by Norman Dixon
“What’s got ya in a tizzy? The Lord finally catch up with ya?” Ol’ Randy said.
“No, your little Devil’s about to come to justice. Get up!" Pastor Craven prodded Ol’ Randy in the ribs with the tip of his crutch. “Get up!" Sweat ran nervously from the Pastor’s red temples, his whole face looked sun burnt, bordering on purple, and not at all healthy.
“I do believe you’re ‘bout to stroke out, Pastor. I ain’t goin’ nowhere until you tell me what in the hell is goin’ on.”
Pastor Craven lashed out with the crutch.
Ol’ Randy was alert, but his body was on the verge of becoming dust internally. He only thought of blocking the Pastor’s blow, the crutch catching his jaw with a hollow knock. The pain rippled through his body. He tasted blood, rich and metallic on his tongue.
“Get up!" Pastor Craven leaned the crutch against his hip. He quickly slipped the Good Book behind his belt at the small of his back. He then drew his revolver from its holster. “This here good old American steel,” he drew the hammer, “says you gettin’ up.”
“Lord knows you won’t kill me. You’re a coward!”
The Pastor cocked an ear to the rattle of gunfire and the wail of the Creepers. “You don’t get up you’ll be responsible for killin’ us Randy. That spawn of Satan is at our door with an army of the dead. And he’s here for you.”
“Bobby. . . ."
“GET UP! I won’t kill you, you got that right,” the Pastor laughed, “but if you don’t get up, and those things break our walls I won’t have to.”
Ol’ Randy came forward, using the movement to slip the rock into his pocket. Now wasn’t the time to strike. He braced himself with his hands, the pain in his joints unbearable, and dragged his knee forward. The dirt floor sloshed beneath him, as if he was afloat on rocky seas. Why, Yannek, why did you bring him back, he thought, angrily.
“That’s right,” he nudged Ol’ Randy’s back, “crawl . . . crawl to meet the scourge you set upon God’s earth.”
* * * * *
Ted didn’t feel too good. His skin boiled. The food he’d been given lacked flavor. He watched remorsefully as the other boys gobbled up their rations. They were told to keep strong, to keep fighting, God willed it, and so they did, well past sundown. Even Ted. His sock stuck to his foot, but he couldn’t feel it. All he knew was a terrifying coldness that worked its way over every inch of him, starting in the bloody bite on his calf. For awhile the severed veins and ripped tendons hurt, but no longer.
The stale bread fell from his gaping mouth, crumbs peppered his pale chin, and suddenly he wasn’t Ted anymore. Everything stopped.
In the thick brush beyond the fence, in the mind of a boy, a new monitor flickered in the darkness.
* * * * *
Pathos One had unknowingly relied on outside forces for revenge, he found it funny, now, that he had become the outside force in someone else’s quest for revenge. He highly doubted he’d have made it this far, almost twenty years, without the intervention of those men, those men that, not only saved him, but brought his wife’s murderers to justice. Now, it was his turn to spin the karmic wheel, to do what was right, he gulped, and climbed out the window.
Flashes of gunfire popped on the rooftops and around the gate, but most of the Settlement was blanketed in darkness. Some of the Folks had set fires in large oil drums, the orange flames mere sparks, on this night. They were diverting power to the bank vault to help facilitate the survival of the women and children.
Pathos One stayed well within the darkness, hiding behind building after building. Bobby hadn’t told him exactly what to look for, but only, he’d know it when it happened. And when it happened, he had to open the gate. He only hoped Bobby would be strong enough to control the horde, and his emotions.
Pathos One hurried into the fray, firing above the Creepers for effect. In the darkness, in the blue coveralls, he’d become one of them, a tool in the next stage of history. He waited for Bobby’s signal.
* * * * *
Bobby weaved his way into the dense pack of Creepers pressing against the fence. The Folks continued to nip away at his troops, but in the dark, without the aid of the thermal scope, the headshots were few and far between. He pressed his body against an oily patch of asphalt, balling himself up against what was left of an old Ford pickup. All around him rotting bodies jammed together, flies buzzed unmercifully, but he had long since grown used to the stench.
