The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past

by Dixon, Norman

  Howard kept his mind working. He couldn’t dwell, wouldn’t dwell. There wasn’t enough time to. The first of the explosive bricks made their way to him. He knew they were inert without the other components, but he still hesitated to touch them. He had to take a breath to steady his hands. With this act, he could give these people release, final release. It was enough to keep him going.

  He began to pack the vests and prep them for war. He worked through the first line, hearing every mind-bending plea.

  “I will give you death. I will give you peace. I promise,” Howard said to a man that wouldn’t stop wailing about his wife. The images were warped by time, but the message in them was clear. A very familiar image—one he’d experienced many times over the years. An overrun house, the last stand gone wrong, backed into a corner, nowhere to run, biting, fading away only to rise again.

  Howard secured the man in his vest. “Soon it will be over.”

  He moved to the next in line—an armless woman with no lower jaw. Her tongue hung in putrescent ribbons like a shaggy beard. Her thoughts held only darkness, like the bottom of the river she’d come from. Dead fish rotted away in her torn stomach and weeds dried in green patches on her bloated flesh. Howard suited her up and went to the next in line.

  He worked through the day, constantly checking the tracks, listening for any sign of the approaching army. He worked until he ran out of vests and then he began stuffing the bricks into their bloated and torn stomachs, into their mouths. Tears wet his cheeks as he worked. Every few Creepers, he’d pull the spike and drive it through soft temples. The field would be his to control. He didn’t need to control all of them.

  He littered the rolling green hills with bombs. Jennifer’s plan was about to come to fruition. Howard wanted to feel some sense of accomplishment, but only emptiness called his soul home. He’d lost the last of himself the morning he woke to Jennifer’s clacking teeth. Over the years, over the millions of people he’d sent to their deaths, each took from him a bit of who he was, and now there was nothing left.

  Howard thought that after his father passed he’d be able to live with the little bit of himself that was left. When Jennifer came along, he actually filled that emptiness up somewhat, but now, as he stuffed bombs into living dead flesh, he realized there was nothing. Howard was gone. He existed now as a tool of revenge risen from the grave of a woman taken well before her time.

  The Creepers cleared the last of the shelves. His fingers ached from his efforts, as did his mind from theirs. As Howard began to file the Creepers out of the base, he caught a glimpse of something in the corner of the room through a blurry set of eyes. He moved the Creeper closer and realized he was seeing something covered by a heavy tarp. He moved rigor-filled fingers and pulled it back, living through the dead man like he now moved through life. A dead thing hollowed by tragedy and the after effects of a war he’d been born into.

  He found himself staring at a very recognizable relic of wars past. He moved the dead hand over its spotless surface. The yellow lights reflected exploding stars back to him through the Creeper’s failing eyes. His feet squished in the muddy field, but his mind was in the room with the warhead. A fiery release lurked just beneath those dead fingers. Howard smiled.

  A loud wail broke the thought. He didn’t recognize the sound at first. Some kind of high-pitched note followed by a chug-chug. Then he glimpsed the horizon and the puffs of smoke rising there. The train was coming. His mind exploded open as thousands of new deaths entered his brain.

  Howard fell into the mud, unable to process this flood of emotion. The Creepers all around began to moan as he lost his grip on them. The army had arrived. He scrambled to his feet. Shaking and panting, he drove the new minds away, pushed them back and back until they were buried beneath the images of the warhead. He began to file some of the Creepers back into the tunnel with their parcels. He wasn’t even sure if what he had in mind would work, but if it did, the dividends would pay off. He had nothing to lose. This was the moment he’d hoped to arrive at with Jennifer. They’d free her people and ride off into the sunset together to rebuild the world.

  No.

  The world was dead. He was dead. There was nothing left. Nothing left but to right the last wrong. To end those responsible.

  Howard worked his mind to the brink of insanity as he used every fiber to guide those stiff fingers. He wired the relic then broke the connection. The detonators dangled from his belt as he ran among the dead. He ran to the far hill for a better vantage point. The train was almost upon him. The tree line beckoned to him from a hundred yards away. He began to disperse the Creepers to make them look like a wandering group. The army would make quick work of them, walk among them, and then he would let the world know her name.

  CHAPTER 23

  Bobby staggered along the muddy path, his mouth dry and arm numb. The pain in it was long since forgotten. Busy faces passed him by without second glances. Horses drawing carts moved ahead, people on foot with large tents strapped to their backs sung songs, and all around the camp ceased to be. The army was in motion. Bobby avoided eye contact, but he couldn’t avoid those faces, dripping like candle wax in his blurred vision. The faces of those responsible.

  Belief.

  It was happening to him all over again. No matter how hard he vowed against it, no matter how hard he fought against it, someone else’s belief found a way to rally against him. The injury was beginning to take its toll. The strength he found within himself when facing Baylor in the pit had invigorated him. The hope it gave him was quickly waning.

  He rubbed his eyes and was lifted for a second by the sight of Baylor’s train. The beast hissed long and loud, signaling motion.

  Bobby ran towards hope. The looks of his enemies became a smear of disconnected faces. The train became the only thing in his world at that moment. So close, yet so far away from him. He weaved between a pair of horses, moved around an old school bus converted to a wagon, wooden wheels and all. The steam from the beast rose higher and higher. He cut between a covered wagon made from an old motor home and a litter carried by four squat men in togas.

  The train’s pistons pumped slowly, squealing, hissing to life, and Bobby ran to them, to the last bit of hope they had left. He didn’t hear the thundering of hooves behind him. Barely felt the small, but strong arm that encircled him, lifting him off the ground mid-run.

