pointed at me. He looked nervous, jumpy. I thought I could talk to him. But the reverend’s pull on him was strong. And he had spent a lot of time on the wall with the reverend. He was under the influence of the spores, the dust from the creepers who had gone duster in the mob outside the wall. When I looked close, I could see that his eyes were filmy, his skin paler. I told him it wasn’t too late for him, and he smiled. It was a terrible smile, more grimace than smile. And I could see his gums had gone black.” Sonya shivered, and she couldn’t help but think about the dust Chase had gathered in the house back by the ranch.

  “And then I knew it was no good. I was probably going to die right there. He was too far gone. I was sitting at that stupid cafeteria table, my legs under it, and I knew there was no way I could reach him before he got off at least one shot.” He smiled humorlessly and shook his head. “It was easy to be a hero when everyone else was in there. But when it was just me and him, I didn’t want to die. I’d like to say it was because I hoped I could come help you guys, but it really came down to just wanting not to die. So I ran. He was aiming the gun, centering it on my chest, and I just dropped off my seat and rolled. He fired then, and that’s the one that hit my arm. I was so scared and so full of adrenaline that I didn’t even really know it. I mean, it hurt, but there was just too much going on to think about it too much. I kept rolling, and I was lucky enough that I rolled through the door into the kitchen. He shot again, but I don’t think he could even see me then. I got up and ran. I didn’t run toward you guys. I’d like to say it was because I didn’t want to put you guys in danger, but I was just trying to get away from him. I went through the kitchen door and into that long hallway, and I sprinted down through there. I don’t think I’ve ever run faster. I heard him behind me, and I ducked into a door. By sheer luck it was a stairwell door. We were still on the ground floor, so I started going up. I went up two flights of stairs and I heard him coming up behind me, so I went through the stairwell door there. And then I stopped. I stood to one side of the door, trying my hardest not to breathe too heavy.” He had tightened his grip on her hand so tight that it was hurting, but she didn’t move. He was breathing heavy now, almost panting. He was reliving the moment.