“Help me!” a voice called from ahead of
her.
Beneath part of the collapsed wall,
Pathos Two’s bloodied face gasped for air. A tattooed arm lay across his chest.
He tried to push the shattered beams away, but his weak arms only shook from
the effort.
Moya took his face in her hands.
“W-why risk us f-for him?”
“For the future,” Moya said as she drove
her iron thumbs into his eyes and beyond. His body jerked then lay still.
She climbed over the rubble just as a
series of explosions rocked the area.
* * * * *
Baylor crawled on his knees through the
haze. He spit dirt and blood and coughed a mixture of both. His purple coat
hung in torn strips and his checkered pants were gone below the knee. Pieces of
the beast’s finer parts were embedded in his legs. He pulled one of his
treasured pins out of his shoulder. A musician, dead for many decades now,
stared back at him through the blood. He shook his head and continued on,
trying to find a way out of the cloudy aftermath of the explosion.
“Move,” a voice grunted in his ear as
hands grabbed him under the shoulders.
“Post?” Baylor asked. He could only make
out a vague silhouette through the murk.
“Yes. Go. Keep your head down, keep
moving!”
“Some fucking early warning system.
Didn’t think it through, did we?” Baylor grappled with the Mad Conductor. The
lunatic in him wanted to roll over and laugh, but the stubborn fuck at his core
wouldn’t let him.
“Baylor, keep moving!” Post said as he
nudged Baylor on.
He stumbled along, dragging his dead arm
like some torn battlefield flag. Baylor slipped in something warm and wet. He
nearly fell headlong into it, but Post had a tight grip on what was left of his
coat. Cold scratched his lungs as they passed out of the explosion’s aftermath.
He wanted to go back in.
They stood in a wash of horse and human
organs still steaming and twitching. All around them, the battle raged. Guns
cracked while people screamed, Creepers moaned, and in between, explosions tore
through all as if god were doling out smites to the unworthy.
Post hefted Keaton’s hand cannon and
cracked a shot at a woman left too long in the sun to rot. Half of her head
evaporated. He cocked the hammer back and fired again, caving in the chest of a
man brandishing a rifle. Post snatched it from his dying grip and handed it to
Baylor.
“Opportunity knocks,” Post said, sending
another Creeper to permanent death.
Baylor held the rifle against his waist
and managed to squeeze off a series of shots that took one of Moya’s men in the
gut. Another explosion knocked him on his ass.
Post held out a hand to help him up.
Baylor reached for it then recoiled as Post’s chest exploded outward, showering
him with hot blood. The weight of Post’s body knocked the wind from his lungs
as it landed on top of him.
“Fucking, soldier boy. Told you, I told
you don’t draw on me. Same goes for my people. Told her this wouldn’t work. I’m
out a fucking arm,” Keaton spat. He had his boot on the back of Post’s lifeless
head. “Now what are we going to do with you, Mr. Conductor?"
The rifle was pinned beneath Post’s
body. He couldn’t lift his dead friend’s weight one-handed, and for the second
time he found himself staring down the barrel of Keaton’s cannon. The Mad
Conductor scolded him from the recesses of his mind.
Keaton snapped his weapon up and fired
twice. Baylor heard two distinct thumps as bodies hit the ground somewhere
behind him. Keaton put the weapon between his legs and opened the drum. He
loaded the gun in less time than it took Baylor to blink. The vortex of the
cannon, that endless black hole, stared at him once more.
The Mad Conductor bowed his head in shame.
Howard had a hard time keeping track of
Bobby. His brother flickered in and out of his mind like a weak radio signal.
He sent a Creeper beneath the churning
wheels of a wagon full of men with automatic weapons. As the wheels crushed its
skull, he pressed the button. Wood and sheet metal tore apart, severing limbs,
taking life, exploding outward to alter the battle further in his favor.
He’d laid the grid out perfectly. Each
number a click. Each click an exclamation point of death. He worked the sides,
funneling the army into a line while giving them the illusion of choice. An
orange blossom tore limbs and further squeezed the column, while Bobby’s wild
rush pressed from the other side of the hill.
Howard searched for Jennifer’s people
between explosions. He jumped through the dead minds like opening door after
door in a long hallway. Each new mind begged him for mercy, for love, for
family, for life, for release, but Howard could only grant an end to the
torment. Guilt worked his heartstrings. The time to unleash his empathy would
come later. He needed to find the women.
If any of them had survived.
* * * * *
Bobby’s ears bled and his innards
trembled from the shockwave. The din of the battle had become one long drawn
out whine that set his teeth on edge. He dropped to his belly as men on
horseback rode up to the destroyed pen. One of them barked orders accompanied
by quick hand gestures. The man turned in the saddle as Bobby dropped the sight
over his face. His eyes went wide.
