The Creepers (Book 1)

by Norman Dixon

  We are to catalogue any truly dead we encounter. If names can be captured they will be added to the list. If not they will be recorded as numbers. I would rather not fall into the habits of old, but if we are to make a future for humanity we must know how many we have left.

  In closing . . . should you be reading this now over my dead body, hopefully not reanimated, then I implore you to continue the task. And if I walk in perpetual undeath, then by all means kill me quickly and continue on.

  Pathos I – Traveling Historian of the Dead

  January 1st, 2020

  Pathos I – Journal Entry [00022]

  January 25th, 2020

  North Arlington, New Jersey

  The majority of this little town is dominated by a graveyard. I am camped on top of an old mausoleum for the night. I hope the few parts of the roof that are still intact will hold my weight. It is savagely cold tonight. I smell snow on the wind. I found the corpse of a barber, scissors still in hand, but little else. I can hear loud banging and moaning coming from the structure on the far end of the graveyard. At first light I will investigate. Not even a month into this mission and already I have found far too many instances of trapped undead. It would seem, even when faced with the grim reality of what their loved ones had become, a greater portion of humanity was unable to pull the trigger. I fear for us. We’ve grown too soft. Note: have to consider alternate means of file storage as the list is growing long.

  Pathos I – Traveling Historian of the Dead

  January 25th, 2020

  The passages continued in this manner. Bobby began to jump bigger gaps in time, but always, Pathos’s entries were shockingly similar. The grim reality of a dead world typed out over years, over miles, spanning almost the entire width of the country. What kind of future was the man hoping to create? How could anything emerge from all that death.

  Bobby wondered how the others fared. Five in all from what he read, but where were they now? The entries spoke of them setting out in different directions: North, South, East, West, and one set sail along the East Coast. Bobby imagined them much like the explorers he had learned about on the Settlement. Brave dreamers setting out to discover the country all over again.

  Bobby sent the text flying upwards. He lifted his thumb off the pad as he came to the list of the dead. Neither a victim, nor an enemy was missed. Pathos One was a diligent student of all things dead and undead. And there, just above the soldiers and savages was one name that drove into Bobby’s chest with a cold fist.

  Yannek (Ecky).

  Before the tears could begin to form three gunshots cracked the air.

  “You don’t git out here, Bobby boy, I’ma blow this man’s brains out. C’mon out hu-ere now, right now!”

  Bobby instinctively dropped low, crouching along the moldy floor he chambered a round. From this angle he couldn’t get a bead on Jackson. How had he managed to get out of the rope? It didn’t matter, he had to act, he couldn’t afford another innocent corpse on his conscious.

  “You let him go, Jackson Crannen, he has no part in this!” Bobby’s voice cracked. He tried hard to speak beyond his years but he was still a boy, but a boy that could pop a skull like a watermelon at a thousand yards.

  “Oh he’s got a part awwlright, we all got a part in God’s design . . . ‘cept you, you ain’t even human. Now git yer ass out hu-ere!”

  Bobby searched, trying to pinpoint Jackson’s location. He wasn’t even sure if Pathos One was still alive. He had yet to hear the man speak. But Jackson’s words already had him formulating a plan. He just needed a little more time.

  “How do I know he’s alive? I heard three shots." Bobby opened his mind, opened the pathway to the Creepers forming a holding pattern a couple hundred yards around them in every direction. Most of them were old, nothing more than bones and scraps of flesh, mummified organs, First War Grade-A meat, but a few, a few were newly made, perhaps less than year. Bobby directed the signal, projecting what he had in mind in their direction. He looped the thought, the plan, Jackson’s image, and what his imagination wanted to happen, in great detail, and then he thought it again.

  “You don’t git out hu-ere gonna’ be a fouw’th shot . . . in say this thinkin’ man’s kneecap. How’s that for a wound in these times? I’d say I know a doctor, but—BOBBY BOY, here kilt’er. Shot her dead . . . bullet right in her heart, God rest her soul.”

