Rifles began to crack from above. Shell
casings clattered down the side of the beast. Death was upon them.
* * * * *
Sophie held Randal close, staring into
his deep dark eyes. Every time she did, she felt as if she were seeing Bobby
before the cruelty of the world placed its heavy hand on him. She tucked Randal
into his makeshift nook lined with steel plates and thick, warm blankets, then
she racked the shotgun.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because there’s no sense anymore,
that’s why,” Jamie said. She wrung her hands until they beamed an angry red.
“Fuck-shit, we try so hard to beat back the terrible things, the terrible
people, we try to sweep that mess out the house and not under the carpet like
my gran used to say. But it always comes back. They always come back.” She
pulled the shotgun from its rack under the kitchen counter, racked it and put
it back, then she did the same for the gun at her side. Sophie knew Jamie
wasn’t about to make the mistake of running out of ammo again should the car be
breached.
“I thought for so long I wouldn’t see
him again, we wouldn’t see him again,” Sophie said, touching Randal on his pale
forehead. “I-I think—” Sophie cringed as the rifles began to boom. Randal
winced, then smiled, rocking back and forth in his nook.
Jamie seemed at a loss for words. Sophie
wondered if she could feel the pain just as clearly as she knew it was etched
on her face. The fierce lines of love.
Jamie said, “Don’t let go of that love,
dear. Hold it tight and keep it close. When it gets bad, it’ll be all you have.
Nothing I say or do will make a difference then, but that love will. You fight
like I taught you. Stand defiant in the face of anything. We’re tough bitches.”
“Always,” Sophie said, wiping away the
tears.
“That’s right.”
* * * * *
Pathos One tapped furiously at the keys.
It was happening again. There was no escaping it. This flux in the world, the
steadily building rage, the explosions that begot explosions that became
inextinguishable fires tearing humanity apart from within. It would never end.
The train swayed hard. Three rounds sent beams of bright white light through
the dark cabin. More followed, like hard rain on tin roofs.
Pathos One dropped to the floor but kept
typing. Men yelled overhead, returning fire in short bursts, but above all the
noise he could pinpoint Bobby’s steady, brutally efficient shots, one after the
other. Carefully chosen targets exited this life on the dusty plains.
Pathos One closed the laptop. He grabbed
his AK-47 and bolted for the rear of the train. He opened the door between the
cars and fell back as a burst of automatic weapons fire ricocheted off the
thick steel. A tall lanky man with a gray beard fired at him from the back of a
horse. Its mouth was thick with froth—long, stringy strands trailing behind in
the wind. Another series of shots tore through the wood around the frame.
Pathos One rolled to his right and
opened fire. The man tried to pull the reins to exit the angle of fire, but his
reaction was too slow. Pathos One’s shots ripped his chest apart. He fell
backward off the horse. Pathos One got to his feet and cleared the gap between
the cars.
* * * * *
Who’s there?
Help.
Why?
They called to him, but he had no time
to comprehend their voices. Bobby aimed like the Folks taught him. He could
hear Ol’ Randy all those winters ago, ‘Center mass on a moving target. Don’t
get cute, Bobby. Focus. Give yourself the best opportunity to drop the sons of
bitches. Lot more ’an Creepers you need be worryin’ about.’ Those words never
rang more true. A squat man in a wide-brimmed hat worked the reins of his horse
hard. Bobby timed the rise and fall of the horse’s movements, counted the
beats, and fired. Accounting for the draft of the train and the elevation, his
bullet smashed the man’s chest and sent him back and off the horse, where his
body was crushed by the man behind him.
Bobby felt each thrump from Baylor’s
grenade launcher. Parts of horses and men and desert sand burst into the
endless blue sky. But they kept coming. More and more exited the dust cloud the
closer they got. The pounding of their hooves was terrifying.
Just before the bulk of the riders
reached the town, Bobby unleashed the Creepers. He aimed for the beasts of
burden, those hammering hooves. Disruption. The attackers were riding too hard
to stop their momentum. Bobby felt the bone-crunching impacts as thundering
beast met rotting flesh. The Creepers were enough to send men crashing into one
another.
Men
cried out to their brethren as they rode past, but were ignored for they were
already dead. The Creepers fell upon them, fed upon them, converted them, and
Bobby welcomed them into the fold.
Never let your guard down, son.
He had not. If he learned anything from
being raised by a diverse group of people in a highly unique situation it was
this: know your surroundings. He did, on a level so intimate he could
anticipate the next crumbling building with an uncanny accuracy. He’d sit and
watch them fall, calling them out to his father. He knew every street that had
been and every pitfall-filled avenue that was created after the shocks. They’d grown
in frequency over the last few years. The city was not safe. Another reason he
had to get out.
