“Don’t. That’s what’s left of Wyoming
Blue,” Bobby said. His eyes no longer closed in concentration but from utter
exhaustion. “And my brother.”
“Brother? But they’re dead.”
“There were more than the five of us.
Remember the journal?” Bobby opened his eyes. He found twin slivers of silver
moonlight staring at him. “It’s a long story. Too long for tonight. We’re going
home.” Sleep took Bobby far away.
Baylor shook his head. The lights
drifted closer, finding a path between the packed Creepers.
* * * * *
Bobby greeted the dawn with a smile. He
stood on the tracks before the train with the army of Creepers surrounding him.
Baylor mingled with the women from the caravan. Old friends apparently, but
Bobby would get to know them later.
It was a long way back east under the
power of the dead. He was waiting for his brother, and as the sun’s rays warmed
his cheeks, he began to worry he would not show. He could use the bond given to
them by their mothers to find him, to talk, but he wanted this meeting to be
face to face. A final goodbye. Something he didn’t get to give to Paul, Bryan,
Pete, or Ryan.
Howard’s narrow frame came into view. He
stumbled along the tracks, unaware of his surroundings. He was too busy tapping
at a device in his hand to notice anything at all.
“Won’t you come with us?” Bobby asked,
but he already knew the answer to the question by the look on Howard’s face.
“No, there are many of our siblings left
out there. I’d like to find them, to know them as I know you. I owe it to my
father and mother, to all of the parents that gave everything so we could
survive.”
“If you change your mind, just follow
the tracks.” Bobby extended his hand and Howard did the same. He felt all his
older brother’s conflicting thoughts, but he let them be. They were Howard’s
demons and Howard’s alone. He shook his hand with a heartbreaking understanding
that he would never see his brother again.
“They need to know the world can be
changed. My father always preached it to me, as if he hoped by brute force I’d
listen, but I never did. Not in the way he wanted me to. I had to taste the
ashes in my mouth before I could understand the fire he always warned about.
Maybe that’s the way of things, Bobby. Maybe we’ll never listen until after
we’ve made our own mistakes, created our own regrets.” Howard dropped the
device into his pocket and shook Bobby’s hand once more. He clasped his brother
on the shoulder and turned to go.
“Remember what I said: leave them but
never forget them,” Bobby said. His eyes held a somber peacefulness.
Howard nodded. “Until we meet again,
Bobby.”
“All aboard! All aboard! Next stop North
Carolina! Let’s go, kid. We got plenty of daylight to burn!” Baylor whistled
from above.
Bobby grabbed hold of the beast’s
damaged spikes and pulled himself up. He brought the Creepers close and set
them to work. They piled against the train and each other. The gears and wheels
screeched and groaned. The field was left to the scavengers behind them.
Bobby watched his brother wave from the
hilltop as the Creepers pushed the train along, farther and farther from the
bloody field. He never took his eyes off Howard—a lone figure silhouetted
against an intensely deep blue sky that ran forever. His brother held up a
closed fist. Bobby sighted it with the rifle and quickly dropped the scope as
he glimpsed the detonator.
A massive fireball erupted behind
Howard, rippling the tracks and earth like a roaring wave. The flames licked
the heavens. Bobby fell over from the shock of the explosion as he was buffeted
by waves of superheated air. When he popped back up and sighted the hilltop, he
found Howard standing with arms outstretched, basking in the warmth of what
he'd laid to rest. Howard’s silhouette waved and skipped along, his shoulders
no longer burdened.
Bobby
watched his brother go. He watched him take the tracks along the rolling black
river until Howard was no longer in view. He stayed with him even farther,
lingering in Howard’s mind, a constant quiet companion, until the distance
became too great and the connection was broken.
The dead man stood in the tobacco fields
as he had for the past several days. The bodies of those that came before lay
hidden behind the deep, dark green leaves of the coming harvest. The dead man
did not budge or sway or show any signs of life beyond that endless stare.
Birds pecked at the remnants of his face, and one even absconded with a
sundried eyeball. Leaves stirred in the wind, but the dead man did not. Rain
ran down his rotting visage, soaked the rags that covered his dead flesh, but
the dead man never budged.
He watched.
Pathos One drew a bead on The Creeper’s
broken face and readied a shot, but Jamie’s voice stopped him.
“Thought I’d find you up here. Can’t you
mourn with the rest of us and leave it be?”
Pathos One shrugged off the intrusion
and breathed out. He fired. The round caught the Creeper low in its mouth,
shattering brittle jaw, jostling it, but was of little consequence to it. It
continued to stare up the hill from the lush tobacco fields, unmoving.
“Shit,” he hissed as he settled his aim
once more. He fired again. This time the Creeper dropped instantly as greasy,
yellow and black putrescence splattered the beautiful green leaves.
