The Creepers (14 page)

“Here,” Ecky said, handing him the
rifle. “Not ideal quarters for that weapon, but stay here, get warm, if
anything other than me walks through door . . . you know what to do.”

The rifle looked massive in Bobby’s
small hands, though, he handled it with expert skill, taking a position at the back
of the room with a clear line of sight on the door. It was most certainly not
an ideal position. There was only one way out of the room and the smoke from
the fire didn’t help matters.

“I clear out place, and then we figure
out course of action." Ecky pinched Bobby’s cheek and slapped him on the
shoulder. He had nothing to offer the boy in the consoling department. His
knowledge and determination would have to do instead.

He cleared the doorway and moved down
the hall, pausing every few steps to listen. The exit-button-pusher stared at
him with empty sockets. He wondered how bad things got at the end. Ecky could
never end it that way, at least, as long as he was not infected. If the Fection
took him he’d end it without a second’s thought. He kept moving.

The hall ended abruptly. To the left,
furniture was piled high, along with more filing cabinets, containing bills
that would never be paid. The debris completely blocked the door, that Ecky
guessed, led to the bells and whistles of the plant. To the right, another
long, dark throat of a hall.

Thump . . . thump-thump.

Ecky clicked the flashlight towards the
sound. He nearly dropped it. Midway down the hall the body of a plant worker
hung from the ceiling by a length of wire. One of its legs had been gnawed off,
most of the lower jaw was gone, the eyes were gone, a rat taunted Ecky’s light
from the dead man’s shoulder. The wind had picked up, and it whistled down the
hall, causing the body to sway. The remaining foot bumped an empty water cooler
. . . thump . . . thump-thump.

Beyond the body a set of stairs rose
into the darkness. Leaving the rat to its meal Ecky shined the flashlight up
the stairs. Bits of dried leaves coated everything, he had to be careful where
he stepped. It was clear to him what had transpired on the first floor of the
plant. He had seen similar events over the years. The man hanging from the
rafter went well before the other men, and most likely didn’t want them to
waste the bullet on him. The world had become a hell, each little pocket of
death, an epitaph to the lives lost.

Ecky fought with the unwieldy
flashlight. It was too big to mount on the carbine, and would make firing the
weapon, awkward at best. Once he cleared the place he needed to concoct
something to keep his hands free.

The second floor was completely open,
with a row of shattered windows on the far wall. The tail end of the blizzard
howled, sending gusts of snow into the open area. Rows of server banks were
piled against the back wall. Something flapped out of the cone of the
flashlight. Ecky snapped to it. Fluttering in the wind was a white sheet. Each
blast of winter wind revealed the body it covered. There were at least a dozen
more alongside it. Each sheet-covered corpse had a deep crimson stain about the
head area. Judging from the exposed body and its lack of blue coveralls Ecky
guessed these were the plant’s office workers. No sign of Creeper of activity
was present. Ecky left the tomb and double timed it down the stairs. As he hit
the last step a single shot disrupted the eerie sounds.

Ecky ran around the hanging corpse and
turned down the hall gun raised.

“Clear, I shot us dinner,” Bobby said,
waving him to lower his weapon.

“Bobby—”

“I know, but I couldn’t let it get it
away. We need food." Bobby held up a fat raccoon by its tail.

Ecky breathed a little easier, but he
still wasn’t satisfied with their shelter. They were too exposed, and there was
a lot of night left to get through.

While Bobby cleaned and prepped the
raccoon Ecky went about setting up a feeble blockade at the door. It wouldn’t
really stop anything that wanted in, but it would give them warning, and enough
time to fall back to the second floor if need be.

They took shifts throughout the night.
Ecky never really sleeping. His stomach turned. He wondered what exactly the
raccoon had been eating all this time.

Bobby pretended
to wake from sleep as Ecky patted his shoulder. It was his turn for watch duty.
Ecky added some broken furniture and paper to fuel the dying fire, and then
turned in. The engineer fell asleep the second his eyes closed.