Jennifer thought she was in control
behind him. She thought she had the upper hand with the rifle, but she was
right where Howard wanted her. He slowly led them towards what used to be home,
but he took a route that would end in a familiar place, a dark place, a part of
the old city cracked open and exposed, and it was in that place he would show
her that all was not as it seemed.
He knew she would go for the rifle. She
couldn’t keep her eyes off it while she paced. She tried to keep him busy with
her words, but that nervous energy from the rush of the encounter gave her
away. Howard let her play that hand to see how far it would go. It ended at the
weapon. Not a very good hand at all.
His father told him once that the whole
city would sink into the ocean. He hadn’t believed it for the longest time,
even with the shocks coming regularly, but after the big one came he’d never
doubt the old man again.
He was twelve. There were still women
around back then, he remembered, as he led Jennifer towards the place from his
past. The shocks came in low rolling waves. Little jitters, Lem used to call
them. They made his feet tingle, and if you looked at the glass in the
buildings it looked like water for a second. By that time, he had already
started clearing the city. He was getting good at it, and it helped to have the
others around, though the killing affected them on a different level than it
did him.
He felt a profound sorrow. He felt those
thoughts. The last gasps. The loop of feedback imprints left on the human
brain. It always sounded like they were talking directly to him, but his father
was adamant that what he heard were nothing more than leftovers. Recordings
left in the brain. Howard never wanted to believe his father, and even to this
day he still had reservations. The voices were too intense, too real to be
discounted as such.
The others felt nothing but fury. Their
world had ended because of the Creepers, but ending them did not ease the
torment. It never did. Howard felt their human emotions just as he felt the
throes of the Creepers, but he could not use his gift to help them beyond
making easy targets of the dead. They smashed head after head in, cursing as
they went, carving a path through the enemies that held them in check for so
many years. They tore through them, through the day, and then it happened.
Howard could still feel it. The wobble
at first, then the terror as the world lifted beneath his feet, rising up and
down and up before slamming him down again. The metal of the great buildings
groaned like an enormous god that had awoken from a long slumber. He could see
the glass giants twist. Strange reflections of the sunlight fell like golden tears
before the windows shattered, showering them, shredding them. One of their
group, Tim Panders, was cut in two. Creepers littered the weeded streets, parts
of them twitching reflexively.
He recalled the Creeper he’d landed next
to. Thin yellow face, a mouthful of broken teeth, tongue poking through a hole
in its cheek. Its thick eyes darted back and forth but its body was gone. All
that remained was the torn base of its neck. It kept biting, biting nothing. In
Howard’s mind, he heard it growl, but he knew it was impossible. There were no
lungs left to create it, but that sound was so ingrained in him, he couldn’t
help but hear it. He wanted to put the thing out of its misery, but he never
got the chance.
The world opened up before him, taking
the head and a large chunk of the city street with it. Dust shot into the sky,
blocked out the sun, and the roars filled Los Angeles. The death throes of a
once great city. Buildings cracked in half, sliding into the darkness below in
explosions of decayed infrastructure. The earth moved, reminding him there was
always more to fear in the unpredictability of nature. Without man to keep pace
with her, nature sought fit to wipe the blemishes of progress from her face,
using the Creepers as her brush and time as her ink.
Howard walked towards that massive
crater now. He could see his father’s tomb clearly, which would have been
impossible years before. There were only a handful of large buildings left and
most of them were rusted, wind torn skeletons. Crumbling concrete fell from the
slightest touch, echoing around them.
“You get used to it after a time.”
Howard kept his tone even, but his mind plotted.
Jennifer flinched at each crunch of
rock, each strained metal groan. She was jittery, unsure.
As she should be
,
Howard thought.
“What’s happening?”
“Movements beneath the earth at our
feet, shifting plates, the execution of time. Things collapse, are reborn.
Cycles, always in cycles. Just as we were born after, as he was born before,”
Howard said, pointing at the now gray-skinned man. He could read the infection
on the man’s face. “Your friend might not be around long enough to tell you
what you want to know.”
“What do you know?”
“As the son of a doctor, I know a lot. I
know that right now his blood is in the process of becoming toxic to his
system. I know that he doesn’t have long to live, and we don’t have the
supplies necessary to save him. I know that once he dies—” Howard spun and
pointed at the man— “he will turn, and at that point he’ll be a liability.
Unless, of course, we ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“Get moving,” she said, pointing ahead
with her weapon.
“Suit yourself.” Howard shuffled
forward, exaggerating his way around a small fissure in the ground. The rusted
hull of a gutted bus poked out like a dead hand rising from the grave. Eerie
scraping and screeching rose from below.
Jennifer flinched again.
“It’s the rats. Don’t worry. They
usually wait until nightfall to come up. Nothing a bullet or two can’t handle,
if you see them before they see you.” He watched the confidence drain from her.
She was so out of her element. Exposed.
“Up ahead, we need to be careful. You
might want to put both rifles on your back.”