  The Creepers were locked in and beginning to move, but their limbs could only carry them so fast. The trees would provide cover, which in turn would buy Bobby some time, however, if Jackson caught sight of them early enough, they’d be down and out before they could prove useful to Bobby’s cause.

  Bobby slowly stood up. The weeded parking lot in front of the diner was empty. The mound of scrub and wild flower that used to be a gas station was equally void of Jackson’s presence. All along the highway Bobby searched the likely hiding spots: in between rusted cars, copses, and around a large mottled gray boulder. But if Jackson was in any of those spots he was well hidden.

  “C’mon now, BOBBY BOY!”

  He cringed at the sound of his name on Jackson Crannen’s ragged lips. How many times had he suffered beatings, humiliations, nights of terror to that dreadful call? How many times had he been told such punishments were God’s will? Too many, he decided long ago. He’d always promised himself that he’d get back at them, set them straight. But he had to be smart.

  Bobby stepped out of the diner without a sound. He held his rifle ready. This was no simpleton he was dealing with. Jackson Crannen had survived the First War as a boy. He helped a small colony stay alive through years of harsh winters that turned him into a cold hearted man. He was but a wraith of the man his father had been, but for all his cruelty he was a staunch survivor above all else.

  “I’m out,” Bobby shouted. He felt the Creepers closer, but he still didn’t have a location in which to direct them.

  “Come round the east side, and come slow. Don’t go hiding your rifle neither. I want it up high, high as your lil’shit arms can hold it. You drop it even an inch. I kill Hamburger Helper.”

  “RUN,BOBBY!” Pathos One shouted.

  “Shut yer mouth!”

  Bobby heard the crunch of stock on jaw. Pathos’s shout was well timed though, and it allowed Bobby to gauge their location. He aimed his undead missiles towards the rear of the dilapidated diner. He eased his way along the rusted side panels that had once beamed a brilliant silver, beckoning to hungry travelers on the lonely highway. As Bobby reached the corner of the diner he calibrated with the Creepers. His mind was steel wool ignited with a set of jumper cables and a battery. Sparks of images, feelings, memories all singed and zapped along the many pathways of his mind. But over the weeks he had learned to funnel them, to understand them, and now he exploited their potential. He turned the enemies he’d been taught to hate into allies, into reliable weapons.

  They were just behind Jackson. Bobby didn’t have a clear view. One of the Creepers lost the gift of sight long ago. All that dwelled in that mind now were glimmers of the past and the hunger. But the other one still had a useful orb, slightly blurry, however, functional. He opened the pathway wider.

  Jackson stood at the top of an embankment, assault rifle darting back and forth, searching for a target. Pathos One lay in a hooded-heap near his feet. The rope was still tied around Jackson's waist. Bobby had his opening.

  “I’m coming around! How do I know you won’t shoot me dead?" Bobby directed the one-eyed assassin to the rope, urging slowness in his thoughts.

  The rifle felt heavy as the world in his small hands. He could hardly lift it. An act he’d performed without thought, without fail countless times before. But never had he attempted a shot while being in a hundred places at once. Signals bounced from the undead moat that surrounded the area, from his personal thoughts, from the clumsy, yet quiet movements of his blind, and one-eyed friends. He also had to snap a shot at a target he was seeing from the opposite angle from which he’d
be shooting.

  The perspective, or rather the very idea of perspective blossoming in his mind, made him dizzy. The world teeter-tottering on the edge of oblivion in the split second of his rounding the corner of the diner.

  Undead hands grasped the rope.

  Speak.

  Creepers moan.

  Jackson’s bearded chin.

  Tugging harder, slipping, falling, stupid dead things.

  Jackson’s face in profile, turning now, assault rifle rising to meet this new enemy.

  As Bobby came around the corner he viewed his target from two different directions, through different eyes, but when the adrenaline took over he stopped all unnecessary thoughts. The crosshair slipped over Jackson’s chest, down his arm, to his hand.

  Bobby fired.

