Not yet.
No.
But it was too late for no. He could see
the swell of the massive instrument of death below him. Howard caressed it with
dead hands as he began to fire the last of the detonators.
* * * * *
Bobby ordered them to drop and they obeyed,
collapsing the instant he projected the images outward. The red-haired woman’s
charge braced for an impact that never happened and they’d gathered too much
speed to stop. Their horses ground some of the Creepers to mush, but the rest
rose, knocking them over, sending them to their deaths, to a level playing
field full of waiting teeth.
He let the Creepers go as he swung the
empty rifle at the red-haired woman’s face. The impact sent both of them
flying. The wind rushed from Bobby’s lungs. He bounced and rolled, but found
his footing. He looked back and found a lone Creeper with a mouthful of
entrails ending its hunger with dead delight.
Then the woman rose from the field, her
fists out wide, blood dripping from her ruined mouth. She darted to the left,
dispatching two Creepers with rapid strikes to their brittle skulls. She
stepped over one of her men caught in the throes of the change. She ended his
struggles with another swift blow, but she never took her eyes off Bobby.
Her red hair was like a fiery halo
encapsulating her tanned face. She moved closer, stopping only to clear her
path.
Bobby tensed, watching her approach, but
at the same time he felt Howard slip away, and saw what his brother meant to
do.
No,
he shouted with his mind. He
reached outward, stretching his mental limits farther, farther than he ever had
before. His eyes burned as if they were about to melt out of their sockets. He
felt his thoughts separate then, felt them leave his mortal body and disperse
among the unimaginable spaces. The woman wavered and then she too was gone.
No, not yet
, he screamed.
He imagined what Howard wanted. He imagined his brother ignited in a release of
rising fire. The field rocked as the bomb from below exploded, ending them all.
He imagined the sounds, the smells, the lights, and then he left Howard in true
darkness. He isolated him, relegated him to the special compartment of his mind
he kept for the truly dead in his life.
Howard was dead. Dead to himself, dead
to Bobby, dead to the world, or so Bobby thought for him. It wouldn’t stick,
but it would buy him time.
As Bobby crashed back into his body, the
woman’s fist sent him spinning away. The sun was above and then below. A
stinging flash of pain. He slipped in the slush of battle, his world jumping up
and down before him.
“I see the truth of you now!”
Bobby sent the Creepers against her. She
spun in fantastic twists, ducking, weaving, while her fists made music. The
Creepers bit and scratched, but she was unfazed, unafraid, a maiden of pure terror.
Bobby was tempted to turn all of them
inward, but if they had any hope of ending this, he had to press what remained
of the army. He had to curtail the last dregs to ensure his piss poor attempt
at victory. He clutched the empty rifle in nervous hands.
* * * * *
Baylor dragged himself inside the
beast’s ruined maw. Years of painstaking metal work lay in ruin all around him.
The fruit of his efforts had been rendered into unrecognizable slag. He kept
pulling the trigger of Post’s handgun. The dry clicks kept his mind off the
inferno in his right side.
The sound of the Creepers lament was
enough to make a sane man roll over in defeat, but he was far from sane. He’d
cashed that check in decades ago. He moved into the second car, which was
relatively undamaged by the blast, the beast having absorbed most of the impact
directly. He flipped open the concealed compartment. Part of him hoped to find
Bobby safe inside. The sight of the lone rifle, like some slab of granite on a
neatly manicured spread, sent chills through his body.
He leaned against the peeling trim of
the car’s hallway. He slid down the wall with his shoulder to avoid the pain in
his broken right arm. The slight shift had him seeing another realm, one
composed entirely of raw nerve-induced pain. Flashes of red rent his mind as
bone scraped bone. He drew long sharp breaths to chase it away. Baylor lifted
the rifle out of the compartment and headed to the roof one pain-filled rung at
a time.
The field spread out before him in a
mural of pure madness, like something he’d glimpsed a terribly long time ago in
an almost forgotten art history book. Things that should not be pulled men
apart. Sporadic gunfire called out like the dying voice of a dying breed. All
around, what was left of the army fell under the constant press of the
Creepers. They ate bullet after bullet but they kept coming, and they were
coordinated.
Baylor’s heart stirred at the sight. The
Creepers moved in individual units, faster than he’d ever seen them move
before, searching out targets. They were hunting, stalking what was left of the
army. Baylor propped the long rifle on his knee and peered through the scope.
The sun bled onto the world, setting it
afire in shimmers of red and gold. The dead were about to rule the day once
more. Even something as sure as Moya’s army could not stand against them. No
one could. No one except Bobby. As Baylor watched the battle grind down, he
felt much like the dinosaurs did when watching the meteor burn through the
atmosphere. His time was almost up. There wasn’t room for those like him
anymore. The world was different now.
A shimmering wave of bright red drifted
between the crosshairs. Baylor froze. A callused fist struck, struck again, and
one lonely boy stood against the wave, his toy soldiers unable to help him.
Baylor settled his breath. Perhaps his
death rattle wasn’t quite ready yet.
