“What about the Mad Conductor?” Pathos
Two asked as he laid out a pair of shiny scissors and removed a pristine
scalpel from a plastic bag.
“Fuck should I know? Where’s mah drink?”
Keaton swayed in the chair. His face was bone white. His arm swung back and
forth, silver pistol catching the candle light of the cramped wagon with each
pass. “He went down to save the kid. Fucking old world idiots. Dead is dead. He
wasn’t going without a fight. I don’t much like sending men into the pit too
injured. Just not fair.”
“Sgt. Post, if you would please.”
“Pleasure,” Post managed.
“Fuck you, soldier boy. Fuck you good.”
Post put the rough man in a half bear
hug as Pathos Two lifted Keaton’s wounded arm onto the table. Keaton roared and
kicked out, but Post had him good and tight.
“Fat fuck, fat fuck!”
Pathos Two began to cut with the
scissors.
Post imagined letting go as Keaton
passed out from the pain. He could drop the man and put a bullet in his brain
and then dispose of Pathos Two, but Keaton was only part of the equation. Moya
was the top of pyramid, the queen, the mother to them all. As much as he
regretted to admit it, he needed Keaton.
“Amazing what the human body is capable
of,” Pathos Two said with a spool of thread hanging out of his mouth. After
cutting away the limb, he trimmed the ragged skin and disinfected every inch of
the wound.
As Post watched the man work, folding skin
and sewing, repairing, his thoughts drifted to Baylor. The Mad Conductor had
been around too long, survived too many encounters, to be beaten by the pit.
However, in close quarters, injured, nothing was for sure. He didn’t even know
if Baylor had been given the luxury of a weapon. How had it all gone so wrong?
They were two men trying to patch the
world back together and they thought they had it figured out. They helped each
other but were not beholden to one another or any shared ideal. They were just
decent men in a time where there were far too few. That’s all. Just two who
grouped with two more and then three and then more, much like Moya’s army.
Would they collapse when their matriarch was gone? Would they scatter or rise
up in anger?
Post helped Pathos Two lay Keaton out on
the floor. The weight of the gun had him thinking of possibilities. For so
long, he thought only of the next meal, the next day, nothing beyond that, but
now he had a chance to do something to make up for all of that, to make up for
losing his men.
Post held Keaton’s severed arm and began
to pry the fingers back one by one to release the death grip on the revolver.
“He’ll want that when he gets up.”
“Mine now,” Post said. Each word carried
the pain along his jaw and down into his neck. His head throbbed.
“He’ll shoot you over that.”
“Not unless his mother tells him to. You
still need what’s up here,” Post said, scratching his temple with the barrel of
Keaton’s revolver. Sweat poured from his trembling temples.
“You have no intention of giving up that
particular ghost, Sgt. Post.”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet. I might
catch wind of the religious fervor going round and buy what Moya’s selling.”
Post pointed the massive firearm at Pathos Two and cocked the hammer back. He
closed one eye, saying, “If I were like him—” he nodded to Keaton— “I’d have
killed you just now. Would’ve splattered your blood all over your precious
little bottles and plants. Wouldn’t even have shot you in the head. Would’ve
put a cap in your gut or leg and watched you change. If I were like him, like
them, I’d wait for you to rise again and then put you with the rest. I’d never
let you die. That’s who you choose to run with, to break bread with. Remember
that when the bullets start to fly, Father Myar.” Post’s jaw burned. The agony
of the words ripped him apart, but he fought through it with a grittiness born
from years of struggle.
Pathos Two stood speechless.
“You should watch what you leave laying
around this wagon, for the good Lord sees all, and don’t you forget that. You
might have left that man behind, but you can never outrun who you used to be.”
“No one’s running. Sgt. Post. It’s
merely survival at work.”
“What happened to God’s plan?”
“God’s plan never mentioned the
Creepers.”
“Fog’s clearing,” the man said, nodding
towards the window as if he wasn’t pointing a loaded weapon at Howard.
Howard had his hands up. With a smile, the
man stared at the orange glow coming through the window. Howard kept a close
eye on that weathered finger resting on the trigger, ready to end him. The man
stood up and put the gun against the wall. He walked over to the window and
whistled.
“Shit, look at them all. Never seen
anything like it.” He turned to Howard. “Howard, right?”
“Yes.” He dropped his hands.
“Name’s Brooks.”
Howard searched for some sign the man
was being truthful and found it in his eyes, and that’s what scared him. He
knew then that these shifts weren’t intentional. They were the side effect of
some deep rooted wrong within Brook’s mind, which made the old timer
unpredictable. Howard had to get closer to the gun. He wasn’t taking any
chances.
“Nice to meet you, Brooks. I think I
might have something. A story for a story.” Howard remembered how his father
would get sometimes. The doctor would be cold and clinical while the dad would
be kind and nurturing, but he never knew what one he’d get. So he adapted a
style of dealing with it all his own. If dear dad was talking to him, he
responded to the doctor, and if the doctor was present, he’d respond to his
dad. It worked most of the time. He hoped the alteration would work with
Brooks, if that was even the man’s real name and not some figment of a memory.