He continued the main army’s press against the fence, using the silenced Creepers at the front as a shield of dead flesh for those behind it. To his left and right, he ordered the others to remain low. Bobby worked every remaining ounce of will into Ted’s rigor infested body.
In his mind he grabbed hold of a solitary monitor, Ted’s monitor, and pulled it close, until, he saw only what those recently dead eyes saw. He had to fight to keep the boy’s body from being obvious; it was a chore just to keep the gun in his hand. He knew there would be no way to lift it further, let alone fire it. He shuffled to the edge of the boys’ little circle away from the fire.
“Hey, where ya’ goin’, Ted?” one of the boys asked.
Bobby went rigid and Ted all too easily obeyed. Without thinking he said, “Fight." Ted’s clenched jaw opened, swollen tongue clicking against dry cheek, and the word rolled out in a low drawl. The word known to the living brain and body for years, forgotten now, in the hours since first death.
“You should rest,” the boy said, approaching Ted.
Bobby thought of turning, of shrinking away, and of the fence. Ted’s hijacked body obeyed and he swerved towards the fight saying, “They won’t." But the words came out a sloppy mess, though, the boys seemed not to notice. They slogged their weary bodies up, restocked ammo, and shuffled themselves back into the fight.
The moment their guns rocked the night’s sky Bobby maneuvered Ted away, and further away, until he was all alone at the back of the battlefield. How easily, he thought, he’d be able to tear the throat out of any one of them. All those fighting boys alive and well while his brothers rotted away. How easily he’d be able to return the torment, to kill them all. He needed to provide Pathos One with a distraction.
Bobby urged Ted’s gangly body forward. He let the gun fall from those stiff fingers. He raised those arms, so terribly pale. He worked the jaw open. He fell upon the back of a boy his age, ripping and biting. Before the boy could scream it was too late and Bobby stumbled to the next, sinking Ted’s teeth into a thin, exposed neck.
“Creepers on the yard!” the first victim screamed.
Another boy fell as Bobby thought of ripping out his throat. Through Ted’s blood-filled mouth he whispered the names of his brothers. The boys did not react with bravery or well thought out, measured, actions. With the threat right next to them now, they reacted like all little boys; their morale fell apart and they cried, they called for their parents, they fell into chaos.
Bobby felt the bullets rip through Ted’s body, but they could not stop him now. They could not silence him like they did his brothers. Already new monitors flickered on. Bobby picked his transmission points well. The deeper and mortal bites, when applied to the vast network of veins in the neck, so close to the brain, well, the quicker the Fection spread.
The boys scattered in every direction, some fell to the ground in tears, making themselves easy targets. As more monitors flicked on Bobby thought of cover, of closing in on the buildings. He was trying to cut off angles of fire and at the same time provide Pathos One with enough time to open the gate. He moved Ted’s bo—
He was back outside the fence. The .50CAL roared, switching his monitors off with rapid efficiency.
* * * * *
The sound of the rifle was like nothing he’d ever heard before, and when the undead boy’s face became vapor, Pathos One didn’t hesitate. He ran straight into the panicked mess, weaving past Creepers and frightened boys like they were nothing more than slalom flags. Men were jumping from the rooftops to save their
frightened sons. The tide of battle had shifted, and Pathos One pushed the envelope even further.
He opened the gate.
Undead hands pulled and pried at the gap, stuffing the space with bullet-shredded, rotting meat, and the gap became a funnel. The Creepers began to pour into the Settlement.
Pathos One turned his weapon on the tower and opened fire.
* * * * *
Hell.
God’s bountiful land, God’s safe land, had in the span of mere moments, become Hell. An inferno, where wailing souls cried with arms raised towards Heaven. The gate, His most precious gate, protecting them from the horrors of the outside world, was no more. Throngs of the unclean, undead filth poured in.
“You have forsaken us all!” Pastor Craven moaned. He pressed the barrel of his revolver against Ol’ Randy’s head. “A man, that at one time, I called friend and brother. You have forsaken your kin for that filth!”