* * * * *
“I see you!” Moya screamed. She swatted
the rifle away and drove her sharp knuckles into the boy’s gut. She spun low as
a group of the dead came for her. “They cannot defeat me! Tomorrow will come
and they will be forgotten!.” She came up in a rush of fists that splattered
rotting brains. Her blood became molten as Josh’s ghost burned away the
infection inside of her.
Moya grabbed the boy and pulled him
close. She squeezed his weary, bloody face. “I would’ve saved you. I would’ve
given you what I could not give him, but the world had different plans for both
of us, little one.” She let him go. Before his body hit the ground, her fists
connected up and down his torso.
“You’re wrong!” they moaned at her.
Moya turned around. Hundreds of dead
faces stared at her.
“You’re wrong!” they moaned again.
She laughed at them. Her eyes found the
boy’s pale lips as they whispered the same sentiment over and over and the
Creepers mimed right along. Nothing more than puppets. She picked the boy up
and cradled his head in her arms.
“You are worthy of a true death, a quick
death, and I would not degrade you with a second death if that were even
possible. You were so much more than they,” she said, recounting the deaths of
those that stared at her. Her mind opened the pages of their demise. “Goodbye.”
* * * * *
Bobby struggled against her iron grip.
His legs slipped in the mud. His fingers dug into her muscled arms, but he
could not break free. The air in his lungs depleted as the world wavered. He
worked his mind in overdrive, drawing the Creepers in. The conduit lighted and
pulsed then began to fade. His brother wandered in the dark on the other side
of his thoughts.
Their voices were gone. The monitors
gone. He heard her voice as if it were coming from so very far away. The world
became a pinpoint of light and regret.
Sophie held Randal against her pale
breast and reached out to Bobby. He took her cold hand. Together they walked
deeper into the darkness around them, moving into the intimate inky folds.
Then the world came rushing back in a
single, solitary, familiar crack. The red-haired woman’s head snapped back. Her
hands went limp and her spine rigid. She fell away, no longer a threat, a
hundred thousand unfulfilled ideas leaking out of her skull.
Bobby coughed. His mind worked in a
state of flux as the monitors snapped back on in rapid succession. He absorbed
the shock with ease, with a perfection he’d mastered without even knowing it.
The battle waned beyond the shield of
the dead. Men on foot and horseback broke for the hills, but the Creepers were
not quite done with them yet. Bobby cut off their escape.
He added them to the fold.
He reached out to Howard, to this
brother he did not know, but lived every day with.
* * * * *
He walked through the darkness alone,
though Jennifer’s voice lingered still. The weight of what he’d done fell away
with each step.
Am I dead?
He thought.
No.
His brother answered.
Howard was joined in the darkness by a
small boy on the verge of becoming a man. His black hair hung in his eyes and
his narrow frame looked as if it were about to take a grand stretch. A pale
hand flipped the hair from his eyes. Howard caught them in all their cold glory
as the darkness abated. It melted away and the truth of where he was became
reality once more.
“No,” Howard cried.
Bobby’s hand yanked the detonator from
him. “Yes.”
Howard blinked at the setting sun, or
was it tears of relief and guilt rolled into one? Those cold yet concerned eyes
stared at him as if they were waiting for something, for answers he didn’t have
and could never provide.
“Bobby,” Howard managed.
“Brother,” Bobby said, wrapping his arms
around Howard.
Howard hugged him back, releasing a
surge of light within. Amid all that chaos, hope had conquered doubt. But
somehow he managed to feel dirty, as the reality of his familial link with the
fate of this young boy settled on his shoulders. The fading testament to Doc
Danielson’s work—one broken boy and a broken man unsure of his place in the
world. They were murderers, avengers, apostles of a new age.
Bobby clapped Howard on the shoulder and
broke the embrace. Howard’s younger brother plucked a rifle from the hands of a
dead man.
“What are you doing?”
Bobby fell into the motions, letting his
nervousness and terrified glee loose on the unresponsive technology. He broke
the rifle down and rebuilt it in less than a minute. He buffed the bullets with
his shirt and loaded them into the rifle.
“It helps keep me from becoming like
them.” Bobby nodded towards the fields of slaughter.
Howard reached out to his brother.
“There is a better way.”
“Is there?”
Howard didn’t know what to say. He
wanted to impart some of his father’s wisdom onto his brother, but those eyes
spoke of deeper truths. Truths Howard was too afraid to face.
Howard . . . Howard . . . Howard . . .
He began to shake. His nerves frayed and
his eyes twitched, awaiting the flood of tears he knew were about to break.
Howard . . . Howard . . . How—
A loud crack rent the air as Jennifer
fell silent. Bobby stared down the sights of the sleek black weapon. Smoke
swirled around his stoic face. He racked the bolt and shouldered the weapon.
“She was not who you thought she was,
not anymore. Go to her, bury her or burn her, then leave her.” Bobby clasped
Howard on the arm. “But never forget her. That is all we can do to honor them.”
Howard’s relief came on the wings of
Bobby’s shot. It was instant and infinite, as if a terrible parasite had been
ripped violently from his body. He fell to his knees.