“I’ll not mourn them until I have good
reason to,” Pathos One said stiffly. He bit the cork from a bottle of vintage
whiskey and slugged it back. He’d regained an affinity for the stuff since the
trek east. It wasn’t healthy, but it helped him regulate his emotions.
“Suit yourself. It’s best to make peace
so you don’t lose yourself to the pain.” Jamie rested her hands on her wide
hips. Her breasts threatened to escape the confines of her long patchwork
dress.
“There is no pain, Jamie. They’re not
dead. I know it beyond a doubt. That boy—” Pathos One jumped up as another
Creeper took up the mantle of the watch.
“What is it?”
“We’re being watched.” Pathos One held
his shot this time. “Started earlier in the week.”
“What do you mean watched?” Jamie
shrugged off a shiver as worry dappled her blotchy cheeks.
“Exactly that, Jamie, watched. It’s just
like Bobby. I can’t explain it. When I saw him move them, when he laid waste to
that Settlement, the way they moved, the way they looked at things, at me, at
him.” Pathos One lowered the rifle and found Jamie’s wide eyes. “There was this
sense that it wasn’t them looking through their eyes, but him. It was eerie,
and it’s what I feel now.”
“Do you think it’s them?” Jamie’s voice
was on the verge of cracking.
“No.” Pathos One shook his head. “That’s
what worries me. There were more, many more than him, and what do we do when
they can do what he did?”
“I have to get Connor. He needs to know
and maybe he can help,” Jamie said, her long dress fluttering as she turned.
“We need Bobby. We need him bad. I don’t
know how much longer they’re going to let me blank them while they’re on their
watch. They’re out there somewhere. Bobby said it didn’t have a long range. So
they’re out there. Probably just beyond the tree line on the other side of the
field.” He fired and dropped another one. Moments later a woman in a
blood-covered dress, armless, a host of rotten organs hanging from her open
stomach, continued the watch in place of her comrade. “You see?”
“Oh dear. Connor needs to know and you
need help up here, stranger.”
“Is that all I am,” Pathos One quipped.
“It’s how I will always know you.
Regardless of what I now know about you and your names and reasons for them, to
me you’ll always be the stranger we picked up on our annual trip west. Does
that bother you?” She smiled.
“If we were in the old world, it would
have driven me mad, but in the present it doesn’t matter in the least. Get the
good doc. We need to start formulating a plan.”
Jamie crossed herself and left with a
curt nod.
Pathos One licked his lips and lowered
his sights on the dead woman.
* * * * *
The boy hardly knew him and now he was
gone. She was sure of it. So many months had passed, so many friends dead, and
now they were back home, each of them alone, locked in their own private hell.
They hid their scars well, though, when the dark hours came. That time when the
boy was asleep and nothing stirred but the cool mountain breeze. During those
times, she let the tears fall. Many a night she spent sobbing into her pillow,
at a complete loss as to how she would carry on for the child, for herself, for
the rest of their group. It just didn’t seem possible on those long sleepless
nights, not possible at all, not to her, but then dawn would come and chase
away the chill and Randal would stir and begin to babble and she would remember
him, and remember what he gave so they could carry on.
She left flowers on an empty grave. A
small wooden marker reminded her of the lie she told herself, but it was
necessary. Otherwise she’d sit atop the wall like the stranger and stare and
wait and decay while her child aged without her. She couldn’t do that. She owed
Bobby’s memory that much, and so Sophie kept going, gutting it out, like the
love she’d known only the briefest of moments in her wild life. Those few, but
ever powerful moments that propelled her onward.
She walked with Randal hand in hand, her
body canted at an angle to accommodate his height.
He kicked at the long grass while shouting,
“Gasss, gasss, gasss?”
“Yes, honey, it’s grass. Green grass.”
Sophie squeezed Randal’s tiny hand to affirm his keen observation. He had his
father’s serious gaze. She could see so much of Bobby in their son, or was it
her longing that applied those features for her comfort? She picked up the
pace, not wanting to dwell on that thought.
“Geen gasss,” Randal yelled.
“That’s right.”
Sophie followed the path around Connor’s
cabin. Rough wooden beams, beaten and stripped by the unseasonably long winter,
dominated the single window structure. Wires and reclaimed pieces of technology
covered the cabin, like thousands of multicolored snakes. All manner of dish
and antenna and other instruments covered the low angled roof, like some
robotic porcupine. She could hear voices coming from the open door.
The sun was setting and the air was
thick with pine smoke. Guards and scouts milled about, but most of the others
were locked up in their homes.
“I don’t trust him, Jamie,” Connor said
in his familiar New England accent. Sophie always found it endearing, but the
others seemed to be annoyed by it.