“What’s that you got?”
Howard handed him a tattered paperback.
It had been in Jennifer’s pack. He’d watched her read it by the fire before
things went bad. He never got around to asking her what it was or what it was
about. He simply enjoyed watching the shadows play on her face as she read. He
found her concentration fascinating.
Brooks whistled as he inspected the
book. “Been read many a time. Told its story to many people.” He waved it at
Howard.
“Or the same person many times.”
“Could be. You know what this is?”
“I never got a chance to ask her.”
“We never get a chance to do a lot of
things. One of the reasons I read as much as I can. Never know when the end is
coming. Never know what you’re going to miss. This is Milton. One of the
greatest poems ever written. Banned in its time by the ignorant. Misunderstood,
misquoted as well, but I don’t want to ruin it. Here take it back.”
“I can’t do that. You said a story for a
story, now I want my story. That was the deal.” Howard could almost hear the
broken machinery of Brooks’s mind trying to put all the pieces together.
“Right, well at the shit end of the
First War, when we had all but given up, every unit in the states was given the
‘Fuck You’ order. That was just before we lost all communication. We were
already hurting. We had already conceded Denver and the surrounding area. We
had no air support, and the stories we were picking up on the small wave radio
were painting a grim picture. To top it all off, the brass tells us to fend for
ourselves, that it was over. Believe that shit? The most powerful nation on
Earth threw in the towel. Well, we said fuck you to Fuck You and we drove
north.” Brooks flipped the venison steaks to sear them evenly.
“A wise decision, but at that stage of
the war I’m guessing a lot of survivors had the same idea.” Howard wondered
what Jennifer's eyes looked like at the end. He watched the dead below. They
stretched across the land like a decaying carpet, writhing, aimless without his
direction. Would she follow?
Don’t do this to yourself
, he thought.
“You don’t miss a thing. The roads out
of the suburbs, every highway, back road, every damn way was flooded with
people armed with whatever they could find. It was a mass exodus. But with
little food, and the water departments long since shut down, they were dropping
like flies. I can’t tell you how many roadside funerals I witnessed in those
first few days. You see, the Creepers were swarming over the city, and aside
from a few stragglers, the roads were relatively safe, until we hit Fort
Collins. The Creepers were coming south after having their fill of Cheyenne.
With new members added to their ranks, they moved south along the twenty-five,
and we were headed north on the twenty-five.” Brooks looked at Howard with a
dour smile. “We didn’t know, the civi’s didn’t know. We were just looking for a
way out, safety, but what we found was, it was insanity, hell on Earth. Call it
whatever you want, it was the grand fuck you from fate.”
Howard opened himself up. He grabbed
images of a man holding his dead wife’s hand as she changed on him, from cold
corpse to biting nightmare. He focused on that terrible scene and began to move
the man, arms and legs at first, then full steps, coordinated steps. There were
so many out there. He felt all their intrusions, but compared to the shock of
Jennifer, all they had were numbers alone.
“I was in the front of the meat train
with what was left of my squad. We had some ammo, we had our wits, and we ran
recon. The government might’ve given up on everything, but we sure as hell
weren’t. We had a fucking oath to uphold.” Brooks stared out the window. His
tired eyes brimmed with tears, but he retracted them as soon as they appeared.
In that moment, Howard felt sorry for
the old veteran. He felt sorry for all of them. He wondered how many times
Brooks relived this story in solitude. How many years had the man waited to
tell it? Or had he told it over and over through the years and forgotten? The
pain must’ve been unbearable. The image of Jennifer’s clacking teeth drifted
through Howard’s mind. How many years would he go without telling his own
story? When he returned to the road, and it wouldn’t be long now, there was a
good chance he’d never see another living human being again. But Howard
couldn’t tell this man, for he had to keep it to himself. He needed the
thought. It made what was coming next matter.
“I’ll never forget it. We’d just come to
the top of a rise in the highway.” Brooks’s eyes were distant, seeing that
stretch of highway so far in the past. “At first I thought it was a dust
storm. But I knew it couldn’t have been. I thought maybe smoke. The color was
right. All black and swirling. It wasn’t. Then the sound hit us like the wall
of some ridiculous storm. It was flies, fucking flies, billions of them.
Buzzing, that terrible buzzing. Think of when you got a mosquito in your ear,
and then imagine yourself in a swarm of them so thick that you could no longer
see the sky, and maybe it’ll come close. Even miles away we could still hear
it, and when the wind shifted we could smell them. There were so many—a moving
ocean of rotting flesh. The moans and the buzzing drove all but the bravest
souls mad. People were running every which way. Some gave up entirely and fell
to their knees on the road, waiting for the end.” Brooks removed the skillet
from the stove and slid the steaks onto the plates. He stuffed a big chunk of
venison in his mouth and chewed loudly.
Howard did the same. The gamey juices
made him realize just how hungry he was. He could almost hear the meat echo as
it hit his hollow stomach.
“A fucking slow moving, stinking,
inevitability. It was then that I knew this was no longer our world. Sure there
may be some of us left yet, enough to fight even, but we are few and too
scattered to do a damn thing. And we're old now. Our time is all but up. I feel
sorry for you, kid. This is all you know.”
