She had briefly lost consciousness when Sparky broke into a trot, shaking her violently. When she had become aware of her surroundings again, he had been climbing, and she could see metal rungs below her. The climbing stopped, and then she felt Sparky struggle with her dead weight briefly until she had been shifted off of his shoulder and onto a cold metal surface. Her arm flopped over as he turned her onto her back, and the impact caused the surface to ring: the sound of metal. Sparky climbed up. He jostled and turned her so that the tarp came free, then he pushed at her, none too gently, until she was in complete darkness. Before leaving, Sparky had given her one more thing to think about.
In the darkness, he had whispered. “If the Chief wasn’t here, I’d warm you up a little before I left.” She had felt his hand on her, and then he was gone. There had been the creak of a hinge, the slam of metal on metal, the click of a lock, and the gonging vibration as he had climbed back down the ladder. Distantly, the doors of the Hummer had slammed, but even before the sound of the motor had been completely out of earshot, Sonya lost consciousness. But not before the shuffling sound of creepers below her had started. When she woke again, the heat had begun,
She had awakened completely unsure where she was. She had been thirstier than she could ever remember being, and she had been sweating. Her shoulders had ached and she had felt…strange. Like she had been sick. When she had tried to reach up to feel her forehead, her knuckles had slammed painfully into something hard. She had started to roll to one side, but there was no room. She had opened her eyes. The sun had been shining from between her feet, the light crisscrossed by a grid of bars. She had looked around and realized she was in a metal pipe. Her dad called them tin-horns. The interior top of the pipe had been about two feet above her nose. By twisting her neck to an uncomfortable angle, she had been able to see the other end. That end was covered by something solid, but there were gaps around it where light showed through. A metal plate, imperfectly welded.
A sound had distracted her. Shuffling. Scrabbling. And then the smell had hit her. She knew the smell of creeper all too well. Her heart racing, she had carefully turned over. She had been able to bring her knees up beneath, her back pushing painfully into the top of the pipe. She had finished contorting, and her head had been toward the grid of bars at the end of the pipe. She had crawled until she could see out. The first thing she had looked for was Honey’s body, but she couldn’t see it. What she had seen beneath her were four creepers circling the pole, their blind eyes turned upwards, hands reaching for her. One of the creepers had been nude but so badly bloated and rotted she hadn’t been able to tell if it had once been a man or a woman. Another of the creepers was clearly a man, still neatly dressed in a surprisingly clean suit and tie. The only stains on the suit came from the fluids being discharged by its rotting body. The final two creepers made her sad. A woman and a child. The woman wore a pink dress, simple in style. Possibly homemade. The child appeared to be about ten. A boy in jeans, an Angry Birds t-shirt, and Nikes. Of course, there was no way of knowing if they were related. She hadn’t been able to help but imagine they were mother and son. The creepers had seemed to be aware of each other, however, only in the way in which they avoided colliding in their clumsy turns around the pole. Sonya had lain watching them, the panic fading. The lower part of the ladder did not extend to the ground, but stopped about ten feet up. They couldn’t reach her, couldn’t even get close. As she had calmed, she had begun to think about her situation.
Sonya had tried to stay as still as possible. Despite her efforts, something had attracted more creepers. Two more had joined the original four. She had to get out of here, but how? She went through the events of the night before in her mind. Had she heard anything that might help? Anything that would indicate what would happen to her next? When she remembered what had happened to Honey, she cried out. She searched the ground in the clearing, looking for some sign of the dog. Nothing. Wouldn’t the dog’s body still be there? No reason for the Chief to move it, and the creepers wouldn’t have been interested in a dead dog. Sonya had allowed herself a little hope for the dog, but not much for herself.
