Looking up at his brother, he said, “I
couldn’t do it . . . I couldn’t do it.”
“None of us should have to, but it’s our
way of life,” Bobby said, staring off into the distance. The dead swirled and
swarmed over the fields, devouring parts of the fallen while many of the newly
dead returned to life and joined them. The cycle of the infection never
breaking, always moving, propelled by the hunger of the parasites.
Howard shook his head and stood. The
detonators clinked as he swayed unsteadily.
Bobby caught him. “No one should have
what’s beneath us. No one.”
“No one will.” Howard smiled. “There are
innocents among them. Jennifer’s people. People who have suffered long at the
hands of a mad woman and her army. For what? So much death and for what, Bobby?
Does it ever end?”
“No,” Bobby said sharply. His deep dark
eyes looked beyond the fields onto his own painful memories. Then a brightness,
like a streaking meteor, came across his eyes. “But it can get better. There
are things beyond death, beyond this war. Things that have always been here,
but are forgotten time and time again—” Bobby turned in place. His head
twitched for a second. “The women are alive.”
Howard smiled then turned away. He went
to bury Jennifer’s corpse. The wind stirred the long grass and the Creepers
moaned right along with it. High-pitched screams piped at odd intervals
throughout the long day, but they too turned to moans.
Bobby found Baylor using a hammer on the
badly damaged train. He stepped around the bodies as if they were normal parts
of the natural landscape. In the back of his mind, he watched his brother bury
his love. He adjusted his thoughts to block the imagery. Baylor hammered a
piece of bent metal clumsily with his left arm. His right arm was tied in a
sling made from his torn jacket.
“Thank you,” Bobby said, sitting down on
the scorched metal beside Baylor.
“Fucking still owe you one, kid. Don’t
think we’re even yet,” Baylor said with a grunt. He brought the hammer down
again then flipped it over his shoulder and laughed. “Who the fuck am I
kidding? Twenty years to make her, all that time, that effort…” Baylor sat down
next to Bobby.
The sun spilled purple-orange across the
black horizon. A chill wind howled over the hills as the night announced its
coming. Bobby watched Baylor wipe a cold sweat from his bloodied brow.
“Long time ago, when I was a little
older than you are now, I had this job. Used to fill the shelves at a pet
store.”
“A what?”
“They have dogs on the Settlement?”
Baylor asked. His wild, wide eyes parenthesizing the shock on his face.
“Yeah, they used them to help herd the
cattle.” Bobby laid the dead man’s rifle across his lap and began to break it
down.
“Well it was a place to get dogs and the
supplies to keep them. I used to stack bag after of bag of dog food. Day in day
out, week in week out. It was this rapid cycle of consumption. We had these big
bins and we’d fill them with cow ears. We’d get these things in boxes by the
thousands. Most days I didn’t even think about what I was doing, you know?
“Just get them filled. Had to keep them
filled. Cow ears, pig ears, bones. Fill them and keep them filled. Then one
day, I’m elbow deep in ears, ears that once belonged to a living breathing
thing. I’m there looking at them, knowing each pair were part of a whole animal
at one point. They’re all tattooed with numbers. And the enormity of the brutal
process really hit me. Wasn’t a non meat eating thing either.
“It was something else. It was a
recognition of what we’d allowed ourselves to become. We became a far more
efficient cycle than nature herself, savagely so, turn and burn. And it didn’t
matter who we had to lead us, where he or she came from, it didn’t matter. The
cycle was the same. It ground us down and chopped us up, divided us just like
those parts and sold every last bit of us back to ourselves, and we welcomed it
with open arms. We filled our guts with it. Our lives in neatly stocked bins on
a store shelf.” Baylor threw a charred chunk of the beast out into the
darkening field.
“Turn and burn. I realized it was
someone’s idea of how things should be. When I looked at her, listened to her,
I knew I’d come to another realization. I’d come to witness another cycle.
There was one common factor in the creation of both of them, Bobby, and it
didn’t have to do with our age or what time we came from. No, didn’t have shit
to do with people from before the war started, nothing to do with us dinosaurs.