“We can survive and kill as many of them
as we can.” Howard swallowed.
“And what then? When there are none of
us left to reap the benefits.” Brooks dismissed the bravado. “Those of us that
didn’t panic, maybe a thousand strong, and perhaps a hundred or two with guns
and ammo, watched the dead throng march slowly towards us. We couldn’t go back
and we couldn’t go forward. The Imp comes strolling up from the back of the
column. He looks at what’s coming and says, ‘Shit boys, I guess it’s time I
broke out this case of Budweiser.’ He starts passing them out and we start
drinking. Nothing like warm skunked beer. Best drink I ever had.
“The Imp was a big bastard. Probably
weighed three hundred pounds. Used to play o-line for Bama. He downs a beer and
smashes the can against his forehead. He goes, ‘We can’t kill ’em all, but we
can slow ’em down good enough. What do ya’say we have a us a fucking Creeper
barbeque?’ We cheered, and the Imp pulled out his bowie knife and started popping
gas tanks. The abandoned cars covered the highway from us all the way to the
Creepers. That section of the twenty-five was like a big cup, and there was
plenty of gas left in those tanks. We got to work.” Brooks finished the last of
his steak and wiped his mouth. He removed a small oak box from under a pile of
books. He pulled from it two brittle looking cigars. “I’ve been saving these.”
“What are they?” Howard was truly
perplexed. There were several things Brooks mentioned that he had no clue
about. But he kept silent. The weight was slowly lifting from the man, and
Howard could practically see the madness disappear. Much like his father had
done when the end came.
“You’re kidding, right?” Brooks cut the
ends off with his knife.
“No.”
“I forgot, Howard. It’s hard for me to
imagine what you know and what you don’t know. Being raised post-war and all.
You know what a cigarette is?”
“Yes,” Howard said, as a painful memory
of men rolling tobacco in an old newspaper they’d come across on the Sunset
Strip streaked through his mind.
“They’re kind of like that, and in
better times these were sweet. They’re cigars. We used to smoke 'em on special
occasions. And seeing how I’m about to finish the Imp’s story, I figured it’s
about time we indulged ourselves.” Brooks lit both cigars and passed one to
Howard.
Howard puffed and started to cough.
“Don’t suck it down. Just let it rest on
your taste buds and blow it out. Tastes like shit but tradition is tradition.
Where was I?”
“You were about to have a Creeper barbeque.”
Brooks laughed, flicked an ash from his
cigar. “So, there were about eighty, maybe a hundred, cars on that hill. The
last leg of the First War was still in full swing and the scavengers and madmen
hadn’t pilfered the obvious stores yet. The gas ran down that asphalt like a
waterfall and pooled at the bottom. The flies were thick then, the Creepers not
more than a couple hundred yards away. The Imp says, ‘I’m done fella’s . . . I
can’t do this anymore. Ya’ll gonna make a go of it . . . I wish you luck. Me,
I’m done. I’m just so tired.’ He’s practically yelling it over the buzzing, and
his tone spreads like plague over our ranks. There are nods and shouts of
agreement. Though he didn’t say what he meant to do, we all understood. We were
all so tired.”
“What about you, Brooks? Are you tired?”
“There is not a word for how exhausted I
am. But let me make one thing clear, Howard. There are those that, when pushed
to the breaking point, well, they want to lash out and go for the glorious
death. I’m not one of those people. I’m all about continuing to draw breath and
fill my belly. Shit, I’d like to think there’s hope. That at the end of this
fucking mess there is peace to be had, a world to rebuild. And I think you’re
one of those people too. Otherwise you wouldn’t have that eerie calm look on
your face, knowing what’s waiting beneath us. I can’t stop you, and I sure as
hell won’t go with you, but I do wish you luck, and I hope that you find what
you’re looking for. I hope you make it.” Brooks blew a ring of smoke and eyed
Howard with admiration.
“I have to for her sake,” Howard said,
thinking of his last night with Jennifer, thinking of his father's dying words.
“The dead are dead. What you do only
matters to you, just like the Imp. He lead that final mad charge into the wall
of Creepers. I watched it through my scope from afar. He commanded that ass
over backwards army with the skill and clarity only attained when nothing else
matters. They brought so many down, but for every one they took, the Creepers
added five to their ranks. I watched every death, heard every scream. The Imp
climbed atop a car in the thick of the Creepers. He cracked his last Budweiser
and downed it. Gently, as if nothing was happening around him, he put the empty
can down on the roof of the car and got out his Zippo. He flicked it and threw
it into the pool of gas. The flames swept over the undead, lighting them like
candles. Hair, and what was left of their clothes, burned and smoked black. The
Imp, too, caught fire, and he meant to fry alive. Some kind of macho last stand
bullshit, but I couldn’t watch another human being do that. There was no way I
could talk him out of giving up, and it would’ve been stupid to try, but I sure
as hell wasn’t about to watch him immolate himself like some zealot. I zeroed
his dome and put him down.”