Bobby drove the Auto Stryker into his
throat and pulled it away in a spray of hot blood. He spun to the other man,
who had a shovel at the ready. Bobby rolled around the awkward strike. He
shouldered the man into the machine. The man reached for him with wide eyes,
horribly wide eyes, and Bobby watched as the machine pulled him in. His scream
lasted only a second, like the call of a crow. Chunks of his stringy gray hair
stuck to the side of the barrels.
Bobby dropped low and headed for the
nearest tent. He needed to get out of sight and out of his clothes. He was
covered from head to toe in blood, some of it his own, but most of it not. His
mind raced, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He’d crash soon enough, or worse. He
didn’t have much time. He had to get to the train before the move. If he
didn’t, he’d never catch up in his condition.
He kept the Auto Stryker close as he
ducked inside the tent.
It was empty. A heavily patched sleeping
bag with a rusted zipper lay on the dingy nylon floor. There was a large
backpack and several jugs of water on top of it. Bobby upended one of the jugs.
He gulped and gulped but didn’t think he’d ever be able to quench his thirst.
He opened another jug and used it to wash the blood from his arms. The bite
marks were evident, jagged rings, but they didn’t carry the same weight they
once did. Yannek’s voice yelled at him from the confines of memory, warning him
about the many kinds of infection one could get.
The weeping hole in his right shoulder
made the bites laughable. He found a small mirror hanging from a string on the
backpack. He used it to help him get out of his blood-soaked shirt, peeling it
off. The patterns in the weave were tattooed on his pale flesh in blood. The
cold water stung. He used the sleeping bag to wipe away the blood, but it was
replaced instantly by more.
Inside the bag, he discovered several
shirts and a pair of socks that had lost their elasticity long, long ago. With
the mirror propped on top of the bag, he began to fashion a sling. The bullet
had gone clean through. He could see a little sliver of light poking through
from the other side. He rinsed the wound again. Staring at the ring of scorch
marks from the muzzle flash reminded him of the last thing Pastor Craven ever
saw before the darkness came.
Bobby worked quick and as clean as he
could. He had the wound wrapped and in a rough sling. The bleeding stopped, but
he’d been exposed to a lot of grit and dirt. He slipped into a dark blue shirt
with a faded gold ring on it. It was loose enough to cover the sling. He tucked
the extra length into his blood covered pants. The occupant of the tent hadn’t
left any other articles of clothing behind.
He rocked back and forth uneasily.
Everything had changed so fast. He couldn’t lose him, wouldn’t lose him. He
wouldn’t fail him like he did his brothers, like Yannek, like Ol’ Randy.
No,
Bobby thought.
No, I won’t, I can’t. Never again. Never again.
He gripped the Auto Stryker tightly and
crawled out of the tent.
* * * * *
Baylor knew from the scent of rotten
animal fat that they had brought him back to the beast. The pain was almost too
much to stomach. Bile nipped at the back of his throat. How had she known? Did
she hear them talking? No, it was far too loud with the army gathered around
for the show. It was something else, something he’d given away, but he was
careful.
“’Bout time you woke up,” Keaton said
from somewhere behind him. “Heard you scream all the way across the camp. She
only broke it.”
Rough hands yanked Baylor up and pushed
him into a folding chair.
Keaton leaned in close. His breath
smelled of strong drink. He waved a bandaged stump in Baylor’s face. “Not like
she took it from you. Not permanently anyhow.”
Baylor rolled his dry eyes, blinked
hard, and tried to settle into reality. Faces swam before him in oblong streaks
of pale light. His arm was wrapped close to his body and he no longer felt the
weight of his revolver about his waist. They’d stripped him of his weapons. The
Mad Conductor cursed at him, berated him for not taking them when he had the
chance.
“The kid was good, but not good enough.
Should’ve stabbed me in the chest, maybe went for my neck, but he got caught up
on you. But I guess that’s why she wanted you in the first place. She wants
that loyalty. She wants that power over them,” Keaton said, waving his stump
around the beast’s cramped confines.
The man’s gray beard came into focus as
did his cold eyes. He leaned on the cold firebox, waiting for Baylor to
respond.
“You could’ve had it easy, shit, you had
it easy. All you needed to do was pass the test and it was all over. So many
before you doing their own thing right now, out there, they followed along and
reaped the reward. Hell, even one of your own did the same. Ain’t that right,
soldier boy?”
A face stepped forward from the shadows,
a familiar face, a friendly face, but no more…
“Post?”
Howard greeted the sunrise with his
army. They were an ocean of rotting flesh, lapping at his heels, eroding the
once stable sanity of his mind. He’d been circling the grassy mound for almost
an hour. This was the spot from Jennifer’s notes. But there was not a single
sign of an entrance to the base in sight. In fact, there wasn’t much of
anything around except the quietly flowing river, like a black band on the
green landscape. His army made sure of that, eating wildlife when they were
able to catch it and scaring it away when they could not.
Their greasy heads stretched into the
distance. Flies buzzed about them, but Howard had grown used to the sound long
ago. More than a week had passed. He heard their every death, felt them all on
a deeply personal level. Their final pleas drained him just as they always had.