“But it has everything to do with people
allowing things to happen. Back then, before the war, before the infection
started. We’d already started to give up the fight. We just let it happen, and
when those of us not willing to surrender tried to stand, we were slapped down.
Just like Wyoming Blue when it came time to face her army.”
“We didn’t fall to them.”
“No.” Baylor squeezed Bobby’s shoulder.
“No, we didn’t. Don’t ever give in for a false sense of security. Don’t ever
give in, Bobby. She promised them freedom from the fear of the Creepers, from
fear of the infection, but in the end—” Baylor waved his hand around and
settled his pointing finger on Bobby— “You showed her the error of her ways.”
“If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be
having this conversation right now.”
“Fair enough, kid, but what I’m trying
to say is don’t let her happen again. When it’s Randal’s time to step up, when
I’m long fucking gone from this world, when you’ve scattered my ashes in the
hills back east.” Baylor stared Bobby down with his crazy eyes. “When that time
comes, you tell him what I told you. You tell him about what happened here. You
warn him. You do whatever you have to do to make him understand it can never
happen again. The cycle cannot be allowed to start. It’s about time we changed
the way of things anyway.”
Bobby nodded. He dropped the last of the
shells into the rifle and slipped it onto his back.
“It’s getting dark. We’d better get some
shuteye. I’m still trying to figure out how we can get the beast going, but
It’s not looking good. We don’t have enough hands to get her going again.”
“We have all the hands we need,” Bobby
said, the darkness hiding the smile that parted his lips.
* * * * *
Howard found an old woman nervously
clutching her hands to her chest. Her wrinkled face spoke of many years passed
under harsh conditions, yet there was a brightness behind her light gray eyes.
A cable full of burning oil lamps stretched along the broken windows of the old
school bus, lighting the small caravan and casting odd shadows on the trembling
women standing behind their heavily armed matron.
“Something strange going on here,” she
said, racking a shotgun. A pair of long rifles crisscrossed on her back and
several scared sets of eyes peered around her wiry frame. Her long gray hair
tumbled down her shoulders like sheets of dirty ice. Her lips pursed, setting a
series of bark-like runnels around them and down her chin.
“They will not harm you,” Howard said,
waving his empty hands at the swath of Creepers moving towards the top of the
hill.
“Ain’t them I’m worried about, but I’ll
harm you if you take another step, sir,” she said, leveling the shotgun at him.
She peered down the sight. “Long have we suffered by the likes of you.” She
nodded at the headless body at her feet. “Never again. I suggest you move
along.”
“I plan on it,” Howard said calmly. “I’m
not one of them. I only wanted to let you know she did this for you.” Howard
let the words ripple on the cool breeze. “I met her in California. I saved her
and she saved me. Every step of the way she reminded me about all of you. She
never forgot. She gave everything for you and me.” Howard nodded slowly. There
was nothing left for him here. He’d done what was asked of him. He’d done what
he promised her he’d do. He’d buried her. It was time to move on, time to try
and forget, but where and how?
The woman took his words fine enough,
her deep resolve unshaken, then a slight tremor shook the lines upon her face.
Tiny cracks in her brave façade caused a leak of tears to run from her tired
eyes. “Jennifer.” The shotgun fell from her hands. Many voices carried from the
deep shadows behind her.
“Is she here?”
Howard shook his head. His own tears ran
streaks of reflected orange down his face as the lanterns flared in the stiff
breeze. They rattled against the rusted shell of the old school bus, joining
the almost constant ululations of the Creepers and the wind. It was as if
Jennifer were speaking from far beyond the finality of death.
Howard turned to leave then stopped.
“There is a place back east, a place for all of you.”
“What about you?” the woman asked.
“There are still some things I need to
settle before I can leave.” The massive bomb beneath their feet wavered in his
mind, along with what lay beyond the hastily erected walls. He would ensure no
one would ever want or possess the dust covered relics of old. That time had
come and passed. “Go to the train. My brother is there. He can help. She
would’ve wanted that assurance for you.”
