The Creepers (31 page)

The dead were moving and they moved with
purpose. Working in teams the remaining Creepers slowly circled the wild men,
dragged them down. They did not stop to devour, instead, they killed and moved on
to another target. The wild men were so caught up with trying to crack the
metal walls of the train that they didn’t notice until it was too late.

“It’s like someone’s ordering them,”
said one of the men. The wiry man tied a piece of his shirt around his head to
stem the flow of blood.

The stranger meant to do the same but he
couldn’t take his eyes off Bobby. As he watched the kid’s lips move his hackles
began to rise. The wounds caused by the sharp stone would have to wait.

*
* * * *

Bobby was moving at a sickening speed.
The black wind ripped at his ears and the faster he fell the hotter he became.
With the heat came the sensation of growth. Where, at first, he had been
insubstantial in the face of vastness, he now began to slake the hunger . . . he
was beginning to fill the void.

The thing that had been Bobby was no
more. It had been replaced by the heat and the feeling of change. Not a simple
shift like someone absorbing caffeine but a DNA altering, evolutionary change, as
if the blocks that made up his essence had been broken down and used to form
something new, something altogether different.

One by one, across the quickly shrinking
void, bursts of angry red explosions bloomed along his path. He directed his
thoughts towards them, feeling the hotness on his being like the freshly
spilled blood of an animal. The black became a dark orange, then lighter, and
lighter still, as if he held a flashlight directly to a closed eye. Flecks of
color, veins branching out, and the heat, burning hot like the very fires of
creation. It was then, with the light revealing what he thought a void, that he
realized where he was—what he was.

Blood, I was born in blood, I’ve spilled
blood, I share their blood and they mine . . . I have become something else.

Faster and
faster he fell . . .
no, not faster, but smoother. I drift within, drift
along the path of my own demise.
The words were not his own. He heard them
spoken in his own voice, but they felt foreign. He could feel them move through
him like wind across the skin, rippling, pulsing forth from the electromagnetic
stroke of his heart. With each beat, each thump, he felt them crowding him,
clamoring to be heard, snatches of voices amid a heated protest. And he drifted
along now like a solitary man trapped in a sea of swarming bodies all driven to
a cause, to a truth that lived just beyond his understanding.

Help us then . .
. if I am you and you me . . . help us.
Thinking the words was slow and
unsettling like lifting his hands through wet sand. The harder he concentrated
on them the faster his being moved and the louder his heart beat, pounding now,
driving like a piston.
I can only promise you a swift death in return.

The least you
could do. . . .

So—tired. . . .

Their words
cascading into his head were clear, at first, but as the others joined in he
could sense the length of decay in them. He could feel the weakness of those
signals, as if the rotted faces were right in front of him. He knew that these
weaker, undecipherable words were those that had been sent to him from the
minds of the most seasoned of the Creepers. The longer they’d been alive the
worse their signals were.

Bobby moved
through them all, zipping along the conduit of their shared disease. That was
it . . . he could see it now, that microscopic similarity, the familial tie
that bound him with them. He had become the link to something new, an
evolutionary soap box through which the dead could speak and be spoken to. He
needed them. He sent out his own signal showing them what he wanted them to do.

They were
hesitant to his suggestions at first, but when Bobby applied the force of his
will, he felt them give way, as if he passed through a spider’s web.

The subdued
reddish light began to pulse brighter and brighter. He rushed towards the
light, and then, he was in it, swimming in the brilliant warmth. At peace
within the glow he felt as if he could bask in it for eternity. But peace was
not yet his. The world wanted him back. Life wanted him back. Their dark hands
clawed for him, grabbed hold, and yanked him upwards.

He was on his
back. The afternoon sky welcomed him with a false sense of security then one of
the ugliest faces he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a lot (especially among the
Settlement’s First War veterans), eclipsed that endless blue. A crosshatch of
swollen, pink and white burn scars covered the face and one emerald eye looked
on him with shock. Where its twin should have been was only a shadowy socket
filled with rugged scars.

“You were
talking to them,” the stranger said.

Bobby jumped up
too fast, swaying under the rush of blood to his head. He reached out to
stabilize himself. “How?”

“Look at them,”
the stranger pointed off to the left. A group of undead had a smaller group of
wild men surrounded and they closed in to finish their meal. “You’re special.
Like that man’s notebook said.”

Bobby pushed the
stranger’s hand away. “No, I’m not. I’m just like everyone else.”

“It’s okay,” the
stranger pulled the hood back over his scarred face, “I’m good at keeping
secrets.”

Bobby was busy
trying to ignore the man. He picked his empty rifle up and slung it over his
back. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched the Creepers finish their prey.
A sickening swill had his stomach roiling. But before he could even contemplate
what had happened to him a scream rent the air.

“THEY’VE TAKEN
MY GIRL!” Jamie wailed. She had stumbled out onto the loose shale that hugged
the track. Her face was bloodied, her apron torn open, a floppy breast swaying
as she searched the trees frantically. “OH HEAVEN . . . NO—NO . . . SHE DOESN’T
DESERVE THIS!”

Bobby was off
the train in a leap that carried him ten feet to the ground. He ditched his
useless rifle and ran past the sobbing Jamie. He wasn’t about to let another
die because of him. In his mind he knew this was his fault. His presence alone
had interrupted their lives. It was the Settlement all over again.

As he charged
into the thick brush he sent his mind outward in search of the Creepers. He
sent the same thought over and over:
if you help me I will end you hunger.
   

