The Creepers (38 page)

“I want to get Ol’ Randy back. That’s
what I plan on.”

“Oh." Pathos One studied the lie
painting Bobby’s face. “And what else has your brow furrowed, and those eyes of
yours worried? Is it our sleepy friend over here? Or is it something else?”

Bobby squirmed, pretending to ward off a
chill. He could not escape Pathos One’s deep, dark eyes. They seemed to always
be wide open, watching him. The scars made them appear as if the man was about
to start shouting at him. Bobby stood, slung his rifle over his shoulder and
nodded back towards the gully. “Take a walk with me.”

“But what about—”

“—He won’t get far even if he does run.
If he picks up a crude weapon I’ll take his other hand. Follow me.”

Pathos One was once again reminded of
the duality of the boy: the killer, the child. Molded into a floppy-haired
package that defied logic and reason, Bobby remained an enigma to him. Ever the
professor, even in this crude, scarred package, Pathos One obliged and followed
Bobby down into the gully and the darkness beyond.

“I’ve been collecting them,” Bobby said,
speaking of the undead as if they were the baseball cards of his age.

Pathos One stood at the edge of the
clearing. The crisp night air devoid of all clouds, and the moon, casting
strange light on the hundreds of rotting bodies that waited for Bobby’s next
command. The flies buzzed like active power lines, an unnerving electromagnetic
frequency that set teeth on edge, caused hysteria.

Pathos One retched. He fell to his knees
from the reek of them so close together in the damp warm air. He could hear
them too, as they swayed beneath the moonlight, a cult of worshippers moaning
in reverence to their god.

“You’ve been building an army. I thought
you wanted to rescue this man not kill everything in sight.”

“They killed my brothers, shattered my
life, set into motion every loss that followed." Bobby stared out, silver
slices reflecting in the wetness of his eyes.

Pathos One crouched. He was unable to
stand on such shaky legs. The song of the undead hung on the air like a
foghorn, a warning to any that dared approach such a swelling mass.

“Bobby,” Pathos One gasped, “how can you
keep track of them all?”

“Because . . . in a way I am them and
they are me.”

“Can you feel them
all
?” Pathos
One said. The awe in his voice bordering on panic.

“The ones here,” Bobby turned to face
him, “yes, but the rest, no. It has limits, a range that I haven’t figured out
yet. But once I’ve touched them it’s easy to keep order. Sometimes, though,
their hunger hits me with an ache in my brain. I feel their cravings for
flesh.”

“But why do they eat the living? It’s
not like they get any beneficial properties.”

“I think it’s just instinct. Remembered
rules from what they were before. The need to survive but backwards . . . if
that makes sense." Bobby commanded a young woman to step towards them. A
dingy purple dress like a ghost’s caress draped her badly decaying body. The
rotting fingers of someone else’s hand protruded from an opening in her bloated
belly. Grayish skin pushed to rupture by the contents inside. Her sockets
regarded them with emptiness.

Pathos One thought her face the saddest
he’d ever seen. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. She seemed scared. I think
being closer to our voices has calmed her. It’s hard to tell, but when I
hear
her. I hear tears, weeping. But I can’t tell if it’s because of now,
or if it was before. Only once did it work like talking.”

“The train,” Pathos One said as he
watched the young woman sway. He could almost picture her as she had once been
on a cool spring night, dancing and giggling beneath the moon, but the constant
buzzing of the flies kept his mind in the now.

“Yes.” Bobby didn't feel the need to
mention the roadside ditch.
 
Ecky . . .
the thoughts were too painful.

“I told them it wasn’t right. I could
feel it, but that was their want. Who am I to say otherwise?”

“Staying quiet does nothing. I only wish
I’d realized that when I was younger. It might have saved my brothers.”

It was strange hearing this boy refer to
his younger self. Pathos One couldn’t even begin to imagine the complex inner
workings of the boy’s mind. But what terrified him was what was to come. “What
will you do?”