The army of Creepers, lighted by the barrel fires, ragged shadows cast on the cave walls of frightened primitives, washed into the Settlement, a crashing wave of locusts.
Pastor Craven pressed the iron sight of the revolver into the leathery fold of Ol’ Randy’s neck. “You tempt me, Satan. O’ how you tempt me, but the Lord has cast me in his image, and therefore I am strong. I will not relinquish. I am steadfast. I am,” he clouted Ol’ Randy, “pure.”
“You are a coward,” Ol’ Randy said over his shoulder. He gripped the rock, as if somehow it would help him keep his mind steady. But the world was something else. It wasn’t ending again, but changing somehow, changing into something he knew he could never be a part of. “You talk of God, but you know nothing of the Good Lord.”
Pastor Craven’s finger trembled on the trigger. “I beg to differ.”
The Creepers rolled up the muddy lane, surrounding Ol’ Randy and Pastor Craven.
* * * * *
Cale traced the man in white with the infrared scope. The featureless face darted behind the milky gray Creepers. Who had turned on them? Why? It was too late to speculate now. The whole of his life was about to buried and forgotten like the majority of the human race.
Devoured. Assimilated into the ever growing undead landscape.
No, Cale thought, as he emptied the clip of the .50CAL. He grabbed another from the bench at his side. The barrel sizzled hot, orange, making his eye twitch as he tried to focus in on the bright white target.
* * * * *
Bobby watched through the eyes of a dead football player, broken helmet, shoulder pads and all, as Pathos One played a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the rifleman in the tower. Every time Bobby tried to pinpoint the shooter’s location, he was ripped back to his refuge behind his army. He lost track of Pathos One amid the mass of bodies.
Panic set in. Sporadic small arms fire buzzed the air above the hijacked football player. Bobby flinched, nearly lost control of the entire army. The sheer enormity of controlling them all, seeing through some, attacking with others, had him scrambling to maintain his control of the situation. The rooftop force had abandoned their posts. Most of the men had formed up around the fields. They were in full retreat, heading for the safety of the bank. They didn’t even bother to fire over their backs.
Cowards, Bobby thought, as the rifleman obliterated the Creeper’s skull. Back behind the car, Bobby began to move. His limbs were numb and his joints ached. He checked his rifle, added two shells, and racked the bolt.
The .50CAL boomed again.
Bobby sent the last of his army, his final wall of protection, forward. He zeroed in on the faint outline of the tower’s roof, everything else was pitch black . . . and then he saw it. The blazing barrel of the massive rifle glowed like a cattle brand. Bobby settled on the grainy hood of an abandoned car.
Another three monitors winked out. The barrel blazed, molten, a meteor streaking through the night’s sky.
Bobby aimed slightly above, and to the left, hoping the shooter was a righty, had to be a righty, Paul was the only lefty on the Settlement, he reminded himself. He fired. Without stopping, he racked the bolt and charged ahead with his army. His position clearly given away, he had no choice left, but to go all in.
Full circle. He entered the Settlement for the last time. The ghosts of his brothers’ lingered somewhere in the dark. His army howled, and he screamed in rage, in pain, in loss, and in vengeance. But he stopped mid-stride. His harrowing cheer settled in a whimper.
There, in the middle of the road, was the only man he could ever call father, with a gun to his head.
* * * * *
The world was afire, a white hot conflagration of pain that spun in sharp circles. Cale stumbled back, hammering the wind from his lungs as he collided with the tower’s wall. The .50CAL clattered to the floor. His teeth swam in the hot, bloody froth. His jaw had become a puzzle, the pieces of which, leaked out through the ragged hole on the right side of his face. He pressed his hand onto the wound, felt the roof of his mouth and the top of his tongue.
The fact that he could feel them, recognize them, meant that he was not dead yet. There was still a battle left to fight. He crawled to the rifle and hefted it on to the rail.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” an unfamiliar voice warned from the ladder.
There was a loud bang, and then the world went dark.
