“Keaton would’ve executed you, Baylor.”
He locked eyes with her as she lead the way towards the heart of the camp. All around, people were packing away their bed rolls, their children, moving cattle into rickety wagons. Bobby was right. Whatever he’d seen during the night had no doubt prompted him to action. These people were getting ready to move.
“All show. It was for the crowd, and you know it. It was all part of your plan, I’m sure.” Baylor turned to face her. “Even the kid rushing in when he did. It all fits too well.”
“You give me too much credit,” Moya said coyly. “Will you lead us west, Baylor?”
Baylor stared at her. The blood from the savages flaked away from his knuckles as he cracked them.
“Your little hill people are safe. Give them what you have left and let them scurry away. After your performance today, I’d call it a fair trade. But be ready for our return. You will wait with Keaton and then the real journey begins.”
Baylor tried to figure out where her mind was at. What did she have planned? “You said this was about secrets from the past…” He tried to find an advantage in her eyes, a warning sign, a slip, anything, but whatever leverage he’d thought they’d held was gone. His chest trembled. Somewhere close by, Bobby was dying and he couldn’t do anything about it. The Mad Conductor laughed at him from the shadows of his mind.
“I did.” Moya stopped and took Baylor’s hand in hers. He let her trace his long weathered fingers, massage his dirty knuckles, and then she bent the fingers of his left hand back in a flash. The bones snapped like twigs. They bent back until the knuckles rested on top of his hand. The shock drove him to the ground.
The pain was instant and overwhelming. He couldn’t even struggle. Her movements were so fast all he could do was obey.
“I did indeed.”
Her knee drove into Baylor’s side.
“I was open with you from the start, Baylor. You should’ve been the same with me. I run a fair game. I don’t like being lied to. But rest assured your little game did not go unnoticed. The boy’s blood will coat our bullets. I will raise many in his name. The glory was all there for you to claim. All you had to do was go along.”
Baylor tried to push her small frame away, but she had total control of him. Each time he moved, she applied just enough pressure to send the breath from his lungs.
“You will show my men how to drive the train. You will work with them.” She turned his arm, locked his elbow. “If you ever try to play me for a fool again—” she yanked back until the arm snapped in two— “I will break every other bone in your body, and then I will bring you back from the dead with the boy’s blood, and your very much alive corpse can decorate my throne.”
Baylor screamed while the Mad Conductor raged from the dark corner of his mind.
* * * * *
Bobby held his breath as he cut away a section of netting. He had to be careful. Two men fidgeted with some boxy machine a few paces away. They placed several barrels on the other side of it already. He couldn’t feel his arm, as if it had been cut off like a First War veteran’s. He sliced another section away and felt the bodies drop an inch. He cut another. The netting swayed, creaking the wood of the crane, but the men were too busy with the machine to notice.
“Damn thing has a mind of its own.”
“Told that fat shit his little vegetable oil fuel wouldn’t work worth a shit.”
“Just wait. Here it is, here it is.”
The machine rattled and chugged then began to whirr loud and steady. Puffs of acrid smoke filled the damp air as one of the men worked the choke on the engine. The machine whined.
Bobby cut away another section. The net snapped, spilling the rotting bodies onto the ground. He could only gather half breaths. The weight of the dead savages on top him was too much. He could see one of the men through the gaps in the limbs. Warty nose, fuzzy eyebrows, and a ragged scar that ran down his cheek and over his lower lip like the zipper of a coat. The man held one of the bodies by the wrists.
“Come on, Lawson. Help me get this one in the chipper. I want to be done and three sheets to the wind before we move.”
“He looks like a crunchy one,” the other man said with a chuckle. “I like them crunchy.”
The weight lessened a bit. Bobby heard the body hit metal. The machine roared.
“Bastard’s stuck, Lawson. Get the shovel and push him down in there.”
The machine rattled, then Bobby heard the sound of the body being torn apart by the technologies of old. The men grabbed another corpse. Bobby breathed, tried to move his arm, and tried not to panic. He could hear chunks splattering against the barrels. He had a pretty good idea what they used the barrels for.
He was able to squirm free. He popped up fast. The world wavered, but he kept upright, though he didn’t know for how long. His heart pounded, lacing his system with adrenaline as he drove his blade into the back of the warty-nosed man.
The man didn’t scream, didn’t cry out. He just stood there, holding his side in shock.
Bobby drove the Auto Stryker into his throat and pulled it away in a spray of hot blood. He spun to the other man, who had a shovel at the ready. Bobby rolled around the awkward strike. He shouldered the man into the machine. The man reached for him with wide eyes, horribly wide eyes, and Bobby watched as the machine pulled him in. His scream lasted only a second, like the call of a crow. Chunks of his stringy gray hair stuck to the side of the barrels.
Bobby dropped low and headed for the nearest tent. He needed to get out of sight and out of his clothes. He was covered from head to toe in blood, some of it his own, but most of it not. His mind raced, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He’d crash soon enough, or worse. He didn’t have much time. He had to get to the train before the move. If he didn’t, he’d never catch up in his condition.