Bobby fired.
The man’s head snapped back as he
tumbled from the saddle. Bobby shot the next two in the back as they searched
frantically for his position. He jumped up and ran to the order giver’s horse.
He grabbed the reins, wobbling as he swung onto the saddle, which was fit for a
much taller rider. It had been some time since he last rode a horse, but it was
impossible to forget anything Ol’ Randy taught him. He’d learned how to ride
dangerous mountain trails and how to fire while moving, but never how to do
everything at once and control a horde of Creepers thousands strong.
Bobby pressed his chest to the mare’s
neck, patting her as he guided her towards the Creepers. She resisted at first,
whinnying and kicking, but he kept working her, kept whispering in her ear. She
was no stranger to the chaos of battle, but the Creepers were a different beast.
When the dead walked, the foundations of essential survival rose to the
top—warning systems from the dawn of time. Run and live or stay and die. Bobby
reassured her that life lie in a pool of the dead. She struggled against him
for a moment then gave in to his commands. She snorted at him and all he could
do was pat her neck to reassure her she’d made the right choice.
The dead horde parted, swallowing them
in a rush of decaying flesh.
* * * * *
Moya stood upon the rubble as she
whistled for her mount. The beast charged towards her call, crushing the dead
beneath massive hooves. Gouts of brain and blood decorated the earth in its
wake. She jumped into the saddle and rode after the boy.
He was another test. She could see it
now, as the battle raged around her. He was put in her path to see if she was
worthy of tomorrow, and just as Josh had been a catalyst for progress, this boy
was a roadblock. She would not be fooled again.
Moya charged after the wild horde,
quickly catching up to her troops in the process. Smoke rose from the train in
the distance, but she couldn’t dwell on the implication. She had much more
pressing matters to attend to.
“Break around and cut them off. Don’t
let them take that hill,” she screamed, pointing towards the smoking ruin of
the train as explosions ripped the horizon.
Her mind, having been honed by decades
of war, could envision the boy’s plan. He guided them along, aiming them
towards the train and the rest of her army. She dug her heels in, spurning her
mount on. Her men rode along with her, picking off the dead in a mad dash to
break their progress.
“Whose firing on us?” one of her men
cried.
She didn’t know.
* * * * *
Baylor felt the blood trickle from his
friend’s lips into his ear. His hand dropped in defeat and found something
mechanical at the base of Post’s spine. He didn’t have to see it to know what
it was. He’d handled all manner of firearms over the years and knew the
familiar shape. He let his hand lay on top of it, but made no effort to grab
it.
Keaton drew on a Creeper a hundred yards
away and fired. The Creeper stumbled and exploded in a flash.
“God damn son of a bitch!” Keaton
searched for another target. “This is soldier boy’s people. I told her the fat
man’s numbers were off.” Keaton fired on another Creeper before reloading
again.
Baylor tried to count the number of
rounds left on Keaton’s bandoliers, but his eyes were swimming with dirt and
blood. He flexed his left hand to ward off the numbness that threatened to end
his wild plan altogether. He’d only get one shot. All he needed was a
distraction.
Keaton had been through too much to be
unnerved by the almost continuous explosions that rocked the field.
It was as if some military force in the
mountains were shelling them. Baylor’s teeth rattled and the ground shook in
waves.
Keaton dropped low. His bearded face was
inches from Baylor’s. “Hell of a day for a fight! When I find the bastard, I’m
gonna enjoy taking his scalp!”
“Not as much…”
“As much what?”
“This,” Baylor said, as he pressed the
gun to Keaton’s temple and fired.
* * * * *
Howard felt her presence immediately. He
tried to ignore it, tried to convince himself it wasn’t real. Just a figment of
his imagination brought on by the stress of the battle, by lack of sleep, by
anything . . . anything but the truth.
Howard . . . Howard . . . Howard . . .
The field of battle slipped from his
mind. The Creepers stopped their coordinated march, stood motionless for a
second, then began to scatter as they searched for the closest living,
breathing thing to feed upon. Howard collapsed at the sound of her voice,
though he knew it by only memory. He knew he wasn’t actually hearing her, but
that didn’t matter. Nothing did but her, and what he wasn’t able to do.
Howard . . . Howard . . . Howard . .
.
His mind painted vivid images of her
trek north. All those miles alone. All those nights filled with painful hunger
she couldn’t satisfy, with a need for release he could not give her. He ground
his fists into his temples as the tears welled and the anger ran out between
his lips in a hiss. The structure he’d trained his mind to endure fell apart
and Howard couldn’t put the pieces back in order.