Bobby watched
the shadows dance to the musical bellows and howls of the wind. The raccoon had
his stomach feeling greasy, and he feared that at any moment he’d throw up. The
last thing he needed on top of a shattered existence was dehydration.

What do I do now? He thought. There had
been tears, however brief, but that had been the extent of his grieving. A
strange numbness dominated him now, even though the gruesome deaths of his
brothers played on the big screen of his memory, he did not feel rage, or hate,
or pain . . . he felt nothing. Was that because he, like his brothers, was
different? He didn’t understand any of it. He only knew that he had been
bitten, and yet, he did not turn. A freak. A useless freak. A brother-less
freak.

Bobby moved his stiff legs, standing
over the fire, breathing the acrid smoke, he warmed his hands and tried to let
it all out, but the boy forced to become a man too soon didn’t know how, and
lacking the traditional familial structure, he’d never know. He checked his
rifle, rechecked it, and listened to the strange sounds of the plant.

The night was cold, and a sharp wind
ripped through the hallway, stirring leaves, creaking doors, making a ruckus.
So unlike the Settlement’s perpetual quiet. Bobby realized then, amid those new
sounds, that he was in another world. He had entered the world of stories, of
tall tales from grizzly veterans, he had entered the very pages of history. It
was then that numbness left him and the fear settled in. He knew, had it
drilled into him, what lurked beyond the walls. And it wasn’t the Creepers that
scared him . . . it was the people.

There were those, he remembered from an
eleventh winter lesson, that chose to abandon all hope, those that treated
human and Creeper with equal malice. They killed to get what they wanted and
needed, savages, pillagers of the just, Pastor Craven had called them. As Bobby
warmed his hands over the fire he recalled the story of the Snowman.

The Snowman had been a doctor before the
Fection hit, and he wasn’t one of those profiteering doctors. He was a genuine
human being, out to help the sick, the poor, and he continued along this course
of action well after the world collapsed. The Snowman became a legend, a
traveling executor of the twice-dead, and a savior of the ill. He traveled the
country on horseback like some tale from the old west come to life, dispensing
justice and medicine. He wanted no part in letting the world slip back into the
dark ages. But fate is a cruel thing indeed.

As the legend goes . . . the Snowman was
somewhere on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wary of the horde of undead
swarming the city, the Snowman was observing from afar when he caught sight of
the woman. She was dirty, ragged clothes, scabby knees, wild hair and terrified
eyes. She looked like so many of the refugees he’d encountered along the
derelict highways across America, barely hanging on. She was surrounded by
several Creepers, and all she had to defend herself was her wits, and piece of
rotted tree trunk. She began to tire from her efforts of self preservation.

The Snowman, ever the purveyor of good
in such dark times, intervened. On horseback he came in, rifle firing, 
the newly dead becoming eternally dead, but he should have kept his attention
on the woman and the shadows, instead of the obvious threat of the undead.

Several armed men stepped out from their
hiding places and the woman produced a small handgun from under her shirt.
Their trap worked to perfection and all that was left of the Snowman was
legend, stories told to teach a lesson, to create a warning, a parable to help
shape decisions, if in fact, he existed at all.

Ecky snored loudly, snapping Bobby out
of the memory. Exhaustion was a powerful thing, for even surrounded by danger,
such as they were, surrounded by the unsure, the blind circumstances that had
yet to greet them; sound sleep was easily found. The stress of high tension did
not take time outs, it did not take breaks to catch its breath, it hammered the
body into submission, and either you listened to it, and grabbed sleep when you
were able, or you’d eventually succumb to it . . . with death close behind.

Bobby watched the flames dance and die
as the embers struggled to retain the last of their warmth. With stiff fingers
he added a plastic-coated shelf to the lame heat source. Thick black smoke hung
in the air, bits of burnt plastic sailing on the streams like miniature ships
on dark seas. The smell was wrong, sticky, acrid, and it made the back of his
throat itch, his eyes water, and his nostrils flare.

