by Norman Dixon
There it was again, that edge to Pathos One’s words, a hint of anger. Bobby didn’t know if it was the bruise on his eye, or something else.
“You used them again." Pathos One wrung his hands. “You did that to yourself to save me. Like back on the train. I can’t keep falling into debt with you, Bobby, I’ll never be able to repay you . . . not to mention how bad it must’ve hurt. What happened inside you to bring such a startling change about?”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore." Bobby tossed another log on the fire. “It’s getting easier." He wanted to tell Pathos One how easy but he was not yet ready to reveal the truth of his army.
“But how? How is it even possible? I’ve thought on it, and read that notebook, and thought some more, but I can’t wrap my head around it. It was my job to understand things, how we changed, are changing, what we came from, but this . . . this is beyond me. You can hear them?”
“In a way. It’s hard to explain." Bobby searched for the words. “They are waiting to be heard like a signal, drifting along, and I . . . I don’t know, pick them up? They just want to die, but something is stopping them, using them.”
“The infection." Pathos One scratched his chin. He gave off the impression of a dog with a bad case of fleas. He realized he might not make much sense to Bobby. Though the boy was well spoken, and educated to a degree, there was no telling the full extent of what the Folks taught him. They seemed a superstitious lot from what he could gather.
“Do you think? How could those tiny things do it?”
“I’m not sure, but this could be the first step on to dry land, the hand, this could be the next evolutionary leap for mankind. You, and from what I gather—if any survive still—the other children could very well be the jump.”
“Like the Fection.”
“Yes, but an anti Fection. A way for us to fight it, to understand it, and to, ultimately, survive it. Life finds a way to live . . . always. Before us, after us, some form of life will remain until the sun dies.”
“The sun can die?”
Pathos regarded the almost alien child-like pitch that invaded Bobby’s voice reservedly. “Certainly, but it’s a very long time from doing just that, a very long time, indeed. But now is not the time for a lesson,” Pathos pushed his palms toward the fire reluctantly, remembering the sting, “and I am ill-equipped at the moment. What do you plan to do?”
“I want to get Ol’ Randy back. That’s what I plan on.”
“Oh." Pathos One studied the lie painting Bobby’s face. “And what else has your brow furrowed, and those eyes of yours worried? Is it our sleepy friend over here? Or is it something else?”
Bobby squirmed, pretending to ward off a chill. He could not escape Pathos One’s deep, dark eyes. They seemed to always be wide open, watching him. The scars made them appear as if the man was about to start shouting at him. Bobby stood, slung his rifle over his shoulder and nodded back towards the gully. “Take a walk with me.”
“But what about—”
“—He won’t get far even if he does run. If he picks up a crude weapon I’ll take his other hand. Follow me.”
Pathos One was once again reminded of the duality of the boy: the killer, the child. Molded into a floppy-haired package that defied logic and reason, Bobby remained an enigma to him. Ever the professor, even in this crude, scarred package, Pathos One obliged and followed Bobby down into the gully and the darkness beyond.
“I’ve been collecting them,” Bobby said, speaking of the undead as if they were the baseball cards of his age.
Pathos One stood at the edge of the clearing. The crisp night air devoid of all clouds, and the moon, casting strange light on the hundreds of rotting bodies that waited for Bobby’s next command. The flies buzzed like active power lines, an unnerving electromagnetic frequency that set teeth on edge, caused hysteria.
Pathos One retched. He fell to his knees from the reek of them so close together in the damp warm air. He could hear them too, as they swayed beneath the moonlight, a cult of worshippers moaning in reverence to their god.
“You’ve been building an army. I thought you wanted to rescue this man not kill everything in sight.”
“They killed my brothers, shattered my life, set into motion every loss that followed." Bobby stared out, silver slices reflecting in the wetness of his eyes.
Pathos One crouched. He was unable to stand on such shaky legs. The song of the undead hung on the air like a foghorn, a warning to any that dared approach such a swelling mass.