The cicadas were so loud they made his
teeth vibrate. Had he not been so intent on his target he might’ve smiled. He
had come to a clearing about four hundred yards from the tracks. It hadn’t
taken him very long to catch up to them, but now he applied caution, breathing
deeply, closing his eyes momentarily to calm himself like the Folks taught him
during marksmanship training, though, he did not have a firearm. He silently
cursed himself for leaving it behind.

Long stands of pine trees, rifled by the
breeze, bent around the open space like the thick lashes of a blinking eye.
Bobby kept to the dense cover they provided as he circled closer. He kept his
knife, blade against his forearm, firm but not too tight.

To his surprise the girl did not scream.
She didn’t even cry as the savage-in-soldier’s clothing leaned over her. Bobby
could almost smell his rotten breath. He had to get closer, but it was at least
fifty yards from the trees to the girl, a lot of open ground to cover. He
couldn’t risk her life on an ill-fated attempt to save her. He had to be exact,
use everything he could to his advantage.

The wild man seemed confused. His
pock-marked face looked back and forth, snapping from one direction to the next,
as if he expected his friends to come marching through the trees with the
train’s bountiful loot. That confusion mixed with fear and gave Bobby an air of
pride. He dropped to the ground and picked up a rock. He tested its weight. In
one last effort he sent his mind out in search of the undead, but none were in
range.

He tossed the rock.

All he needed were a few seconds. That
would be enough time for him to close the distance and drive his knife into the
wild man’s back. A few seconds . . . that was it. He charged low.

The rock clattered against a tree trunk
far away with a
thock
that sent the wild man searching, but it only
distracted him for a second. He quickly changed his focus, sensing Bobby’s
presence well before he should have. At the sight of his attacker’s approach
the wild man lifted Sophie by the throat, as if he meant to strangle her. But
instead, he threw her to the ground hard enough to illicit a cry from her. She
began to choke and sob as the impact knocked the breath from her. The savage
man balled his fists and planted his feet wide and firm, smiling at Bobby.

Bobby growled like an animal, a
rage-filled thing threatened with an early end. He feigned left then came back
right, sweeping the knife in an upward arc aimed for the man’s throat. However,
Bobby’s strike hit only air as the ropey-muscled youth, who looked every bit as
young as Bobby now that he was close, ducked and rolled along his arm. Bobby
couldn’t keep up with the kid’s speed. He swung the knife wildly and awkwardly
just to keep him off balance, but all that effort managed to do was leave him
open to a sharp-knuckled punch that spun him round. Before he could recover the
beast of a teenager was on him, biting and clawing the back of his neck.

He stabbed over his back, sinking the
knife, hilt deep, into the wild kid’s shoulder, but it didn’t stop the assault,
it didn’t even slow the raking of dirty fingernails across his face. Bobby
pushed back then went limp, falling forward to throw the youth off balance.
Halfway into his forward motion Bobby twisted and countered with a punch of his
own that cast the kid aside for a split second.

It was all the time he needed.

In that primal struggle Bobby became the
mirror image of the wild youth, a savage animal forgotten by history. He clutched
that thin throat in his hands and squeezed until he could hear the beating of
his own heart heavy in his ears, until he could feel it across his temples and
in his jaw, and then, he squeezed harder.

The wild youth drove his fist hard
against Bobby’s face, but each successive swing carried less weight.

Bobby’s vision was red, seething hate
like fire behind his eyes. All he wanted to do was be left alone to live his
life, but no matter how far he ran, others found it necessary to impede that
wish. And not only did they trample his simple wish, but they dragged other
innocents along, sweeping them up in the hysteria. He felt the kid’s windpipe
break in his grasp. He would not relent. With the kid’s eyes bulging, and his
tongue sticking out like a bloated frog’s, Bobby pressed his thumbs into the
kid’s throat even harder, until, at last, the life left those wild eyes
altogether.

Bobby staggered back, panting, sucking
wind. He went immediately to Sophie who was already up and dusting herself off.
She stared at him for a long time, her red hair littered with dry leaves. The
kid’s angry red handprints still prominent on her freckled throat.

“Are you okay,” Bobby reached out to
her.

Sophie flinched away, clutching her
hands to her chest.

“It’s okay . . . it’s . . . safe now. I
promise,” he reassured her and once again offered his hand.

She nodded, then hesitated briefly,
before reaching out.

Bobby took her hand gently in his own
and led the way back to the safety of the train.

*
* * * *

“Cut those men down, Hoss,” Baylor said,
a little out of breath. He was in the middle of reloading his revolver after
dispatching the last of the Creepers around the train. He’d never seen anything
quite like it in all his years of survival . . . even during the early days of
the railroad when they had to stop for long periods of time. The dead always
came with the noise, but when they arrived they moved haphazardly, they crept
and shuffled, never in order. Baylor shook his head disbelief.

Times are a changin’ old man,
he thought with
a chuckle. The world never ceased in its attempts to disarm his thoughts. He
only chuckled when he was nervous. . . .

Baylor walked towards the rear of the
train to survey the damage and do a body count. Bodies lay in heaps, twice-dead
and newly dead alike. He put a bullet in the brain of every fatigued corpse he
came across on his inspection. He was never one for taking chances and there
was no telling how many bites had been incurred during the melee. As he stopped
to reload once more he saw Jamie and the stranger far away from the train, a
little too far away.

“Hey, what the hell are you two idiots
doing?” he yelled.

They looked at him in stunned silence.
Jamie’s bleary-eyed face like a lumpy piece of dough gone bad, and the
stranger’s face, which he was seeing for the first time in bright light, had
him cocking the hammer back on his revolver.

“Oh, Baylor, she’s gone,” Jamie sobbed,
“my girl’s gone.”