The Creepers (15 page)

“I promise,” Bobby said with a shudder.
A pressing weight settled around his temples, between his eyes, on his
shoulders. The world took up its perch, chasing away the last remnants of
boyhood.

“Good, at first light we move out."
Ecky stubbed out his cigarette and went to his pack.

“Where will we go?”

“North. There is small town. Gainer, we
cleared years ago. Houses were in good shape, elevation higher, not much
activity . . . human, or otherwise. We wait out winter,” Ecky paused. His eye caught
something he had missed upon his first inspection. He peeled back a bit of
liner to reveal a small spiral notebook.
Randy, what did you leave me?
The
sight of the teal colored notebook filled him with dread.

“Then what?”

Ecky covered the notebook again. He’d
check it once they were settled. Randy’s details, the hint of what he whispered
to Ecky before they left, were buried in there. Ecky wasn’t ready to hear it
though. He had to stay focused. He had to give Bobby, and himself for that
matter, a chance to make it to spring.

“Then, well, Bobby, we meet Baylor.”

The name inspired a sense of awe in
Bobby. He, like anyone in the Settlement with a  set of ears, had heard,
and heard well, of the famous Baylor. The Mad Conductor, as he was sometimes
known, held imaginations captive, as if he were some kind of post-apocalyptic
Santa Claus. In a way Baylor was, albeit a more practical, and far more heroic
version of the long lost legend. Bobby always imagined what his train looked
like, wondering if it held the sleek curves and shiny surfaces he’d learned
about from the Folks. If he made it through the winter he’d finally find out.
It wasn’t much, but it was something to look forward to, something to occupy
his thoughts, and he would welcome it with open arms.

“You okay, Bobby,” Ecky said, snapping
his fingers in Bobby’s face.

“Yeah, I was just thinking,” Bobby
rubbed at his weary eyes.

“You do a lot." Ecky checked the
CAR-15, making sure the safety was set.

“I guess. It’s hard to stop. It . . .
just happens. I can’t help it." Bobby shrugged. He didn’t know how to
explain it. Yet, it always happened to him. He’d fall back into a memory and
everything in the present ceased to be, it fell away, and suddenly he was in
the past, oblivious to everything. It was a dangerous flaw, but one he’d lived
with as far back as he could remember.

“Can I count on you to focus. To stay
with me?" Ecky pointed into his own eyes and then Bobby’s.

“Yeah.”

“You sure? I know spells of yours are
almost as legendary as Baylor’s supply train.”

“Sir, you can count on me, sir,” Bobby
snapped a stern salute. He held his form straight and rigid.

Ecky laughed, waved a hand in dismissal
and said, “Bobby, those days are gone. You are not robot. You are not slave.
You are free. World is open to you now . . . I only wish was different world. I
wish it was like world when I was young man, but that is all in past now.”

“What was the world like for you?”

“Not now, Bobby. Story better left for
another day. And there will be plenty days to get through. So sleep. I can see
it on your face. We haven’t had much rest, you especially. Sleep. I
watch." Ecky took up the CAR-15 and slipped his head through the strap.
The matte black weapon sat diagonal across his chest, barrel to the floor.

“But.”

“No, mister, you don’t get to stay up
late this night,” Ecky said with an air of humor. “Sleep and sleep well.
Nothing will harm you tonight. I got sharp eyes and even sharper aim. Sleep
well, Bobby, may be best rest you get for rest of life.”

Bobby didn’t hear the last part. The
moment his head hit his pack, sleep covered him with its heavy cloak.

Randal Beckenridge had seen much in his
time as a marine. He fought in Afghanistan and Iraq as a middle-aged man. They
almost didn’t let him, though, due to his age, he was well into his thirties at
the time, but he was persistent . . . and a little crazy. They couldn’t refuse.
He fought in the First War, crushed countless skulls of the undead with Tilda,
had seen horrors to last many lifetimes, had even earned the nickname Ol’ Randy
for his survivability, but none of it prepared him to dig the boys’ graves. One
of them was a small hole at best, just deep enough to fit half a body . . . how
had it come to this? He thought. Murdered by their own.