“Bobby,” Pathos One gasped, “how can you keep track of them all?”
“Because . . . in a way I am them and they are me.”
“Can you feel them all?” Pathos One said. The awe in his voice bordering on panic.
“The ones here,” Bobby turned to face him, “yes, but the rest, no. It has limits, a range that I haven’t figured out yet. But once I’ve touched them it’s easy to keep order. Sometimes, though, their hunger hits me with an ache in my brain. I feel their cravings for flesh.”
“But why do they eat the living? It’s not like they get any beneficial properties.”
“I think it’s just instinct. Remembered rules from what they were before. The need to survive but backwards . . . if that makes sense." Bobby commanded a young woman to step towards them. A dingy purple dress like a ghost’s caress draped her badly decaying body. The rotting fingers of someone else’s hand protruded from an opening in her bloated belly. Grayish skin pushed to rupture by the contents inside. Her sockets regarded them with emptiness.
Pathos One thought her face the saddest he’d ever seen. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. She seemed scared. I think being closer to our voices has calmed her. It’s hard to tell, but when I hear her. I hear tears, weeping. But I can’t tell if it’s because of now, or if it was before. Only once did it work like talking.”
“The train,” Pathos One said as he watched the young woman sway. He could almost picture her as she had once been on a cool spring night, dancing and giggling beneath the moon, but the constant buzzing of the flies kept his mind in the now.
“Yes.” Bobby didn't feel the need to mention the roadside ditch. Ecky . . . the thoughts were too painful.
“I told them it wasn’t right. I could feel it, but that was their want. Who am I to say otherwise?”
“Staying quiet does nothing. I only wish I’d realized that when I was younger. It might have saved my brothers.”
It was strange hearing this boy refer to his younger self. Pathos One couldn’t even begin to imagine the complex inner workings of the boy’s mind. But what terrified him was what was to come. “What will you do?”
“You don’t know where I come from." Bobby sent the young woman back to the crowd. While he talked he’d acquired a roaming band of Creepers that he added to his flock. “If we even attempt to simply walk up." Bobby fixed him with a sharp gaze. He punched the meat of his palm with a slap. “Dead. You’ve seen me shoot. The guard tower Folks don’t miss often and they pack a higher caliber. Their effective range is over one thousand yards on a clear day, easy,” Bobby added.
“Do you just plan on throwing bodies at them, waste their ammo?”
“Not exactly. You don’t understand how much they have. Even adding more wouldn’t matter in the long run. They’ll have the high ground. The Folks spent many winters building that town and even more perfecting it. There is only one road in and out, but it does not run through it. Not like the towns we’ve passed through. The old Still Water Road was blocked off long before I was brought in.
“In the early days, when it was happening, people tried to get in to stay alive. The Folks turned them away and when the people, their cars lining the road, refused, the Folks opened fire. All of those rusted cars are still there. The rest of the hill surrounding the town was made impassible." Bobby hiked his shoulders up in a shrug. He turned back towards their camp.
“You have to have a plan.”
“I do.”<
br />
“And?” Pathos One questioned uneasily.
“And,” Bobby returned his unease tenfold, “I’m going to need more bodies.”
“But you said.”
“I know what I said.”
CHAPTER 27
Bobby kept the Creeper army back at the very edge of his range. Several thousand strong now, far more than he imagined, a huddled mass of decay lying in the shadow of a dead suburban hill. Skeletal structures, foreclosed tombstones, some still bearing their weatherproof vinyl siding leaned along with the army of undead. The flies hovered overhead, buzzing, feeding, breeding within their unaware hosts. Dozens of wild dogs stalked the perimeter of the throng, snatching limbs, nipping flesh and then fleeing retribution.
Bobby watched the Settlement through his binoculars. At this distance it was a mere silhouette, but he could not risk getting closer, not yet. He studied the battlefield using the knowledge bestowed upon him by the Folks. He thought of it as returning the favor. What he had planned was going to take every available particle of cognitive thought. Nothing could be wasted.