They licked at his emotional stability as if it were a wound, and that is just
what they had become to him—a terrible wound, but one he could now live with.
He asserted dominance over them, moved
them, controlled them to a degree, and each day that passed made him better at
the whole affair. Though he still moved about in mid-cringe, waiting for
Jennifer to enter his mind with her pleas. If that happened, he wasn’t sure
he’d be able to see this through.
He kept looking for the door. Her notes
mentioned two trees and a jutting rock, but he couldn’t find two trees.
Something had happened to the land. There were two stumps and the rock was
gone. Judging from the way some of the larger trees were bent, the river had
crested its banks in recent times. He retraced his steps again.
Then he saw it. Just back from the
broken stumps. A patch of thick mud. It held the vague outline of a rectangle,
barely visible to his keen eye, but there, and very much out of place. He wiped
and clawed at it to reveal a rusted set of doors. They opened with a groan on
to a dark staircase. Water sluiced down the concrete walls.
Howard didn’t hesitate. He descended the
stairs with a measure of caution, though he was not afraid of what might be
below. He was afraid of what he was about to do. Everything had changed since
Jennifer’s death.
The light began to fade. Howard stopped
to allow his eyes to adjust. It was like the corridors back in L.A all over
again. He felt not fear, only a grand curiosity. The steps went on for what
felt like a long time. The wet afternoon was somewhere far above him now. He
reached an algae covered landing. The moment his feet touched it, a series of
hazy yellow lights flicked on one by one to reveal a long concrete corridor.
It smelled of wet funk. Parts of the
hallway were in various states of decay. Chunks of rock and earth mixed with
the half foot of water that filled the long narrow space. Old military markings
lay hidden beneath years worth of black mold. A bloated rat twisted lazily in
the slop at his feet. He stepped over it and continued down the corridor.
Just under the damp smell was something
else, something metallic, and it reminded him of his father’s communication
tower in the early years. It gave off a terrible buzzing sound that hit him on
a subsonic level. It unnerved him. He remembered never wanting to go up there,
though his father always told him there was nothing to worry about. When he
reached the end of the corridor, he heard that familiar buzzing. Another series
of lights snapped on. He spied a small motion sensor in the corner of the
ceiling. Another long corridor waited for him, but this one was lined with
doors. The buzzing intensified with each step. He felt the hairs on his neck
raise. The wet smell was overcome by ozone that tickled his brain.
Jennifer’s notes were spot on down to
the room numbers. There were at least 30 empty rooms with military issue
mattresses and neatly folded bed clothes. Each identical to the last. Wyoming
Blue had been quite thorough in their application of pre-war discipline. The
corridor opened up at the far end on to a massive room with a set of tracks
running down its center. This was where the weapons were brought. The empty
cart on the tracks was equipped to hold several different sizes of bomb, as
well as other explosives. A large metal door took up most of the right side of
the space and two smaller doors took up the left. Faded yellow and white lines
crisscrossed the grease-stained concrete.
Howard went to the smaller doors first.
The first door revealed a dark office with a series of switches and buttons on
the wall. Howard pulled out the old phone and tapped the screen until he
reached Jennifer’s notes. As his finger swiped the screen, he thought he heard
her calling his name. His hands shook as he scrolled through the screens.
Big button: sends/recalls cart
Red button: locks down facility
Yellow button: lifts rolling door to
garage, guns there, fresh clothes
Don’t go past the green doors. We walled
it off. Bad, bad shit in there.
Howard shut the phone down. He had no
intention of going anywhere near the explosives until he absolutely had to.
He’d need to wire them and he had Jennifer’s notes for that, but he wasn’t
about to expose himself to unnecessary risk. Not yet, not until he had a clear
shot at the army. He wasn’t going to let Jennifer’s death become meaningless.
He was in the process of calling several
Creepers into the base. They shambled along the corridors, splashing water and
moaning. While he waited for them, he opened the garage door. A deep oily smell
wafted from the dimly lit area. The vehicles had been removed long ago but
their presence lingered still.
Howard found fresh fatigues but ignored
them, though he did take the olive-colored undershirt. He wasn’t a soldier. He
was just a man looking to put things as close to right as they could get under
the circumstances. This was for Jennifer. Her wish. Nothing more. When it was
done, he’d either be dead or worse. He’d be alive and alone.
He recalled the images from Manuel’s
dead mind. Given the timing Jennifer talked about, and the tracks, they
wouldn’t be long now. He knew what he had to do. He had the Creepers load
themselves onto the cart. He went back into the office in his fresh shirt and
pushed the big button. The Creepers disappeared into the dark tunnel.
A single row of runner lights lined the
roof of the tunnel. Suddenly the darkness lifted to reveal a circular room with
a crumbling, dome-like ceiling. The left half held Jennifer’s green door. He
viewed the room on a tilt due to some kind of trauma to the Creepers’ necks, or
perhaps it was just simple decay that made them so.
A series of metal rolling doors were
spaced evenly along the right side. Jennifer had tried to explain in detail all
the types of weaponry stored within them, but her technical descriptions of
them went over his head. Her words about how to use them did not.