“Man saved me, saved my girl, and that
baby. He fought for us, fought for Baylor!” Jamie cried, a loud slap followed
her words as her fist collided with Connor’s counter.
“Baylor’s dead for all we know,” Connor
shouted back.
“He may very well be, but that doesn’t
change what’s happening out there!” Jamie turned, catching a glimpse of Sophie
with Randal in her arms as she stood in the doorway. “Good,” she said with a
huff. “Tell this nutney about the stranger. Tell him everything!” Jamie waved
her hands in the air.
“He already knows. Don’t you old man?”
Sophie said.
“I do. Just said I don’t trust him.
Doesn’t mean I discredit everything that he’s done for you all. Can’t a man
have his opinions, woman?” Connor lowered his glasses and rubbed the bridge of
his nose. His bushy eyebrows arched like the arms of some cartoon wolfman.
“I’ve been up there.” He gestured out the window, towards the wall. “I’ve sat
with him and observed. I know the story in great detail, and I spent many
nights with Baylor on the subject before he went back for the boy. The skeptic
in me says something weird is going on, but the chances of what the nut in me
thinks is going on—” Connor opened his arms wide— “are pretty fucking good.”
“Who’s watching us?” Jamie gave a
resounded sigh.
“Why are they watching us?” Sophie added
as she hugged Randal tight to her breast.
“Because of him.” Connor nodded at the
boy.
Sophie half turned her body as if to
protect Randal from the implications. “No, not my son.”
“He may be that, but he is also
something else. Just like his father, just like the rest of them. We still have
no clue what those people unleashed. Hell, I don’t even know what the little
guy is working with. Beyond the initial sample, I just don’t know. When he was
an infant, the blood showed me the immunity, but there’s more work to be done.
A lot of hard work, and it will require more blood.”
“He’s not a damn pin cushion, Connor.
He’s my son.” Sophie kissed Randal on top of the head.
“As I am well aware, my dear, well
aware, and I’d just as soon inflict great physical pain on myself than harm
him. But we need answers, and in order to do that I need him. And I’ll need one
of them, maybe more.”
“Out of the question.” Jamie shook her
finger in Connor’s face. “Not going to happen. With Baylor gone, seniority
falls on me, and I’ll not have them inside our camp. Too many mistakes can be
made. They’re unpredictable.”
“I disagree. They’re very predictable.
Absolutely so. You see, just the other day I was walking the southern fence
with Sophie and young Randal and we had several visitors. You know what I
noticed as we walked?”
Jamie rested her hands on her wide hips.
“They were completely dormant. Shut off.
No moaning, no scratching at the fence, nothing at all. The second the little
guy exited stage left, they were back at their old tricks. Let me find out
why.” Connor stood. Grabbing Jamie by the shoulders, he stared into her eyes.
“Let me help us, all of us. This is our chance. Chances like this don’t come
along often. Maybe once every couple hundred years. We finally have a weapon to
use against them. Let me find out what the connection is. I love you both and
love this brave little boy with all my heart. Let me do this. I won’t let you
down and I won’t harm him.”
Jamie turned to face Sophie. “As his
mother, it’s up to you.”
Sophie bit her lip. Little Randal stared
up at her. His chubby innocent face knew not a single word they spoke. He did
not yet know their world. Sophie was silently thankful for that. She couldn’t
bear to open his eyes until it was absolutely necessary. She wanted him to
remain an oblivious child forever, but knew it could never happen. However, she
was damn sure she wasn’t about let it happen earlier than it needed to.
“No,” she said.
Connor’s shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Then that’s settled.” Jamie gave a
smile and a wink. “In the mean time, what do we do about the watchers? It’s why
we’re here after all.”
“We prepare.” Sophie squeezed Randal
again, silently wishing Bobby were with them. No, she mustn’t tread in those
thoughts. He was gone, they were gone.
“I’m with Sophie. We gear up for the
worst possible event.” Connor wrung his hands. The look of disappoint over Sophie’s
decision was evident in the whorl-like wrinkles around his eyes.
“What is the worst possible event?”
Jamie asked. “Horde? Organized army like we ran into out west? Or something
else?”
“How about both for starters,” Connor
said. “We can defend this place against many outcomes. It was designed for just
that purpose. So we do what we’ve always done. We prepare as Sophie has
suggested and we hunker down. We keep knocking them down as they come to watch.
It’ll help thin them out, if anything.”
“I want scouts out there,” Jamie said
with a finger on her chin.
“You’re in charge, Jamie. Only a few of
us dinosaurs left now,” Connor said with a hint of sadness in his voice.
“They’ll listen to you. You’re our mother. They will fight just as hard, if not
more so, than they did for Baylor. Make the call. I’ll do what I can to help.”