Ol’ Randy had seen dead children before,
but they were nameless casualties of an errant bomb strike on a muddy village.
He could rationalize it to an extent, he had to, or he never would’ve made it
through the war, let alone life. But this . . . this was different, in a way
these were his boys, his children, he had seen them grow, taught them to
survive, and here he was burying all, but one. The pain gnawed at him
unmercifully, chewing his sanity in its gritty teeth.

The boy was so light, a feather in his huge
arms, yet something so small, and only hours ago so full of life, had held the
power to change the world. Five risks, five chances to turn the tide against
the undead, five secrets, and now only one remained. Ol’ Randy wiped the
budding tears from his eyes with a cold, dry hand. Had he and the Crannen’s
killed the boys . . . no, he couldn’t think that.

As he laid Ryan’s body on the newly
fallen snow he knew the world had shifted once more, as it had more than a
decade ago when the dead decided to take over. He picked up the shovel and
started to dig. That was what they had done, right? He asked himself, pressing
the shovel into the snow. Why had it taken so long for them to decide to walk
again, after all, they’d always been there. Perhaps they wanted to turn a tide
of their own, shake things up a little. Ol’ Randy’s hands shook as the shovel
struck rock. He had to think about the unanswerable in order to keep his mind
from turning to despair.

But he was hard pressed to do so.

Even if Bobby made it, a statistical
impossibility, even with Ecky’s help, there was no structure now, the chances
of him finding a place to settle down were slim, and the hope contained in his
DNA, well, Ol’ Randy didn’t want to think about it. He got to digging, the two
freshly covered graves to his left, taunting him all the while.

“You sully our sacred earth with their
vileness,” Pastor Craven said from behind him.

Ol’ Randy continued to dig. He was well
aware of the five men surrounding him. Guns drawn while keeping a safe
distance. After all, it was he who had trained them. And while he had their
skills at his call, he did not have their spirits, their immortal souls, no
matter how much blood they shed together, no matter how much loss they’d
suffered . . . he could not contest the will of God. He wouldn’t ask for it
either. Which was one of the main reasons for keeping the secret. They wouldn’t
have understood the boys for what they were.

Ol’ Randy picked up Ryan’s body and laid
it gently in the grave. He bowed his head and spoke to God. He asked the Good
Lord to take care of Ryan in death as he was unable to in life.

Patting the muddy earth with the shovel
Ol’ Randy turned to face the Pastor. He leaned on the shovel, eyeing
Tilda, the sledge hammer rested on the snow just out of his reach. As much as
he wanted to, he could not fight these men, hell, some of them are still boys,
his thoughts cautioned.

“You murdered the future you son of a
bitch,” he said in a rasp. So it had come to this: his own turned on him just
as they turned on the future. He would not be able to convince them otherwise.
“God with not forgive you that sin. They were innocent.”

“There were demon spawn! And to think,
dear Randy, we cared for them, sheltered them, and this is how they repaid
us.” The Pastor pointed to the blood covering his overalls, Lyda’s blood.
Her body had been laid out in the church. Most of the Settlement still did not
know that their doctor was dead. “Such terrible slaves of the Devil . . . those
boys. Look how they repaid you,” he gestured to the freshly packed earth
continuing, “Hmmph, and it was you, after all, who rescued them from, what was
it again? I seem to have forgotten in my old age.”

Pastor Craven laughed loudly, raised his
voice several octaves so the men surrounding them could hear, and said, “Road
bandits, cannibals, yes, that’s what it was. Saved them from the savages so
they could murder our dear Lyda in cold blood.”

“They were children, you bastard!"
Ol’ Randy went for Tilda but a bullet cracked the snow in front of him. He
stared at the edges of a low building and barely, just barely, made the outline
of the man hiding there. “Shot like that, Jackson, I’m impressed, but you
always paled in comparison to your father. But I suppose that’s what comes with
being a coward!”