“And what do you want, sir?” The woman
rubbed the tears away with the back of her hand and retrieved the shotgun.
“I want us to forget everything that
came before.” Howard clutched the old phone in his pocket. A trickle of
hypocrisy ran through him, but he did not shy away from it. What he needed to
remember of the past was the only thing of any importance now. The wars, the
rules, the ideas, the technology, none of it helped to change anything for the
better. They were still knee deep in the blood of each other, on another
smoking field. All that he needed from it was what his father left him with.
His brothers and sisters were all that mattered now, at least to him. If he
could just reach them, speak with them, know them on the level he now knew
Bobby, then maybe everything would make sense. Maybe one of his siblings would
have the answers he sought. Or maybe it was all one drawn out tortuous fantasy
to give his life meaning. There were too many variables, too many raw emotions
spiraling within after his brush with death to even begin to put the pieces
together.
“We’re too stubborn to forget, sir. It’s
just not in our nature to,” she said.
“I guess we’re a different breed then,”
he said, tracing the outline of the sleek device, knowing he had the same
problem. If only they could all follow in the late Doc Danielson’s footsteps,
but then again even the good doctor couldn’t escape it. The messages and
locations proved that.
“If you decide not to head east, don’t
linger here,” Howard said. He turned away, unable to face the woman’s deep
eyes. There was something beyond pain in them—a pair of mirrors reflecting
feelings still very prevalent in his mind. “It won’t be safe.”
Howard left the woman and headed towards
the train. He looked inward, hearing his brother’s mind as if he were right
next to him calling out orders.
Left, center, right, mark, column shift,
mark
.
On and on Bobby’s thoughts ordered the Creepers about, moving them to the
hilltop, structuring them. Howard felt their human ends. He plodded up the
death covered hill. The train caught the last of the sun’s light like some
waiting god, all sharp talons and twisted imagery, with a flock of worshippers
at its charred feet.
* * * * *
Bobby sat atop the train. His feet
dangled over the edge. Rows of neatly stacked monitors stretched throughout the
infinite space of his mind. He heard Baylor huff next to him, but he kept his
focus on the thousands of rotting minds that surrounded the train.
“The cars are unlocked,” Baylor said.
“This is crazy, kid, fucking crazy.”
“You’re the only one that’s crazy,”
Bobby said. His eyes were closed as his hands found the familiarity of his
Remington. He traced the synthetic stock with his fingertips. The weapon kept
him centered and he used it as a talisman as he maneuvered the Creepers. He cleared
a path from the head of the beast all the way along one side and for thirty
yards of track behind it. He began to pile Creepers beneath the beast’s head.
Their writhing, worm-ridden bodies pressed against the unforgiving steel. Bobby
added more, lining the sides. He ordered them to take hold of the gears, to
take hold of any available steel they could find, and he continued to add them
until they began to ease the scorched and gnarled metal beast from the track.
The train shifted beneath him. Baylor cursed,
grabbing hold of the iron railings to steady himself. By the light of the moon,
the Creepers lifted the train from the tracks and turned it eastward.
“Engine might be shot, but there’s
enough of them to get us home,” Bobby said. Sweat broke across his brow. He
swayed with the Creepers as they moved, one hand held up as if he were
conducting a symphony.
The Creepers followed their master’s
commands, and by the witching hour, they had the train back together and facing
east. There were many, their limbs snapped or broken off from the effort, that
stared oblivious into the darkness.
Baylor leaned on his knee, staring into
the dark skies of the west. Moonlight glinted off his head as he shook it.
“Never going to make it to the coast, kid.”
“You going to give up that easy?” Bobby
fell back, depleted. He looked into the star-speckled sky as he let the cool
air comfort him. “Besides, we have all the hands we need to make it happen, but
first we go home.”
“You’re right. Wouldn’t be the same
without them,” Baylor said. A row of orange lights caught his eye. He reached
for his freshly reloaded pistol.