The army, no longer under constant
bombardment, regained composure, silencing the voices in his head. So many of
them, so many gone, but Jennifer’s voice rang loud, echoed off his skull.
Howard screamed and Jennifer answered over and over.
* * * * *
The mental break was almost enough to
send him tumbling from the saddle. He felt his brother’s mind crumble as the
waves of despair hit him. Bobby quickly found the source, having lived the
brutal memory of her in a heartbeat. He reached into her decayed thoughts. He
set her monitor beside the others, bade her calm and quiet, but the damage had
already been done.
He extended his voice to Howard, but his
brother would not let him in. Walls of raw emotion repelled each of his
efforts. Bobby pleaded to no avail. He’d been into the pit of despair before.
There was a way out, if only Howard would let him in, let him show him, but the
harder he tried, the greater Howard’s resistance became.
Not wanting to risk it all, Bobby
grabbed a hold of Howard’s Creepers and wrestled them back from the edge. Their
hunger became his hunger. Their eyes became his. Their broken, rotting mouths
became his own, and he set them on any target he could find.
Bobby bent the Creepers towards the
train as a streak of red on black caught his eye. The woman rode hard around
the edge of the horde, a cadre of mounted riders with her, firing at will,
blanking monitors with veteran precision, trying to break his press towards the
train.
He fired a few rounds of his own, taking
out one of her riders, then ducked back down. He promised his horde a way to
end their hunger as he drove them harder, faster than their rotting limbs would
let them. He lost many under their own weight, but the fresher ones continued
on, faster and faster, swallowing those unlucky enough not to have a means to
keep them above the field of battle.
Bobby’s horde, propelled by the flesh of
his enemies, charged towards the smoking hulk of Baylor’s train.
Bobby only hoped the man was still
alive.
* * * * *
Moya watched the dead move in ways she
never thought possible, even if Josh had come of age. They ran, ran harder than
they had any right to, and many of them fell apart from the effort. Even on
shattered limbs, they crawled, relentless, but those still upright ground their
brethren into the dirt in their rush.
Scalps slapped against her thigh and the
wind rushed through her hair. The smell of smoke and death and blood permeated
all. She relished in the terror of it. Her army was sorely damaged, but there
were still wagons about, still men and women fighting hard for survival, for
victory. Those gritty faces spurned her onward.
Moya leaned as her mount took the hill,
swooping in a long arc that took her near the smoldering train and back down
again. Her men followed the looping route. The twenty of them became a
spearhead carried by the momentum they gained from the hill, and downward they
charged towards the gnashing teeth of the Creepers.
She smiled as death graced her lips. “We
killed them once! Conquered them all! We can do it again!” She raised her fist
high into the air as she bore down on them. The faces of those not strong
enough to survive, the faces of the weak, all of them stared at her with a wild
hunger. Their moans were nothing but an empty threat, long ago rendered
ineffective against her will. She balled her fist and swung at the
maggot-ridden face to her right, but met only air.
Then she realized her error as the stock
of the boy’s rifle cracked against her jaw.
* * * * *
Howard slipped into the vest he’d saved
for himself. The weight of the explosives were reassuring. His mind was numb.
Jennifer’s cries had been silenced, but he could still feel her presence like a
heaviness pressing down from behind his eyes—a crushing blow that had him
stumbling towards the chaos. All around him, the earth smoked. Men pleaded for
a release from their injuries. The dead twitched reflexively, living in the
trapped isolation of their last thoughts.
Soon they would all be released.
Howard held a fistful of detonators in
his right hand and the lone trigger for his vest in his left. He moved among
the wounded and dead with a nervous calm. His heart trembled for what was to
come.
Bobby. His brother pounded against the
walls of his mind. He let go just enough to let him see what was to come, to
warn him, and to say goodbye. However short-lived their meeting, he owed him
that much. He hoped that one day Bobby would reflect on this moment and
understand why it had to happen, and then he put up his defenses again, like he
had for so many years when he’d been the executioner of Los Angeles.
He could see his purpose now. In giving
up his life, he’d silence so many, clean the world a little bit more, and
repent to his love for not having the courage to free her earlier.
Howard moved among the dead as they
clashed with what was left of the massive army. Bullets cracked. Teeth ripped
flesh from bone. The world worked its grindstone in overtime. The cycle of it
played out in hundreds of tiny windows all around him. Life and death, and
somewhere, rippling on the edge of it all, the torment. His torment. His thumb
danced over the trigger.
No.