He kept the Auto Stryker close as he ducked inside the tent.
It was empty. A heavily patched sleeping bag with a rusted zipper lay on the dingy nylon floor. There was a large backpack and several jugs of water on top of it. Bobby upended one of the jugs. He gulped and gulped but didn’t think he’d ever be able to quench his thirst. He opened another jug and used it to wash the blood from his arms. The bite marks were evident, jagged rings, but they didn’t carry the same weight they once did. Yannek’s voice yelled at him from the confines of memory, warning him about the many kinds of infection one could get.
The weeping hole in his right shoulder made the bites laughable. He found a small mirror hanging from a string on the backpack. He used it to help him get out of his blood-soaked shirt, peeling it off. The patterns in the weave were tattooed on his pale flesh in blood. The cold water stung. He used the sleeping bag to wipe away the blood, but it was replaced instantly by more.
Inside the bag, he discovered several shirts and a pair of socks that had lost their elasticity long, long ago. With the mirror propped on top of the bag, he began to fashion a sling. The bullet had gone clean through. He could see a little sliver of light poking through from the other side. He rinsed the wound again. Staring at the ring of scorch marks from the muzzle flash reminded him of the last thing Pastor Craven ever saw before the darkness came.
Bobby worked quick and as clean as he could. He had the wound wrapped and in a rough sling. The bleeding stopped, but he’d been exposed to a lot of grit and dirt. He slipped into a dark blue shirt with a faded gold ring on it. It was loose enough to cover the sling. He tucked the extra length into his blood covered pants. The occupant of the tent hadn’t left any other articles of clothing behind.
He rocked back and forth uneasily. Everything had changed so fast. He couldn’t lose him, wouldn’t lose him. He wouldn’t fail him like he did his brothers, like Yannek, like Ol’ Randy. No, Bobby thought. No, I won’t, I can’t. Never again. Never again.
He gripped the Auto Stryker tightly and crawled out of the tent.
* * * * *
Baylor knew from the scent of rotten animal
fat that they had brought him back to the beast. The pain was almost too much to stomach. Bile nipped at the back of his throat. How had she known? Did she hear them talking? No, it was far too loud with the army gathered around for the show. It was something else, something he’d given away, but he was careful.
“’Bout time you woke up,” Keaton said from somewhere behind him. “Heard you scream all the way across the camp. She only broke it.”
Rough hands yanked Baylor up and pushed him into a folding chair.
Keaton leaned in close. His breath smelled of strong drink. He waved a bandaged stump in Baylor’s face. “Not like she took it from you. Not permanently anyhow.”
Baylor rolled his dry eyes, blinked hard, and tried to settle into reality. Faces swam before him in oblong streaks of pale light. His arm was wrapped close to his body and he no longer felt the weight of his revolver about his waist. They’d stripped him of his weapons. The Mad Conductor cursed at him, berated him for not taking them when he had the chance.
“The kid was good, but not good enough. Should’ve stabbed me in the chest, maybe went for my neck, but he got caught up on you. But I guess that’s why she wanted you in the first place. She wants that loyalty. She wants that power over them,” Keaton said, waving his stump around the beast’s cramped confines.
The man’s gray beard came into focus as did his cold eyes. He leaned on the cold firebox, waiting for Baylor to respond.
“You could’ve had it easy, shit, you had it easy. All you needed to do was pass the test and it was all over. So many before you doing their own thing right now, out there, they followed along and reaped the reward. Hell, even one of your own did the same. Ain’t that right, soldier boy?”
A face stepped forward from the shadows, a familiar face, a friendly face, but no more…
“Post?”
CHAPTER 22
Howard greeted the sunrise with his army. They were an ocean of rotting flesh, lapping at his heels, eroding the once stable sanity of his mind. He’d been circling the grassy mound for almost an hour. This was the spot from Jennifer’s notes. But there was not a single sign of an entrance to the base in sight. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything around except the quietly flowing river, like a black band on the green landscape. His army made sure of that, eating wildlife when they were able to catch it and scaring it away when they could not.
Their greasy heads stretched into the distance. Flies buzzed about them, but Howard had grown used to the sound long ago. More than a week had passed. He heard their every death, felt them all on a deeply personal level. Their final pleas drained him just as they always had. They licked at his emotional stability as if it were a wound, and that is just what they had become to him—a terrible wound, but one he could now live with.
He asserted dominance over them, moved them, controlled them to a degree, and each day that passed made him better at the whole affair. Though he still moved about in mid-cringe, waiting for Jennifer to enter his mind with her pleas. If that happened, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to see this through.
He kept looking for the door. Her notes mentioned two trees and a jutting rock, but he couldn’t find two trees. Something had happened to the land. There were two stumps and the rock was gone. Judging from the way some of the larger trees were bent, the river had crested its banks in recent times. He retraced his steps again.