The Pastor held his hand high in
dismissal. “They killed our dear Lyda. They have disrupted our lives, lives
that not only you, but I as well, have toiled tirelessly for.”

“I killed her. You leave my boys out of
this. Ain’t a single one of ’em done nothing to deserve this. You’ve killed the
future.”

Pastor Craven’s laughter danced wickedly
on the cold wind. “Is that what I’ve done, Randy, well, the way I see it is,
I’ve saved our little slice of Heaven. Those were not boys . . . they were not
human. I’ve seen the blood, I’ve seen what lived in it. But there are questions
I still require answers to, questions that only you can answer.”

Ol’ Randy feigned another move towards
Tilda. Another crack, this time off from the left.

“I will not give you the warrior’s death
you so crave, Randy. You do not deserve it."

“You can’t kill me.”

“As much as the Lord wants me to, no, I
can’t kill you. Not yet, at least, there are still answers to be gained, and wrongs
to be righted. By my count we have four dead enemies, one dead doctor, a
missing engineer and a missing demon.”

“You’re the demon. You, and the rest
that lost sight of progress. Your misguided beliefs will be our downfall.”

Ol’ Randy collapsed to the ground,
snatched up Tilda in the same motion and spun low towards Pastor Craven. He
felt the bullets rip through his right leg, then his left, but his large frame
was already moving, and his aim was true. Tilda’s heavy, solid steel head
shattered the Pastor’s kneecap and nearly tore the leg off.

Pastor Craven crumpled to the ground, a
wailing mess.

His men closed in around him, stood over
him, but Ol’ Randy didn’t flinch. He watched them form a wicked halo over him.
So this was it, he thought, the world is truly done in, and by its own hand.

“Well, boys, get to it! Your parents’
hearts are breaking in heaven,” he prodded, the Crannen twins snarling at his
words.

“Too bad you won’t get to say hello for
me where you’re going, Randy,” Jackson said, aiming down the barrel of his
rifle. He racked the bolt and tensed on the trigger.

“NO!” the Pastor managed to scream.
“Information . . . he has information! This is not over yet." Pastor
Craven crawled towards them, his destroyed leg trailing limply behind.

“Take him to the brig,” Jackson said,
then added, “and get his wounds tended to.”

Ol’ Randy burst into a fit of laughter.
He thanked Bobby wordlessly with his bellows. He felt no pain, in fact, he felt
a bit of relief. Without Lyda’s expertise the Pastor would most likely lose his
leg. Sure, there were others Lyda had trained in case of such an event, but
they were not her, and they were not nearly as schooled as the late doctor.

“Better get the old man a cane. Start
prayin’ too, specially you, Jackson, God’s gonna’ want some penance, he’s
gonna—”

The butt of Jackson’s rifle crashed on
Ol’ Randy’s head.

* * * * *

Not everyone possessed the mental
capacity to survive in an orderly fashion. There were no lines, no forms, no protocol,
and most certainly no sanity in Post First War America. Even the war’s name
spoke of starting over, and it carried all the baggage that went with starting
from scratch in the absence of law and order. Law and order that had taken
thousands of years to build. Now it was all lost, with only one known
exception: the Settlement. Within the confines of the carefully planned
survivalist bastion existed a measure of Pre-First War American law, some might
call it a frontier sense of justice, but it was something, a shining badge in
the face of much lawlessness.

When men were taken by the drink, by
isolation, and by their lesser desires they were dealt with. Make no mistake,
even though the Folks observed their form of Christianity, they were still
human.

Every facet of their micro-society had
been planned from square one, and the brig was one of the first things the
Crannen’s proposed. Pa Crannen had been adamant about creating it, while the
others, even his wife, were somewhat skeptical, but his warnings ultimately won
out. They’d been thanking him silently ever since. Countless lessons had been
learned over the nearly, two decades since its inception, and along with the
lessons were the trials, for the more serious offenses, but overall the brig
was a monument to the little bit of the old world that survived.