The day had crept by. When she had awakened, it had been mid-morning, judging by the light. Throughout the day, she had studied what she could see of the clearing. There were several large barrels around the base of the sign. The heat had made it hard to think, and she had been so thirsty. Nothing had made sense. A metal plate on top of the barrels was welded to the massive metal brace that support the pipe she was in and the sign. Below the plate the metal of the sign post was burned and rusted. The ground had been torn up, and at the edge of the clearing she saw what had done that: a small tractor with a bucket. In spite of the heat, in spite of the thirst, in spite of a brain that felt like it was turning into very dry cotton, Sonya had begun to put it together. The creepers were lured to the sign, the barrels exploded, creepers were wiped out, the remains were cleared.
Satisfied that she had figured out the purpose of the barrels, Sonya had studied the pipe, trying to find a way out. She had flipped again and crawled to the other end to examine the plate, the welds. When she had found a message scratched into the plate, even the heat of the day hadn’t stopped the chills: Chef sparky tracy y i servived wen everone i loved died i dont no then u killd me im not sorry who wants 2 live in this world anyways. She had realized the Chief was a bigger monster than she had suspected. She was not the first bait to be used in this trap.
By nightfall, Sonya had been delirious. Once she thought she saw Honey at the edge of the clearing, but she couldn’t be sure. What she could be sure of was the twenty or more creepers surrounding the base of the sign. She had exhausted every idea of escape. She had resigned herself to staying up on the sign until something changed, until something happened. Even in the depths of her delirium, she knew another day in the pipe, more heat, more creepers shuffling below, no water, and she would slip into unconsciousness and die. It was then she heard the motor.
Chapter 33 – Marilyn
Marilyn felt as if she were a passenger on a ride at Universal Studios (her parents had taken the family there last year), participating in an adventure that wasn’t really hers. She had felt it before. She had felt it first on the road that day she had shot her first creepers. The feeling then had passed quickly, but when Devon had asked his last favor, she had slipped into the same state and had stayed there. She told herself it was God using her in the way she was meant to be used, but even so she wasn’t sure she liked it.
The part of her that that had been a little girl who grew up in a house and went to church every Wednesday and Sunday and had an American Girls doll named Sally and yelled at her brothers when they touched her stuff was shocked and a little scared. Check that. She was a lot scared. But the part of her that was beyond caring, the part that pulled the trigger and took the shot, that part was ready for whatever came next.
They had left the barn, not speaking. Chase hadn’t asked any questions. She hadn’t offered anything. The less-travelled road to the barn was hard to find in the darkness, despite the moonlight, despite having the hi-beams on. There had been creepers coming down that road, path, but spaced out, no large groups. Chase missed them when he could; hit them when he had to. But then they had come to the main driveway. There the creepers made a steady stream. The constant sound of gunfire from the unseen valley below told her the creepers had been coming for some time. Chase was able to plow through them and out onto the highway, then across the highway and into the field surrounding the sign. The creepers were thick here, too, but had not filled the field. They seemed to be more drawn to go down into the drive. Others continued on down the blacktop. But the light from the full moon revealed quite a few in the field. Chase skirted the clearing in the Suburban, stopping on the backside, away from most of the creepers. When he stopped, Marilyn looked at him questioningly.
“We may only have one shot at this. Just do what I say when I say it, and I think it will work.” She wanted to ask him what t
o do, how he planned it, but when she saw how frightened he was, she just nodded. He started talking, nervously, machine gun quick, the words running one into another. “We’re going to try this, you and me, and we may die but I know Sonya’s in that pipe, and I know when there’s enough creepers around that sign, when there’s enough current, then there’s going to be an explosion. If we are close to the sign, then we’ll be in that explosion and I don’t know what will happen, but we’ve got to get Sonya, we’ve got to get her and get away, far away and I’d do it by myself, I swear I would but I need you and it’s going to take both of us, but if you don’t want to do it you don’t have to. I’ve got a plan. I’ve got a plan. I don’t know if it will work, but I’ve got a plan and if you’re in, then you’re in, and I don’t have time to explain I’ll tell you what you need to do when I need you to do it.” He stopped, took a deep breath, looked her in the eyes. “Are you in?” She nodded. He nodded once in return. He turned his eyes back to the windshield and sat there for just a second. “I’m crazy, you’re crazy. Let’s do this.”