“You don’t know where I come from."
Bobby sent the young woman back to the crowd. While he talked he’d acquired a
roaming band of Creepers that he added to his flock. “If we even attempt to
simply walk up." Bobby fixed him with a sharp gaze. He punched the meat of
his palm with a slap. “Dead. You’ve seen me shoot. The guard tower Folks don’t
miss often and they pack a higher caliber. Their effective range is over one
thousand yards on a clear day, easy,” Bobby added.

“Do you just plan on throwing bodies at
them, waste their ammo?”

“Not exactly. You don’t understand how
much they have. Even adding more wouldn’t matter in the long run. They’ll have
the high ground. The Folks spent many winters building that town and even more
perfecting it. There is only one road in and out, but it does not run through
it. Not like the towns we’ve passed through. The old Still Water Road was
blocked off long before I was brought in.

“In the early days, when it was
happening, people tried to get in to stay alive. The Folks turned them away and
when the people, their cars lining the road, refused, the Folks opened fire.
All of those rusted cars are still there. The rest of the hill surrounding the
town was made impassible." Bobby hiked his shoulders up in a shrug. He
turned back towards their camp.

“You have to have a plan.”

“I do.”

“And?” Pathos One questioned uneasily.

“And,” Bobby returned his unease
tenfold, “I’m going to need more bodies.”

“But you said.”

“I know what I said.”

Bobby kept the
Creeper army back at the very edge of his range. Several thousand strong now,
far more than he imagined, a huddled mass of decay lying in the shadow of a
dead suburban hill. Skeletal structures, foreclosed tombstones, some still
bearing their weatherproof vinyl siding leaned along with the army of undead.
The flies hovered overhead, buzzing, feeding, breeding within their unaware
hosts. Dozens of wild dogs stalked the perimeter of the throng, snatching
limbs, nipping flesh and then fleeing retribution.

Bobby watched
the Settlement through his binoculars. At this distance it was a mere
silhouette, but he could not risk getting closer, not yet. He studied the
battlefield using the knowledge bestowed upon him by the Folks. He thought of
it as returning the favor. What he had planned was going to take every
available particle of cognitive thought. Nothing could be wasted.

Pathos One typed
furiously on his laptop. The historian of the dead was finding it increasingly
hard to keep up with Bobby’s drafting abilities. Every so often the boy would
say simply, ‘another, another’, never taking his eyes from the Settlement. “I
wish you could communicate with the flies. I can’t think straight with all that
noise.”

“They won’t be
able to either.”

“And what about
him?” Pathos One asked, throwing a thumb at Jackson’s sniveling form.

“He’s still
breathing. He can walk. He’ll be able to deliver my message." Bobby
tightened the pen of Creepers around Jackson. Every second of terror the man
felt was a second of payback for winters of torment.

“What message?”

Bobby lowered
the binoculars and faced Pathos One. “I don’t expect you to get involved,” he
said.

“I’ve come this
far, haven’t I?” The scars of Pathos One’s brow seemed to twitch. He scratched
them, chasing the itch he couldn’t quite satisfy.

Bobby rubbed a
patch of grass with his boot until he had a clear spot. He grabbed a twig and
began to draw. “We’re here,” he said, jabbing the twig into the end of the
sguiggly line. “The Old Still Water Road." Bobby ran a rough line through
the middle of the road. “That is their effective range of fire." He drew
another line, this time it was a little closer to their current position. “This
is, I think, the range of the fifty caliber, but it depends on who’s doing the
firing.”

“What about
night?”

“Same,” Bobby
said confidently. “Doesn’t matter. They have infrared on the fifty. It’s one of
the reasons my brothers are dead. Ecky and I were lucky. If Ol’ Randy hadn’t
ran interference we’d have never made it out alive. Night won’t matter, but
interference will. And that’s what I plan on doing. They’ve killed plenty of
Creepers before, so have I, and so have you, but have you ever faced an army of
intelligent ones?” Bobby smiled as he said this.