* * * * *
“Look at the them!” Pastor Craven screamed. “Look at them, Randal! They are the death of our world, a sleight against the Almighty! Look at th—”
“Look at me!” Bobby cried. He bade the Creepers part as he approached. They obeyed, receding away from him like the tide. They rocked back and forth, awaiting his next command, swaying in his thrall.
Pastor Craven laughed. “And so the spawn of Satan returns to us. You will have much to answer for, boy. No doubt, your brothers are already answerin’ for it in Hell.”
“Shut up!" Bobby trembled in anger. The reason for so much of his pain and loss stood poised to take another from his life. Years worth of torment rippled out of him, causing the Creepers to moan a deep lament that, like a funeral song, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, the long drawn out sigh of a forgotten god.
“Let him go,” Bobby demanded.
“No,” Pastor Craven said. “I speak for the Almighty, and the Almighty says you are not of his loins. You are an abomination. You need to wiped clean of our earth, His earth . . . like your brothers.”
“Bobby, go live the life you deserve,” Ol’ Randy coughed, “and let an ol’ man like me die. Lord’s callin’ me home now. I can hear—”
“He ain’t listenin’ to you, Randal! You’ve sinned against Him! Look what you’ve done, but there’s still a chance for forgiveness, a chance to save your soul! Repent . . . cast this demon aside." Pastor Craven’s neck tightened as he spoke the words. Even surrounded by certain death he was determined to deliver his finest performance.
“I won’t do such a thing, Pastor, no sir. Lord knows you’re wrong and Lord knows I love this boy like my own . . . as I loved his brothers. I should’a let ’em go from this place sooner . . . away from your hate.”
“No, you saved us, prepared us.”
“I failed you, Bobby, but not this time." Ol’ Randy swung his arm back and around, rolling the rock towards the Pastor’s elbow. It crashed against the brittle bone with a snap, but the Pastor’s grip was strong, and even as his arm broke, he fired.
Ol’ Randy, half in a spin, caught the bullet in the side of his neck. He felt the streak of fire as it ripped through his insides. He dropped to the ground.
Bobby fired the moment he saw Ol’ Randy make his move, but even he had been too late. His shot took the Pastor low in his belly, and the hateful man lay curled in a ball, moaning, just behind Ol’ Randy’s crumpled form.
Bobby dropped his rifle and ran to all he had left.
“Did ya’ get ’im?” Ol’ Randy gasped. His face was so pale it was nearly translucent. In the dark he looked like a ghost, an
apparition of the father he should’ve been.
“I got him,” Bobby said. He cradled Ol’ Randy’s head in his lap. The boy in him cried and shook terribly, but he could bury those emotion no longer. He wiped the blood from Ol’ Randy’s mouth with his sleeve. “I got him, sir. Got him, good. Let me dress the wound. I’ll fix you up in no time, sir.”
“No, Bobby, too late for that. Lord’s been houndin’ me to come home for months now. I think I done pissed him off good’nuff. . . .” he coughed hard, the blood matting his yellow-gray beard.
“Don’t leave me! Don’t go!” Bobby cried.
“Make me proud, son. Get away from here . . . fix the world . . . save it . . . save us all." Ol’ Randy looked up into Bobby’s eyes and said no more. The life left him, passing like a quite breeze, onward and outward.
Bobby squeezed tightly, rocking back and forth.
“Get away from me!”
The shout tore him from his mourning. Behind him, splayed out on his back, was Pastor Craven, a dark bloody hole in his abdomen. The Creepers were closing in around him as Bobby’s sorrow broke his hold on them.
Bobby closed Ol’ Randy’s eyelids and whispered, “I love you, dad." He set the man’s head down, gently, and retrieved his rifle.
With a measure of calm he ordered the Creepers to pick the Pastor up. Their putrescent fingers and hands obeyed.
“Don’t let ’em get me! Kill me!”
Bobby stood before the man that took everything from him. “You don’t deserve it.”
“Have mercy!”
“Like you had on my brothers?" Bobby drew more Creepers in around them. He put his face in the Pastor’s. “We will always be monsters in your eyes, always were, no mercy was ever given to us, and in turn none will be given to you.”