Chase floored the Suburban and the tires spun on the grass of the field, finally catching enough to propel the Suburban forward through the first wave of creepers. The vehicle slammed into the small crowd surrounding the sign, rocking madly as it surged over the bodies. Marilyn thought they would hit the barrels at the base of the sign, but Chase twisted the wheel, narrowly missing. They crashed through until they were past the main bunch and out into the clearing on the other side. The creepers followed them, leaving the sign, no longer aware of Sonya. Chase brought the Suburban to a stop and began honking the horn. He rolled down the window and shouted, and Marilyn did the same.
When the barking started in the forest to their right, Marilyn knew immediately that it was Honey. “Wait, Chase!” she yelled. She called to Honey, and the dog came leaping out of the forest. Marilyn opened her door and the dog scrambled inside, licking her face. No time, Marilyn thought, though she was very happy to see the dog. She pushed the dog back between the front seats.
“Close your door!” Chase shouted. More creepers than Marilyn could count were coming toward them. Once the base of the sign was mostly clear, Chase rolled up his window and cut the wheel to the right, skirting the tree-line which surrounded the clearing, hitting the occasional straggling creeper, but leading the main crowd around in a circle. Marilyn could pick out the ones that had been hit: the limping, crawling ones. When Chase reached the road again, he turned west and crept along, just barely keeping ahead of the fastest creepers. Two hundred yards down the road, he accelerated, made a U-turn, headlight beams bouncing crazily across the trees as they crashed through the ditches until they faced the oncoming crowd. “Hang on,” Chase growled, reaching down and putting the SUV into four-wheel drive.
Marilyn wanted to close her eyes, but she kept them open, bracing herself for impact. The last thing she noticed before they hit the crowd was a creeper who had once been a ten-year-old boy, in tennis shoes and a t-shirt. It could have been one of her brothers. Then they were into the crowd. The distorted faces and blank eyes disappeared down below the level of the hood, the ones at the corners spun off into the darkness and out of the headlights. In her peripheral vision, she registered the movement at the sides of the vehicle. At first, Chase kept the vehicle floored, but it slipped and slid around so badly on the decomposing bodies under the tires that he let off and they proceeded through the crowd at just over twenty miles per hour. The jarring and jolting seemed to go on forever.
When at last they were through the crowd, the sign once again ahead of them and to the right, he accelerated. But all the creepers weren’t gone. There were several still at the base of the sign, dragging themselves along. They had been disabled by the crashing SUV, but not immobilized. Chase approached the sign, avoiding the creepers on the ground, but Marilyn still felt the leap and surge of the Suburban as they drove over one. He brought the vehicle to a stop below the ladder leading up to the galvanized metal pipe resting on the platform at the base of the sign.
“Get up there, Marilyn. Go help her,” Chase growled. Marilyn rolled down her window, looking back at the approaching horde of creepers, then down at the ground below to make sure there were none too close. She climbed onto the roof of the Suburban. She pulled herself up on the bottom rung of the ladder, climbing until she was even with the pipe, the grate on the end. Through the bars she could just see Sonya’s face in the pale light of the moon, looking out at her, eyes huge with dark, dark circles underneath. Sonya’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. She pushed two fingers out through the grate of metal bars at the end. Marilyn touched them briefly then turned her attention to the grate itself.
The grate was held in place on one side by a large hasp and a ridiculously small padlock. Marilyn thought she would be able to break it open if she just had something to do it with, but there was nothing. Then she looked at the other side. A large metal hinge held the other side. The pin for the hinge had worked its way up from the knuckle. Marilyn reached for it and tried to pull it up and out. It gave a little and stopped. She pulled again, feeling the metal dig painfully into her fingers, the muscles in her shoulder straining. Nothing.
Below her she could hear Honey whining, and then Chase called out, “Hurry! The creepers are coming back!”