  CHAPTER 26

  The round entered Jackson’s wrist, ricocheted at a ninety degree angle off the grip of Pathos’s weapon, and took three fingers with it. He dropped the AK47, clutching at his destroyed hand as the bloody flesh, bone, and sinew dangled uselessly from his forearm. A second later the two Creepers managed to get a steady hold on the rope around his waist, but where they lacked muscle they had mass. The sheer weight of them leaning back at Bobby’s command toppled Jackson Crannen to the ground.

  It was then, facing the great nightmare of his lifetime, that Jackson truly screamed. The Creepers dragged him down the dew-covered slope.

  Bobby found it hard to mentally fight his way through the wall of hunger that dominated the Creepers’ every cell. He found it strange work, like having dipped his fingers into syrup for the first time, springy, sticky, resisting, but then he was through, plunged into that hollow world that longed only to be full.

  He urged his thoughts to grow, to occupy that vast empty space with the intention of crossing the gulf and keeping the Creepers from eating Jackson. The last thing he needed was a dead offering.

  Their dead, single-minded drive resisted his intrusion at first, and they had him wishing for better newly dead minds like the man trapped in Baylor’s beast, something . . . no, he corrected himself, someone he could communicate with. But he had not found such an example since he silenced that voice on the train. Had it been a figment of his imagination, a construct of a troubled teenage mind? He knew better, that lonely voice was far too real to be faked.

  Bobby reached the other side, bridged the gap, and stopped them just in time. He stood over Pathos One’s limp, but breathing form, aiming down into the gully.

  “I wouldn’t move if I were you,” Bobby said.

  “Shoot ’em . . . fuckin’ shoot ’em. No matter what I done—I don’t deserve this!” Jackson replied frantically.

  The Creepers wavered as if unsure of their limbs like newborns trying to move beyond the crawl. The wet rotting refuse of their disease ridden mouths clicked and moaned. A squadron of fat, greasy flies buzzed maddeningly above them like anti-halos. Other winged and many-limbed chitinous things crawled and chewed on their weathered hides. Under Bobby’s command they loomed over Jackson like tidal waves tall enough to block out the sun, a child’s nightmare villain clutching something sharp and wicked, the embodiment of fear. So dominating was their presence that Jackson seemed to forget about his shattered limb. His body shook, twitched, and his face screwed up in a terrified grimace.

  “They won’t,” Bobby reassured.

  “Is you crazy? They shit spawn, Creeper fuckin’ scum, they are our downfall, the Devil’s work,” Jackson spat.

  “They won’t. Because I won’t let them.”

  “Yer’bout a whole fuckin’ bird short of being a buzzard.”

  Bobby didn’t know what that meant. He wanted to scare Jackson into understanding, but he had to be careful. Jackson wasn’t built like him. He was immune to the Creepers’ Fection, he couldn’t risk an errant drop in such an open wound. So he directed the Creepers to grab Jackson’s feet.

  They obeyed.

  Jackson screamed, kicking at their grasping hands, but the wound prevented him from putting anything substantial behind his strikes. The undead hands pulled him towards the wooded area beyond.

  “No! NO! LORD HAVE MERCY!” Jackson cried. He began to stumble his way through a teary-eyed rendition of the Lord’s prayer.

  “They’re going to eat you, Jackson Crannen, going to eat you up. They’ll start with your toes,” Bobby promised. He ordered the Creepers to rip off Jackson’s boots. They obliged.

  “Kill ’em, Bobby, kill ’em please. I swear I’m sorry for all I done. So sorry,” Jackson pleaded.

  Bobby thought of the snapping jaws of wild dogs. Clack-clack-clack like automatic weapons fire, snarl-filled, and the Creepers did their best rendition of that mental image. Jackson seemed to shrink inside himself. Which, at first glance, didn’t seem possible to Bobby, but somehow the man looked smaller. Bobby made the Creepers shake the man to rattle him further. The countless repetitions of the word sorry meant nothing to him. This man, along with a great many of the other Folks, put him and his brothers through hell. If he didn’t need Jackson’s warm body he’d have let the pair have their fill and then some.