He gathered a large duffel bag and
packed some ammunition, a long rifle, and spools of wiring in it. Then he
grabbed the detonators. He took another bag and began to cram it with military
issue vests until he had the shelf clear. There weren’t nearly enough, but
they’d have to do. He headed for the surface. While he walked the corridors, he
had the Creepers begin loading the cart. It would take some time to move things
along. Even with plenty of helping hands.
Would that leave enough time?
He hustled up the stairs into the
afternoon light. He sent another group of Creepers down, and then another,
until he had a chain of them leading out into the muddy field. While one part
of him worked the Creepers through the process of removing the explosives, he
was busy ordering the rest of the army into neat rows. With all their dreary
thoughts, they obeyed and took a bit more of his soul in the process.
Howard kept his mind working. He
couldn’t dwell, wouldn’t dwell. There wasn’t enough time to. The first of the
explosive bricks made their way to him. He knew they were inert without the
other components, but he still hesitated to touch them. He had to take a breath
to steady his hands. With this act, he could give these people release, final
release. It was enough to keep him going.
He began to pack the vests and prep them
for war. He worked through the first line, hearing every mind-bending plea.
“I will give you death. I will give you
peace. I promise,” Howard said to a man that wouldn’t stop wailing about his wife.
The images were warped by time, but the message in them was clear. A very
familiar image—one he’d experienced many times over the years. An overrun
house, the last stand gone wrong, backed into a corner, nowhere to run, biting,
fading away only to rise again.
Howard secured the man in his vest.
“Soon it will be over.”
He moved to the next in line—an armless
woman with no lower jaw. Her tongue hung in putrescent ribbons like a shaggy
beard. Her thoughts held only darkness, like the bottom of the river she’d come
from. Dead fish rotted away in her torn stomach and weeds dried in green
patches on her bloated flesh. Howard suited her up and went to the next in
line.
He worked through the day, constantly
checking the tracks, listening for any sign of the approaching army. He worked
until he ran out of vests and then he began stuffing the bricks into their
bloated and torn stomachs, into their mouths. Tears wet his cheeks as he
worked. Every few Creepers, he’d pull the spike and drive it through soft temples.
The field would be his to control. He didn’t need to control all of them.
He littered the rolling green hills with
bombs. Jennifer’s plan was about to come to fruition. Howard wanted to feel
some sense of accomplishment, but only emptiness called his soul home. He’d
lost the last of himself the morning he woke to Jennifer’s clacking teeth. Over
the years, over the millions of people he’d sent to their deaths, each took
from him a bit of who he was, and now there was nothing left.
Howard thought that after his father
passed he’d be able to live with the little bit of himself that was left. When
Jennifer came along, he actually filled that emptiness up somewhat, but now, as
he stuffed bombs into living dead flesh, he realized there was nothing. Howard
was gone. He existed now as a tool of revenge risen from the grave of a woman
taken well before her time.
The Creepers cleared the last of the
shelves. His fingers ached from his efforts, as did his mind from theirs. As
Howard began to file the Creepers out of the base, he caught a glimpse of
something in the corner of the room through a blurry set of eyes. He moved the
Creeper closer and realized he was seeing something covered by a heavy tarp. He
moved rigor-filled fingers and pulled it back, living through the dead man like
he now moved through life. A dead thing hollowed by tragedy and the after
effects of a war he’d been born into.
He found himself staring at a very
recognizable relic of wars past. He moved the dead hand over its spotless
surface. The yellow lights reflected exploding stars back to him through the
Creeper’s failing eyes. His feet squished in the muddy field, but his mind was
in the room with the warhead. A fiery release lurked just beneath those dead
fingers. Howard smiled.
A loud wail broke the thought. He didn’t
recognize the sound at first. Some kind of high-pitched note followed by a
chug-chug. Then he glimpsed the horizon and the puffs of smoke rising there.
The train was coming. His mind exploded open as thousands of new deaths entered
his brain.
Howard fell into the mud, unable to
process this flood of emotion. The Creepers all around began to moan as he lost
his grip on them. The army had arrived. He scrambled to his feet. Shaking and
panting, he drove the new minds away, pushed them back and back until they were
buried beneath the images of the warhead. He began to file some of the Creepers
back into the tunnel with their parcels. He wasn’t even sure if what he had in
mind would work, but if it did, the dividends would pay off. He had nothing to
lose. This was the moment he’d hoped to arrive at with Jennifer. They’d free
her people and ride off into the sunset together to rebuild the world.
No.
The world was dead. He was dead. There
was nothing left. Nothing left but to right the last wrong. To end those
responsible.
Howard
worked his mind to the brink of insanity as he used every fiber to guide those
stiff fingers. He wired the relic then broke the connection. The detonators
dangled from his belt as he ran among the dead. He ran to the far hill for a
better vantage point. The train was almost upon him. The tree line beckoned to
him from a hundred yards away. He began to disperse the Creepers to make them
look like a wandering group. The army would make quick work of them, walk among
them, and then he would let the world know her name.