Marilyn glanced down and saw the dark mass of a horde of creepers lurching across the field toward them, growing closer. There were so many she couldn’t count them. She knew if they made it to the base of the sign, surely that would be enough to cause the explosives below her to blow. She leaned her shoulder into the grate for leverage and prepared herself to pull upward on the pin again. She heaved with all her might, and the pin moved, caught, finally came free with ridiculous ease. Marilyn looked at it stupidly for a moment and then dropped it onto the roof of the Suburban below her where it made a metallic bonging sound. She stepped down the ladder one rung and pulled on the grate, which swung crookedly out, narrowly missing her head. Sonya reached for her with both arms, wrapping them around her neck.
“Hurry, Marilyn, for God’s sake, hurry!” Chase shouted, the panic in his voice causing it to break.
Marilyn pulled on Sonya, freeing her from the pipe and catching her full weight as Sonya swung out and down. Marilyn held to the ladder, thinking for the briefest of seconds she would be able to hold both their weights, but then her fingers just couldn’t do it anymore and the two of them fell to the roof of the Suburban. Marilyn almost rolled off but caught herself in time. She flailed around until she felt Sonya, then she crushed the small girls’ body to her own.
“Go! Go! Go!” she screamed. The Suburban rocked forward, almost throwing them from the roof, but Chase must have realized they had nothing to hold to and slowed down. He drove toward the back of the clearing, away from the approaching horde. As the Suburban slowed to a stop, Marilyn sat up and prepared to climb down. Then came the roar and the heat and the shock wave and Sonya was gone. The same wall of force pushed Marilyn off the roof and down the windshield onto the hood. She lay there stunned.
She could feel the vibration of the motor beneath her, the heat of the engine rising up beneath the hood, but she couldn’t hear anything. She realized what had happened. The creepers had set off the explosive charges. The sound had deafened her. She sat up and looked around. The driver’s door of the Suburban was open, but the dome light showed no sign of Chase. She lowered herself over the front of the hood and turned around. A dark shape she recognized as Chase was crouching over another dark shape lying still on the ground twenty feet in front of the Suburban, his back to her. As she watched he stood and turned, holding what she realized was Sonya in his arms. She thought he said something, but she couldn’t hear him. He began running toward her, and she could see his eyes wide with fright. She spun to look behind her.
A creeper lurched toward the front of the Suburban on the passenger side. No one looking at it would ever have thought it had once been human. Even in the moonlight she
could see that the skin was flayed from the remaining musculature, an arm was missing, and it had been partially disemboweled. The rotting guts hung almost to the ground, swaying in front of it as it walked. The white eyes were gone, but the blackened tongue remained. Marilyn knew she was screaming, but she couldn’t hear herself. She ran toward the driver side door, the cool and calm she had felt completely gone. Instead of the warrior of God, she was the girl she had been before and that girl was scared. But not helpless.
She looked inside the Suburban and didn’t see a gun to grab. The only thing she saw was a four cell flashlight that Chase kept under the driver’s seat. She picked it up and turned to the creeper, but it had sensed Chase and Sonya and was lurching toward them. Chase had stopped. He stood there, frozen, still holding Sonya. Marilyn didn’t think. This thing was threatening her friends. Despite her fear and revulsion, she ran forward, swinging the flashlight. Just before she reached the thing, a brown blur flashed past her, and the creeper went to the ground. Honey had the thing’s remaining arm and was tearing at it, almost pulling it along the ground. Marilyn caught up them and then bent at the waist, swinging as hard as she could. The impact of the flashlight against the thing’s skull sickened her. It was still moving, so Marilyn stood over it and swung again and again until it stopped moving. When she was done, she looked up. Chase was looking back over her shoulder. She turned again. No creepers were close, but there were others approaching. Honey stood between her and the approaching horde. Some had been hit by the explosion, but some had not. Chase passed her on his way to the Suburban. She watched as he awkwardly opened the back door on the driver’s side and pushed Sonya inside. She followed, climbing over Sonya, closing the door. Honey jumped into Chase’s open door, then Chase got into the driver’s seat and put the Suburban in gear. He turned back toward the road.
After Everything Else (Book 1): Creeper Rise Page 19