Bobby moved to the doorway and leaned
into the dark and listened. The world was quiet and loud at the same time. Sure
there were sounds, trees swaying in the post-storm breeze, an owl hooted,
stalking prey, dead leaves rustled the black halls, something thumped upstairs.
Bobby waited, craned his neck, but nothing followed the thump save for that
same brilliantly loud silence. It was nothing like the routine sounds of the
Settlement that had dominated his life for years. It was scary, like the world,
and future that now awaited him.

He quietly removed his knife from the
rucksack. Testing its weight, he held it up to the light of the fire. The black
metal blade reflected no light. Bobby sat cross-legged just inside the
doorframe. He wiped away years of dirt and grit to reveal the cracked, black
linoleum. With the tip of the knife he began to carve the names of his
brothers, followed by the winters they had lived.

“Remembering them in mind and heart is
enough. Dull blade make tool useless, useless tool, one less life saver on
hand.”

“You should be sleeping.”

“I got hour, maybe two, enough for now.
We have to move." Ecky slid a bag of brittle tobacco from his pocket, and
a sheet of yellow ledger paper marked with a grocery list that never made it
home. He rolled a cigarette and smoked in silence for a moment. “At first light
we move. Have to put distance between here and there.”

“Where do we go? What about
Randy?” Bobby slumped forward.

“We find shelter for winter. We wait it
out and meet Randy in spring at Baylor’s pass. If we make it that long. This is
not Settlement . . . this is,” Ecky eyed Bobby with a sharp scowl and
continued, “this is real world now.”

“I’m not a child. I know.”

“You have knowledge of what to expect,
yes. More than any pre-war child would’ve ever known, but what you know, and
what you’ve lived, two different things. Not a training exercise, or target
practice, not farms, or working technology, or order. This, Bobby, is chaos, is
survival, is brutal,” Ecky finished with a shiver.

“The Snowman.”

“Worse. Think about world as you’ve been
taught. It’s been more than decade since last signs of civilization existed.
Over a decade . . . think about that, Bobby. Think about how lucky you are.”

Bobby wanted to lash out at the words,
but looking into those gentle, weary eyes he realized those words were not
meant as a slight. They were words of wisdom from a man, who had only a short
time ago, gave up everything so that he could survive. The engineer’s blue-gray
eyes carried the look of love with a seriousness for the situation that
demanded a response.

“There are those that were less
fortunate than me—”

“—No! Don’t think of sermon, Bobby,
think of what matters.”

“But God.”

“God is not in bullets, in trigger, in
aim. God is not around when stomach growls with hunger and throat is parched
dry. No, survival, and only two ways to survive, Bobby. Those with enough power
to survive by strength, and those with enough knowledge to survive on what the
world presents them. You have education. You have knowledge. You have a chance.
But those raised in wilds, on outside, without semblance of order, survive on
sheer strength. They survive by taking.”

“But we’re smarter.”

“Maybe with making things work in our
favor, but they will not make the moral choice . . . we might, when all is said
and done. We might think like orderly humans, they will not. Could you kill
someone you perceived as innocent, Bobby, if need be? Could you commit
murder?" Ecky was so caught in the moment he couldn’t stop the words.

“I already have . . . if you want to
call it that,” Bobby said in a whisper.

“That was different. Self defense. You
did what you had to do?”

“Is it, Yannek?” Bobby asked, using the
engineer’s full first name, something he never did.

Ecky pulled hard on his cigarette.

“She was human . . .”

“She was not innocent. Not even close.
Remember the Snowman always, Bobby. Things will come up when you need to act,
not think. Your very life may depend on it. Do not hesitate in that moment. If
we are to make it through winter . . . and beyond, you must act first and think
later. Promise me that." Ecky rolled the cigarette between thumb and
forefinger, eyeing the boy, measuring him up.