Pathos One shook
his head. “You can’t just attack them wantonly. You said it yourself. There are
women and children . . . innocents.”

“Which is why I
will give them a chance,” Bobby said, pointing to Jackson. “I will send him to
ask for Ol’ Randy’s release in exchange for his own.”

“Why would he do
that?”

“He won’t have a
say in the matter." Bobby patted his rifle. “He’ll make the long walk and I’ll
be watching. If he sneezes he dies.”

“And what then?
Storm the castle and rape and plunder like a barbarian?”

“No, storm the
castle and get my friend back.”

“They gonna kill
you good, Bobby boy, gonna shoot you dead,” Jackson said between slobbering bites
of raccoon.

Bobby ignored
the bait, choosing instead to focus on the three Creepers he was in the process
of sending closer to the Settlement. He was practicing for the big the push,
though, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He chose the three because they
still retained their eyes, and through them, he watched. The lights blazed from
many windows, as if issuing a challenge to the world. Many had attempted to
breach those fences, both alive and undead, and all of them had failed. But
where they failed, Bobby would succeed, because none of the would be invaders
knew how the inside worked. Bobby knew. He knew how they’d respond to an undead
threat. He remembered the daily drill, a clockwork application that allowed
zero disobedience, even the Folks’ hate of the brothers stopped during the
drills. Everyone paid attention.

First the
children, those that could not bear arms yet, and a few caretakers would be
locked within the bank vault. When the innocents were out of harm’s way the
remaining fighters took up positions on the rooftops. They would then focus
their lines of sight on the gates, on the Old Still Water Road, which turned
into a funnel of death. Only a small remnant of the force would cover the rest
of the perimeter.

The Creepers
passed into Bobby’s hypothetical kill zone. He kept them single file, hiding
their true number. As they approached a burned out ambulance he scattered them,
made them dart between cover. The first shot rang out, a rare miss, then
another, one view of the Settlement down in a headless, twitching heap. He
pushed the remaining Creepers to their limit, another miss, keeping them to
cover, keeping them moving. He felt their bones crack, he felt their stumbles,
but they felt no pain, and crawling now, he kept them moving. The next shot
ripped one in half, but it continued on shredded forearms and fingerless hands.
After a few hundred feet the Creeper knew nothing but the dark beyond.

Bobby dropped
the last to its swollen gray belly sloshing the colony of fresh maggots hidden
within. He wormed it along the road. His efforts had it safely to the halfway
point before it was iced. The fifty punching a hole through the rusted car
before splattering the Creeper’s brain pan on the weedy blacktop. He lost count
of how many misses before the kill shot. More than two, at least. He knew, with
enough bodies, he’d be able to reach the fence, but would he be able to
independently control that many? He’d been able to keep them in a group, a
hive, but could he break them off into smaller groups, performing different
tasks, all the while concentrating on his own set of targets?

“Tomorrow you
either live or die, Jackson Crannen, by choice,” Bobby said, standing wearily
in the fire light, “something my brothers didn’t get.”

*
* * * *

The fucking kid was out there somewhere.
Though he didn’t know where, he could feel that muzzle locked onto his back
like a hungry predator watching him from just beyond the safety of the fire.
Primal. Freezing ass cold. A shovel full of snow down the back of his coat collar.
Downright icy. Running was out of the question. Even if he managed to somehow
make the little rat miss that opening shot, and find cover . . . it wouldn’t
matter. The kid would out wait him, patient as death, waiting for the
opportunity to crease his skull.

Jackson Crannen trembled for the first
time in his life. He’d known fear before. The back of his father’s hand, the
Creepers, the unknown, Hell, all of these things stirred a fear low in his
belly, but none of them felt as cold as knowing that at any second the lights
could go out. Bang. Just like that. Gone. Only, he wouldn’t get to hear the
crack of the shot that took him down. So he walked. He obeyed the little
maggot’s order. He marched home with a great ashen bull’s-eye crudely
smeared on his black jacket.