“I know. But—" Howard flinched as the wind howled outside— "I have to face it in order to save them. It’s all she wanted to do. It’s all that mattered, and if I don’t do that then I take meaning from her life, and that’s worse than death. That’s forever."
Howard thought of the determination in Jennifer’s voice as she taught him how to operate the explosives, as she told him her plans, as she talked about saving the women and exacting revenge.
"That's heavy." Brooks cocked his head to the sound of the Creepers moaning. “Something’s got them buzzing. Here we are.” Brooks handed Howard a battered book. “That there will guide you in the right direction. It helped me a long time ago. No need to hang on to it now.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Man named Huxley. About a world that came close to happening. Think of it like a lesson in what not to do when you’re done with what you have to do. There’s a world out there waiting to be rebuilt. Those taking up the task will need guidance. Can’t think of anyone better to guide you, Howard.”
Howard let the old man’s wise words hang in the air. He wondered if they were drawn from Brooks’s own experiences, or were they drawn solely from the pages of the books he coveted? Ultimately, their origin didn’t matter to him, for he had already made up his mind. He pictured her wandering the hills, the moon barely reflecting in her rotting eyes. She had begged him to release her. She spoke to him. He heard her as he heard all of them. But he couldn't grant her wish.
“Thank you,” Howard said.
Howard . . . Howard . . . Howard
Brooks shook his head with a laugh. “If you come back this way, and if you happen to come across any books that might be of interest to me, I’d thank you kindly for them. With another story, and I promise I won’t pull a gun on you this time.” He winked.
“It’s the least I could do.” Howard stared in awe. Had it all been a ploy? A test of some sort? To what purpose?
“Now, besides the story, I can’t promise you anything other than a good meal, if the deer are cooperative, and what food I can send with you when you leave.” Brooks snapped his fingers and knocked a pile of hardbacks over to get at a yellowed cardboard box. He handed it to Howard. “My service sidearm. She’s not much against that, but she’ll do you proud. Shame all I have left is that clip. Better than nothing I suppose.”
“Thanks, Brooks, but there’s got to be at least a dozen or more libraries in the surrounding area. What could I possibly find that you haven’t already?” Howard gestured to the many books leaning in large stacks around the fort.
Brooks shook his head. “There were. They’re all burned down now. Not sure who, but some Neanderthal that got it in his head that knowledge is a bad thing. A lot of people blame what’s happening on knowledge. We know better. And I ain’t what I used to be. I can’t go journeying across the land anymore. But I’ll make it easy on you, find anything by a man named Robert Heinlein and you’re my hero.”
“It might be a long time before I’m back this way. Are you going to be able to last that long, old man?” Howard kidded.
“Old man? This old man could beat your smart ass all the way to L.A and back.” Brooks wrapped the smoked venison in large green leaves and closed the creaky oven door. Without another word, the gruff old man curled up on his bedroll and was fast asleep the moment his eyes closed.
Howard didn’t doubt for second that Brooks could take him. He’d known only a few true survivors over the short expanse of his life, and their wisdom held more value than all the paper wealth of the world that used to be.
With the night in full swing now, rain beginning to fall again, Howard relived the horror of Jennifer’s ashen face as she cried out for him. He could still hear her wails within the confines of his mind. He packed up his things and left all his rational thoughts behind. If he was going to do this, to finish what she started, he needed to make her wish the only thing that mattered. He needed to leave all of his doubt and worry in this lonely room with this lonely man.
So he did.
As quiet as he could, he climbed down the chain to meet the waiting Creepers.
Pathos I – Traveling Historian of the Dead
May 15th, 2041
Pathos I Journal Entry [7704]
St. Louis seems like a lifetime away, but in reality it’s only two weeks removed. Two weeks. Fourteen days. Half a month. A measure of time I’d taken for granted before the war too many times. Two weeks until summer, two weeks until fall, two weeks until that Billy Joel concert, two weeks until our anniversary, but even as I dig deep into the past, I can’t recall a single memory of any of that lost time. In hindsight, none of it seems important.
Two weeks pre-war, maybe an aunt died of a coronary, a bomb went off at some gathering home or abroad, maybe an industrial accident or two. Death happened. But even when it hit home, it didn’t hit all that hard after the initial shock. What I’ve witnessed during these particular two weeks will never leave me. But each for a different reason. One for the absolute horrors brought on by warped religion and superstition. Two for the absolute apex of human kindness. Night and day, black and white, top and bottom, the best and the worst.
I’ve spent a great deal of time at the keys over those two weeks. I’ve recorded many dead. Just outside of St. Louis, after that amazing morning, head dry and fuzzy from too much drink, we saw the first of many atrocities. I’d heard the stories, heard the tall tales, the warnings, just as Jamie had, of the techno cults. I’d even run across their sites of worship and sacrifice over my years.
Never this many, and never occupied.