Then he saw it. Just back from the broken stumps. A patch of thick mud. It held the vague outline of a rectangle, barely visible to his keen eye, but there, and very much out of place. He wiped and clawed at it to reveal a rusted set of doors. They opened with a groan on to a dark staircase. Water sluiced down the concrete walls.
Howard didn’t hesitate. He descended the stairs with a measure of caution, though he was not afraid of what might be below. He was afraid of what he was about to do. Everything had changed since Jennifer’s death.
The light began to fade. Howard stopped to allow his eyes to adjust. It was like the corridors back in L.A all over again. He felt not fear, only a grand curiosity. The steps went on for what felt like a long time. The wet afternoon was somewhere far above him now. He reached an algae covered landing. The moment his feet touched it, a series of hazy yellow lights flicked on one by one to reveal a long concrete corridor.
It smelled of wet funk. Parts of the hallway were in various states of decay. Chunks of rock and earth mixed with the half foot of water that filled the long narrow space. Old military markings lay hidden beneath years worth of black mold. A bloated rat twisted lazily in the slop at his feet. He stepped over it and continued down the corridor.
Just under the damp smell was something else, something metallic, and it reminded him of his father’s communication tower in the early years. It gave off a terrible buzzing sound that hit him on a subsonic level. It unnerved him. He remembered never wanting to go up there, though his father always told him there was nothing to worry about. When he reached the end of the corridor, he heard that familiar buzzing. Another series of lights snapped on. He spied a small motion sensor in the corner of the ceiling. Another long corridor waited for him, but this one was lined with doors. The buzzing intensified with each step. He felt the hairs on his neck raise. The wet smell was overcome by ozone that tickled his brain.
Jennifer’s notes were spot on down to the room numbers. There were at least 30 empty rooms with military issue mattresses and neatly folded bed clothes. Each identical to the last. Wyoming Blue had been quite thorough in their application of pre-war discipline. The corridor opened up at the far end on to a massive room with a set of tracks running down its center. This was where the weapons were brought. The empty cart on the tracks was equipped to hold several different sizes of bomb, as well as other explosives. A large metal door took up most of the right side of the space and two smaller doors took up the left. Faded yellow and white lines crisscrossed the grease-stained concrete.
Howard went to the smaller doors first. The first door revealed a dark office with a series of switches and buttons on the wall. Howard pulled out the old phone and tapped the screen until he reached Jennifer’s notes. As his finger swiped the screen, he thought he heard her calling his name. His hands shook as he scrolled through the screens.
Big button: sends/recalls cart
Red button: locks down facility
Yellow button: lifts rolling door to garage, guns there, fresh clothes
Don’t go past the green doors. We walled it off. Bad, bad shit in there.
Howard shut the phone down. He had no intention of going anywhere near the explosives until he absolutely had to. He’d need to wire them and he had Jennifer’s notes for that, but he wasn’t about to expose himself to unnecessary risk. Not yet, not until he had a clear shot at the army. He wasn’t going to let Jennifer’s death become meaningless.
He was in the process of calling several Creepers into the base. They shambled along the corridors, splashing water and moaning. While he waited for them, he opened the garage door. A deep oily smell wafted from the dimly lit area. The vehicles had been removed long ago but their presence lingered still.
Howard found fresh fatigues but ignored them, though he did take the olive-colored undershirt. He wasn’t a soldier. He was just a man looking to put things as close to right as they could get under the circumstances. This was for Jennifer. Her wish. Nothing more. When it was done, he’d either be dead or worse. He’d be alive and alone.
He recalled the images from Manuel’s dead mind. Given the timing Jennifer talked about, and the tracks, they wouldn’t be long now. He knew what he had to do. He had the Creepers load themselves onto the cart. He went back into the office in his fresh shirt and pushed the big button. The Creepers disappeared into the dark tunnel.
A single row of runner lights lined the roof of the tunnel. Suddenly the darkness lifted to reveal a circular room with a crumbling, dome-like ceiling. The left half held Jennifer’s green door. He viewed the room on a tilt due to some kind of trauma to the Cre
epers’ necks, or perhaps it was just simple decay that made them so.
A series of metal rolling doors were spaced evenly along the right side. Jennifer had tried to explain in detail all the types of weaponry stored within them, but her technical descriptions of them went over his head. Her words about how to use them did not.
He gathered a large duffel bag and packed some ammunition, a long rifle, and spools of wiring in it. Then he grabbed the detonators. He took another bag and began to cram it with military issue vests until he had the shelf clear. There weren’t nearly enough, but they’d have to do. He headed for the surface. While he walked the corridors, he had the Creepers begin loading the cart. It would take some time to move things along. Even with plenty of helping hands.
Would that leave enough time?
He hustled up the stairs into the afternoon light. He sent another group of Creepers down, and then another, until he had a chain of them leading out into the muddy field. While one part of him worked the Creepers through the process of removing the explosives, he was busy ordering the rest of the army into neat rows. With all their dreary thoughts, they obeyed and took a bit more of his soul in the process.
The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past Page 22