  “Just like you told me once, Jackson. Remember when I hit that ball over the fence?" Bobby crouched at the top of the gully, slapped Pathos One, stirring the man, then leered down at Jackson’s upturned face. At the same time he viewed the bulging jugular through that slimy, solitary eye. “Remember when me and my brothers won that game against the natives? We were always reminded that we were outsiders once your parents died . . . do you remember Jackson?”

  “What? What’re you talkin’bout, Bobby?” Jackson stammered. The undead leaned closer, pulled a little harder on his legs.

  “Oh you remember,” Bobby went on in a cold metallic monotone, “you told me ‘sorry for this, kid, but you had it coming’ do you remember now? When you beat me so bad I couldn’t piss right for a month? DO YOU REMEMBER NOW!”

  “No, Bobby, we taught you better’n ‘at. We took care of you. Was just growin’ up. Had it easy compared to me and Thomas.”

  Bobby almost let the Creepers rip him apart at those words. He wondered if the Russian government made a plea like that to its citizens before they irradiated them. Was that the way of the world? Do something horribly wrong and just that simple word, somehow, makes it alright, erases the act. Forgiveness. Bobby had it hammered into his head from the time he could recognize words. It was part of the Folks’ doctrine, it was the backbone of Jesus’ words, but whenever Bobby and his brothers uttered that simple word they were not given quarter. They were not forgiven.

  “You taught me how to hate,” Bobby stood, finishing, “and for that you should be truly sorry." He ordered the Creepers to drag Jackson back up the slope, taking extra care to make their progress slow. If Jackson was this terrified now, Bobby wondered if he’d survive the shock of seeing the army that lurked nearby. The thought made Bobby smile.

  Bobby stoked the smoky fire. The rains had left everything damp, but he managed to get it going nicely. The tangy scent of pine tickled his nose. Overhead, the stars blinked silently, and the moon hung, almost full, in a clear black sky. Silver and gold light scattered shadows across Bobby’s dirty face. He watched Jackson work through the throes of a heavy fever. What was left of his bandaged hand clutched to his chest. Bobby had to practically jam the few pills he’d taken from Baylor down the man’s throat.

  He’d sent the Creepers back to the protective ring but their stink lingered still on Jackson’s clothing, serving as a reminder of how long it had been since he’d washed. It wasn’t good to forego a bath, ignoring the need for cleanliness led to many unwanted maladies. He made a note to keep his eyes, and his mind, open for a clean watering hole.

  Pathos One pecked away at his keyboard, no doubt recalling the busy day, but something seemed to be bothering the man. He’d been strangely quiet since regaining consciousness.

  “Are you ever going to see them again?” Bobby asked, staring up the cosmos’ amazing display.


  “Pardon?” Pathos replied over his shoulder. The hood hid every feature except his chin.

  “The other historians.”

  “No,” he closed the laptop and put it in his bag. “At least, I don’t think so, not all of them anyway." He removed his hood to scratch at his scalp. Whenever he did this it made Bobby do the same, like seeing a spider or gnat, itchiness by proxy.

  A knot burst within the fire, casting embers upwards to join the stars momentarily before fading to ash at Bobby’s feet.

  “How do you think a retail worker, who never sailed a day in his life, is faring now, traveling down the coast?”

  Bobby didn’t know what a retail worker was but he said, “I’d like to think he’s doing just fine. You made it, didn’t you?”

  Pathos One laughed, “I did—it’s good to be optimistic, Bobby. Sometimes, I forget about it entirely. We are supposed to meet when the world is stable, back in New Jersey, but the world hasn’t settled down just yet. She’s still working through her issues. I don’t think all of us will make it . . . statistics really, the odds are not in our favor, but maybe,” Pathos One looked at Bobby and said, “maybe you can change all of that.”

  Bobby followed the trail of a falling star with his finger as more streaks of orange joined in the fall.

  “And so the universe cleanses itself of another manmade object. Wonder what kind of satellite that was,” Pathos One asked no one in particular. “Radio station, defense, who knows, a shame, all that knowledge lost. What will we create when we crawl out of the slop this time?”