By the light of the lantern, we came upon the first. A construct of wire and cattle fence that resembled a crude dome. Three moaning Creepers were sacrificed within the rusted prison. A warped homage to Christianity. A warped testament to our cruel past and what had become of those who went full native after twenty long years. For starters, they had perfected their craft.
The domes were beautiful, painfully crafted from the useless technology of which they were a commentary. But all that effort, that great driving force, it was nothing more than an implement of death. Like a cruise missile, sleek and amazing, but utterly devastating. All for naught, but not from their point of view. Oh no, not from their point of view.
We stopped at each construct to give the dead a proper burial. Even though we’d passed plenty of wandering Creepers during our journey east, we never stopped, never even thought to do so, but something about the domes gave us pause. Something about the severity of these acts and their terrible aftermaths struck our very human souls. It would’ve been wrong of us to leave them like that. And those acts of kindness saved us.
Jamie had just finished burying our ninth body that day. We’d gathered around to bow our heads in respect when the first arrow whistled past. We’d finally caught up to them. What had taken them months to do had been undone by a few hard working survivors in just two weeks. We weren’t happy. Neither were they. And we let each other know it. The technology they hated so fiercely wiped them from the world in minutes.
Baylor had taught the women how to handle firearms well, and they made quick work of the cultists. As I walked among the dead, ensuring they didn’t come back to haunt another group of poor souls, I realized what I had previously thought animal skins were in fact human. There was a faded tattoo of a woman holding a baby covering one of the cultist’s waist. A smiling mom and her big beautiful child, their faces warped into devilish caricatures.
It was that tattoo, the image and idea it represented, that floored me. I broke down. In that brittle, dry field, next to the corpse of a savage, I broke down and cried. It’s okay, Sophie said to me then. She stood over me, smiling like the woman in the tattoo, holding little Randal, like the woman in the tattoo held her son.
Our brave mothers, our amazing women—the caretakers of this terrible apocalypse. It is because of them we survive, we grow. My god it is because of Sophie and Jamie I’m alive now. It goes deepe
r than the two weeks. I realize that now. Jamie’s been keeping me going for a long time.
Her words, the way she drives a conversation, she uses the same precision that navigates these haphazard tracks. I imagine she did the same for Baylor over the years. A mother to them all, but more than that. An ear to listen, for sure. A shoulder for us all to cry on when needed. The lover, the caretaker, coaxing great flavors from what should taste like wood chips. The example setter and the fierce warrior, and even, when situations deemed it, the ice cold killer.
Even through all of that, she never lost her motherly instincts. She cares for Bobby and Sophie’s child as if it were her own. She dispenses knowledge to Sophie with a careful hand. She never over steps her bounds and she never makes Sophie feel inadequate as a mother. Jamie is the epitome of what it means to be a woman. By simply being such, she has ensured there will, one day, be another like her, and hopefully many more when it comes time for Sophie to set the example.
My, how dumb the other half of our species has been. Perhaps if we’d only listened to what we knew all along we’d have circumvented wars and genocide and not lost so many along the way. I feel humbled, I feel shame, I feel I’ll never be able to even come close to her level. I wish I could, but I know I can’t, for my mind does not work like that. I’ve been too damaged by the world.
She saved me. She can save us all. I only have to make sure she lives to do so. The world is still in a great flux and there are many perils along this rusted track. One day I hope there is a monument in her name, but I am afraid, so afraid, that like so many of our strong women before her, she will be ignored, or even forgotten when it comes time to write that history. I must do all I can to ensure Jamie’s name will not be forgotten.
I hope, somewhere at the end of what is to come, she will know peace. I hope that she will know what it is to not live in constant fear. She deserves that at the very least. They all do. They’ve put on such a brave face. They endured even when the strongest of us have cracked. Such power and grace and beauty they possess. Times like this make me think of Siobhan. How I miss her. How I wish she were here to bear witness to beauty born. For that is what Jamie is. She is beauty. She is everything right with the world. We can all learn from her, from them all really.
It is the women who will save us. It is the women who will ensure the world is not rebuilt, but reborn. It is the women who will make sure it never happens again. It is the women who help the rest of us cope when all seems lost.
CHAPTER 21
Their mouths found his arms. He heard Baylor shouting. The boom of the Mad Conductor’s heavy revolver pulsed against his ear drums. It all seemed so far away. He felt heavy, so heavy, as if he were sinking into the world. A slow descent accompanied by the hungry moans of the Creepers.
The monitors flickered and popped. He was powerless to stop them. He couldn’t focus. Their cold, slimy mouths tore his shirt then his skin. He tried to move, to shake them off, but it was like a dream where he tried to scream, to run, and was powerless to do so.
“Bobby! Bobby!” Baylor’s voice warbled.
Bobby focused on his name. He focused on the man behind the voice. He pictured those wild eyes and sleek bald head, and he held that image in his mind’s eye, but it slipped away.