Pathos One typed furiously on his laptop. The historian of the dead was finding it increasingly hard to keep up with Bobby’s drafting abilities. Every so often the boy would say simply, ‘another, another’, never taking his eyes from the Settlement. “I wish you could communicate with the flies. I can’t think straight with all that noise.”
“They won’t be able to either.”
“And what about him?” Pathos One asked, throwing a thumb at Jackson’s sniveling form.
“He’s still breathing. He can walk. He’ll be able to deliver my message." Bobby tightened the pen of Creepers around Jackson. Every second of terror the man felt was a second of payback for winters of torment.
“What message?”
Bobby lowered the binoculars and faced Pathos One. “I don’t expect you to get involved,” he said.
“I’ve come this far, haven’t I?” The scars of Pathos One’s brow seemed to twitch. He scratched them, chasing the itch he couldn’t quite satisfy.
Bobby rubbed a patch of grass with his boot until he had a clear spot. He grabbed a twig and began to draw. “We’re here,” he said, jabbing the twig into the end of the sguiggly line. “The Old Still Water Road." Bobby ran a rough line through the middle of the road. “That is their effective range of fire." He drew another line, this time it was a little closer to their current position. “This is, I think, the range of the fifty caliber, but it depends on who’s doing the firing.”
“What about night?”
“Same,” Bobby said confidently. “Doesn’t matter. They have infrared on the fifty. It’s one of the reasons my brothers are dead. Ecky and I were lucky. If Ol’ Randy hadn’t ran interference we’d have never made it out alive. Night won’t matter, but interference will. And that’s what I plan on doing. They’ve killed plenty of Creepers before, so have I, and so have you, but have you ever faced an army of intelligent ones?” Bobby smiled as he said this.
Pathos One shook his head. “You can’t just attack them wantonly. You said it yourself. There are women and children . . . innocents.”
“Which is why I will give them a chance,” Bobby said, pointing to Jackson. “I will send him to ask for Ol’ Randy’s release in exchange for his own.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He won’t have a say in the matter." Bobby patted his rifle. “He’ll make the long walk and I’ll be watching. If he sneezes he dies.”
“And what then? Storm the castle and rape and plunder like a barbarian?”
“No, storm the castle and get my friend back.”
“They gonna kill you good, Bobby boy, gonna shoot you dead,” Jackson said between slobbering bites of raccoon.
Bobby ignored the bait, choosing instead to focus on the three Creepers he was in the process of sending closer to the Settlement. He was practicing for the big the push, though, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He chose the three because they still retained their eyes, and through them, he watched. The lights blazed from many windows, as if issuing a challenge to the world. Many had attempted to breach those fences, both alive and undead, and all of them had failed. But where they failed, Bobby would succeed, because none of the would be invaders knew how the inside worked. Bobby knew. He knew how they’d respond to an undead threat. He remembered the daily drill, a clockwork application that allowed zero disobedience, even the Folks’ hate of the brothers stopped during the drills. Everyone paid attention.
First the children, those that could not bear arms yet, and a few caretakers would be locked within the bank vault. When the innocents were out of harm’s way the remaining fighters took up positions on the rooftops. They would then focus their lines of sight on the gates, on the Old Still Water Road, which turned into a funnel of death. Only a small remnant of the force would cover the rest of the perimeter.
The Creepers passed into Bobby’s hypothetical kill zone. He kept them single file, hiding their true number. As they approached a burned out ambulance he scattered them, made them dart between cover. The first shot rang out, a rare miss, then another, one view of the Settlement down in a headless, twitching heap. He pushed the remaining Creepers to their limit, another miss, keeping them to cover, keeping them moving. He felt their bones crack, he felt their stumbles, but they felt no pain, and crawling now, he kept them moving. The next shot ripped one in half, but it continued on shredded forearms and fingerless hands. After a few hundred feet the Creeper knew nothing but the dark beyond.