“Right.”
“Suit yourself.” Howard led them around
the corner.
What looked to be another dilapidated
city street opened onto a huge black pit that stretched for miles. Suddenly the
groan of the buildings was replaced by a rush of water, ebbing and flowing,
crashing against things unseen below. The jagged tip of what was once a shining
example of man’s ability pierced through the darkness and into the sky. Massive
birds perched upon it in the sun. The wind swept past them, salty, inviting.
“Madre.” The man coughed.
“Nature always claims her prize.”
It was beautiful, it was tragic, and it
was dangerous. Howard rarely ventured to this side because of the delicate
nature of the earth. It could give way at any second. One wrong step could set
off a chain reaction. He started around the left side, staying inches from the
lip. “We have to—” He leaped into the darkness. The sound of crashing waves
swallowed his fake scream.
He timed the fall just right, his feet
catching on the exposed façade of a crumbled building. He swung down into a
pitch black window, landing on the wall, and he allowed himself one look back.
The bright sky seemed so far away from down here, but he was only thirty feet
from the lip. The darkness was beyond deep. Even coming down here to scare his
father as a boy, with the aid of powered lights, it was as if the world had
been erased. Solid ground and then an endless, light-swallowing darkness. A
timeless tomb. All through the crooked hallways, the skeletons of Los Angeles
found their final resting place. He could even sense some Creepers, but they
were better left to their fates. He pushed them out of his mind.
With the roar of the ocean at his back,
he traced his famous route through the new underground and came up a block
behind Jennifer. He could hear her shouting for him over the edge.
Howard slipped into a weeded alley that
looked more at home in the jungles of Brazil than Los Angeles. The building to
his left was open to the elements. A large crack ran vertically from the alley
all the way to the roof, and it allowed access to an exposed staircase. Howard
took the steps carefully. He never trusted them, but they would get him to the
roof.
The salty air cooled the sweat on his
forehead. His breath came in quick gasps. It had been some time since he’d run
like that. He crawled on his belly through the dandelions. He could see Jennifer
pacing before the fissure. From his vantage point, he could see the sea spill
into the darkness. The view was not pleasant. It made him feel uneasy because
soon the building he was on, and the rest of the tombs, would pass into the
cool blue waters. He had to get out. It was now or never.
“Welcome to my city, Jennifer, my home.
Isn’t she beautiful?” Howard’s voice echoed through the empty city. “She’s
yours now. I cleaned her and everything. I’ve been trapped here most of my
life. She is all I know, and now I have a chance to be rid of her, and you come
along. You’re like so many of the others my father dealt with over the years.
But I believe behind all that grit, all those terrified responses, I believe
there’s a wrong that needs right.”
“Come out!”
Howard laughed. The run through the
tombs had invigorated him. He felt the importance of what he was about to do,
and for once it did not scare him. His father had tried to prepare him for this
day, but the truth of it was he had to do it himself. The razor thin edge of
decision stretched out before him and he hit it at a run.
“You have two choices, Jennifer. Let me
help or—” Howard bounced up— “kill me now! I’m right here!” He stood, waving
his hands and smiling in her direction.
Jennifer spun to find him, but she did
not raise the rifle. The man lay crumpled at her feet in a fetal shiver.
“Don’t you see? There is nothing left
here for anyone! I can help you. I already have. You’d be dead if it weren’t
for me. Truth be told, I never killed a man until yesterday. You’ve made me a
murderer, but I can make you the victor.”
“You’re nothing but a lunatic with a
death wish.”
Howard felt the man exit life the
instant of his last heartbeat. A flicker of light in his thoughts, and then he
sensed all those imprints: cattle cars being pulled by horses, human hands
groping through the bars, Creepers marching beside them, men speaking many
languages, shouting. He felt queasy from the rush, but he let the sensation
pass and gained control of his prize. He made the man rise slowly, quietly.
“Look behind you, Jennifer!” Howard
mimicked a low moan and the newly born Creeper obeyed.
Jennifer’s shot was wild, catching the
Creeper in the shoulder. She readied another round.
“Don’t you see! I can help you!” Howard
made the Creeper drop to its knees and bow its head, one good arm out wide in a
mock bow. “It’s up to you!”
Howard’s heart beat wildly. He had
played his hand. He let his secret be know, much to the dismay of his dearly
departed father. But he would not resign himself to the life his father
suffered through. He remembered the garden of stone from the song, remembered
his father’s words always.
Jennifer pressed the muzzle of the rifle
against the Creeper’s head and fired. Wet brains and skull splattered on the
ground as the body fell into the dark waters below.
“I know where they are!” Howard shouted,
as he recalled the images that had flooded his mind.
* * * * *
Howard set their camp near the edge of
the city under a crumbling concrete overpass. The coyotes howled the coming of
the night, and the Santa Anna winds whistled through the bones of yesterday.