He was running away from the Settlement in the blinding snow. Bryan’s legs dangled from the fence. Yannek coughed his life’s blood away with each puff of smoke. Ol’ Randy bled to death in his arms. The Creepers screamed inside his mind and the world twisted into a torrent of misery. His rifle echoed amid the chaos. But the memories kept coming.
The world stretched further then rushed back all at once.
He gasped.
Cold, wet air knifed his lungs. The fire in his right shoulder was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. He blinked, shaking his head to clear away the fuzz.
A Creeper had his arm in its mouth. What had once been a woman was missing half her face. A cloudy eye bounced on her torn cheek. Her floppy breasts swayed as she shook Bobby’s in an effort to free the morsel of his living flesh. Bobby kicked at her.
He swung at her bloody mouth. The Auto Stryker cut across her face, but not deep enough. More of the fresh Creepers clawed at him. He rolled towards them. Their voices filled his mind with pleas in the language of savages. One by one, monitors snapped back on. Bobby plunged into the thick of them.
“Bobby!” Baylor shouted. His revolver boomed.
Bobby felt the cold spray of congealed blood and brain matter. The bullet had missed him by an inch if that.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “Follow my lead and stop shouting my name.” Bobby worked his way into the thick of the crowd. He moved like the Creepers, and it wasn’t hard. The wound had him on the verge of passing out. If he stopped now, it was all over. His only chance was to work the pit with Baylor.
Baylor’s revolver clicked dry. The Mad conductor twirled the revolver around and growled at the Creepers, at him. Bobby moved them with just enough style to sell the show to the frothy crowd around the lip of the pit. He let the Mad Conductor swing the empty weapon like a hammer, splattering skulls between curses.
Bobby made them slow. He sent Baylor easy paper targets, one by one they left his mind, and the world, in violent sprays of brains and blood. Bobby could see the glee as the Mad Conductor relished in the swell of it all.
As the Creepers began to thin, Bobby inched closer. Swiping at Baylor, he whispered, “Make it look real. Come nightfall, I’ll make for the train. Stall them if you can. Don’t leave without me. They’re getting ready to move.”
“Motherfuckers,” Baylor roared, pushing Bobby away to crush another skull. He had tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.” His words were barely audible over the shouts of the crowd.
Bobby winked at him and nodded, but to those above it looked like purely broken motor functions. He lunged for Baylor. The Mad Conductor tried to spin away, but tripped over a corpse and fell onto his back.
“You’re fucking crazy, kid.”
“I know,” Bobby said as he tried to take a chunk out of Baylor’s arm.
“But not as crazy as me. I got one bullet left in my belt. I’m pushing you back to the Creeper coming up behind you. Get him in front of you and don’t fucking move, don’t flinch. It’s gotta look real.” Baylor shoved Bobby back.
Bobby struggled to his feet. The wound bled terribly. The sky twisted into a vortex. He maneuvered the savage Creeper in front of him. He could see Baylor through the ragged hole in the thing’s chest. Baylor’s pistol glinted in the light and then cracked the air. Cold empty thoughts splattered his face. He fell in time with the savage, a perfectly choreographed death for all to see.
The crowd cried, “Baylor! Baylor!”
Beneath the savage’s corpse, Bobby began to slip away. He tried to stay alert, but his arm and most of his right side went numb and cold. He was having a hard time breathing.
He felt the weight of the final two Creepers smash on top of him. The sudden jolt kept him from fading altogether.
* * * * *
“Get me the fuck out of this pit!”
The crowd died down as Moya stepped forward. “Didn’t take you for the bleeding heart, Baylor.” Moya motioned towards the pit.
“It was just a kid, just a fucking kid!”
“I think, Mr. Keaton, would disagree with you there. But you made it through. Maybe there wasn’t as much truth to your myths as you’d like others to believe.”
A ladder was lowered into the pit. Baylor stared at their faces, each and every one of them: the mothers, the narrow-eyed gazes openly calling him out, the satisfied smirks, and the awe of the younger ones. He marked them all. He wiped the blood and brains from his revolver before holstering it and then he climbed out of the pit.
“That was quite the punch, but a piss poor attempt.”
“I wasn’t going in that pit.”
“But you did.”
“Just a fucking kid.”
Th
ere was a commotion as a large wagon was pulled to the edge of the pit. Men began to drop ropes and netting in as the crowd dispersed. They shouted orders and worked with an efficiency that reminded Baylor of his crew.
“What are they doing?”
Moya pulled her flaming locks away from her face. “Oh, they’re recycling,” she said with a shrug. “Even dead, our enemies have many uses. You’ll see soon enough.”
Baylor watched in horror as the bodies were yanked from the pit by a series of horses. The men secured the decaying bundle and used a wooden crane to pull the corpses away from the pit. Somewhere within, Bobby played dead, or he might already be. Baylor held his emotions in check. This was it. The grand play. He didn’t have any idea what Bobby had in store. Everything had gone so wrong. Why had the kid exposed himself?
The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past Page 21