Bobby dropped the last to its swollen gray belly sloshing the colony of fresh maggots hidden within. He wormed it along the road. His efforts had it safely to the halfway point before it was iced. The fifty punching a hole through the rusted car before splattering the Creeper’s brain pan on the weedy blacktop. He lost count of how many misses before the kill shot. More than two, at least. He knew, with enough bodies, he’d be able to reach the fence, but would he be able to independently control that many? He’d been able to keep them in a group, a hive, but could he break them off into smaller groups, performing different tasks, all the while concentrating on his own set of targets?
“Tomorrow you either live or die, Jackson Crannen, by choice,” Bobby said, standing wearily in the fire light, “something my brothers didn’t get.”
* * * * *
The fucking kid was out there somewhere. Though he didn’t know where, he could feel that muzzle locked onto his back like a hungry predator watching him from just beyond the safety of the fire. Primal. Freezing ass cold. A shovel full of snow down the back of his coat collar. Downright icy. Running was out of the question. Even if he managed to somehow make the little rat miss that opening shot, and find cover . . . it wouldn’t matter. The kid would out wait him, patient as death, waiting for the opportunity to crease his skull.
Jackson Crannen trembled for the first time in his life. He’d known fear before. The back of his father’s hand, the Creepers, the unknown, Hell, all of these things stirred a fear low in his belly, but none of them felt as cold as knowing that at any second the lights could go out. Bang. Just like that. Gone. Only, he wouldn’t get to hear the crack of the shot that took him down. So he walked. He obeyed the little maggot’s order. He marched home with a great ashen bull’s-eye crudely smeared on his black jacket.
The little bastard had a plan, waiting just beyond the effective range of fire, somewhere out there, well-hidden in the brush, the kid watched his every step. Jackson walked slow, cursing his parent's names between each breath. After all, it was they who brought the destruction of his little world about. His own flesh and blood . . . one of the enemy. Trying times. Desperate times. People were capable of anything. A fifteen year old boy lay hidden in the brush with a powerful rifle ready to fire.
Halfway up the road, walking extra slow, admiring the dead with weeds growing from the holes in their skulls, how he wanted to be one with them. A silent observer. A witness. He wanted no part in what wa
s to come, but he couldn’t bring himself to run, to invite that shot he’d never get to hear. So he walked. Shoulders slumped, he walked on up the Old Still Water Road the silhouette of a coward.
Life is disagreement. There’s no way around it. You believe this and they believe that. Different ingredients in the soup bring about different results, different flavors, but in the end it all goes bad, souring on the tongue. Jackson knew bitter regret. If he ever got the chance he’d ask his parents, why?
Why did you bring them to our world?
But their answer would never let him forgive them.
It was too late for forgiveness. The Devil had him dead to rights.
People were beginning to stir along the fence. He could just make out the pale blots of their faces, the glints of their weapons. He needed to run to them. To warn them. To seek shelter and medicine for his throbbing hand. But he couldn’t run—mus’nt run now, son—walking, walking slow as can be, a death march. He felt like the overwhelmed hero captured by pirates. He was being forced to walk the plank, and no matter how tough he thought himself, no matter how much he’d seen, been through and survived, he was helpless as a little boy.
He shivered. The boy’s rifle watching him every step from somewhere behind him.
* * * * *
Pastor Craven rubbed his eyes and looked again. In the breadth of that moment he thanked the Lord and cried internally. He had to look again. He had to be sure. Yep, there was no doubt about it, none at all, Jackson Crannen had finally come home.
But where were the others and what was wrong with Jackson?
The man’s face didn’t look right to him. There were signs. Signs that had been drilled into his head. Signs he knew all too well: an open wound, pale blue lips, bloodshot eyes, yellowing skin, slow motor skills. There were signs. The Fection had not yet taken him, but, well, there were signs.
Pastor Craven crossed himself several times and ordered the worried Folks to keep the gate closed. He couldn’t risk his flock. Wouldn’t risk his flock. He found the cuticle of his left thumb, taking care to lean on his cane and good leg, he bit it off, welcoming the sting.