  He tried to twist away but he was too weak. Red hair whipped past his face as his abductor changed direction. The horse bolted away from the train. Bobby tried to fight, but those hands were so strong and the injury exacted now took its true toll on his body. He held the Auto Stryker in a loose grip, but he was so tired. The blade slipped from his grasp and he was defenseless in the arms of the enemy. Somewhere far away, the train sighed in defeat.

  * * * * *

  Moya kissed the boy’s head. She hugged him tight as she charged through the wet field, thick with her followers. The train wailed, announcing their departure. Her heart thundered right along with her mount’s pounding hooves. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst with joy. Tears streamed down her face. A satisfying warmth spread over her body.

  It couldn’t be, but it was. She always knew there were more than her precious Josh, but never did she imagine one in her midst. The boy should be turned by now. She’d watched him shot by Keaton. She’d watched him bitten by them. She’d watched him shot again, or so she thought. Yet, despite all that, here he was, alive and breathing.

  Her army moved ever closer to the future she’d dreamed about all those years ago. They spread out before her in a tapestry of the triumph of her will. She hugged the boy, wiped the sweat from his pale brow, and squeezed him tight.

  She slowed the mount to a trot. Her followers called out to her, patted her powerful thighs, blew her kisses, tossed flowers as they worshipped their queen. Moya soaked it in. If they could procure the weapons of old, none they might encounter in the east would be able to challenge them. None in the new world
would be able to take the children ever again. None would be able to stand against them.

  She rode beside the Creeper pen. The moaning dead reached through the bars for her. They reached for the boy, reached for their new master. The boy’s presence rendered them silent.

  Moya pulled to the front of the pen. A tattooed woman wearing the skin of the man that raped her took the reins of Moya’s horse.

  “It has come,” the woman said. Her short hair glistened with sweat. The hard work required to maneuver the pen had given her broad shoulders and a deep tan. The tattoos looked like faded reminders.

  Moya carefully moved from her horse to the jostling platform with the boy in her arms. “It has, Feriah. It has.”

  “Do you expect resistance?”

  “Part of me always does, but in this area, nothing more than mountain hermits.” Moya took the uneven staircase, made from repurposed wood and scrap metal, to the top of the wagons.

  “We’ll be ready, no matter what,” Feriah called after her.

  Moya looked back and gave Feriah a quick nod. The guards bowed as she approached. Below, the dead groped the air. Their cloudy eyes followed her every step.

  The sun burned away the morning dew and the perfect blue stretched on forever. The train pulled ahead, sending up clouds of steam. The march was in full swing, and soon the great black band of river joined them as a silent slithering companion.

  The man in the harness awoke screaming as Feriah lowered him closer to the dead. The pen picked up speed.

  “It is here, Josh,” Moya said, hugging the boy, kissing his burning cheeks.

  * * * * *

  Bobby looked at himself through their eyes, through thousands of sketchy monitors. He saw himself through one eye, through milky eyes, through broken eyes. He saw himself as the flies above the horde saw him—through a thousand different windows. He felt the movement, felt her ropey arms under his body, but his mind was so far away. He couldn’t return to his eyes. He tried to slip back.

  The Creepers wouldn’t let him.

  Somewhere behind the monitors, in the deep black space inside of him, he heard his heart beat slow until it sounded like intermittent thunder on a southern horizon. He felt his life slipping away. He felt the Creepers drawing him, beckoning him home. Their rotten fingers grabbed for him. Cold dead hands latched onto the tiny invaders in his blood, coursing slowly with each dying heartbeat.

  Sophie’s smiling face rose in the darkness. Her pale freckled face hung before that endless cold. She lifted little Randal, held him out for Bobby to love, but he had no arms. His body was so far away. A terrible hunger found him, burning in his guts, begging him to fill it, but it wasn’t something he could do. This time it was different.

  He was dying.

  * * * * *

  With the boy cradled in her arms and the dead below her, Moya watched the train struggle up the steep hill while the great black river chose to bend around it. They were almost there. Less than a mile, but the boy was keeping her from fully savoring the moment. He was terribly pale and his brow was slick with sweat.

  “Feriah!” Moya called.

  The tattooed woman rushed atop the swaying platforms. She knelt beside Moya.

  “Bring Pathos Two here.”

  Feriah looked perplexed, but she did not question the order. She scanned the swath of moving pieces, searching for the fat man’s moving garden among their full number.

  “Go, now,” Moya said, rolling the boy’s shirt up to reveal the blood soaked bandage. His lips barely moved. The bites would not take him, but Keaton’s handiwork surely would if she didn’t intervene.

  Part of her wanted to squeeze the life from him. Her fingers were dangerously close to his throat at that moment. He was in a weakened state and of no use, but Josh—his face swam close to the surface of her pool of memory, keeping her from acting on that impulse.

  Flowers drifted on the wind. Josh’s blood soaked her clothes, traced the cracks in her sundried fingers. Delicate innocent crimson. Her world fell apart. Everything changed. She shook the terrible memory away, but she could still hear her own scream. The moment relived at a time of great importance. She was not one to shuck what her mind was allowing her to feel once more.

  The boy spoke in unintelligible whispers. The dead below moaned louder and louder, fighting against the pull of the great pen and the draw of the hanging man. Moya held the boy to her chest. He was burning hot, hotter than any human should ever burn. A star scorching a hole in her bosom.

  The train crested the hill—a powerful silhouette of her achievements. Her army followed, lining the hilltop on both sides of the train. People from all walks of life. The truest of true survivors.

  “It’s okay, Josh. It’s going to be okay.” She existed on two planes of reality. She shed tears on both, a vulnerability she thought dead inside her. She rocked back and forth, cooing to the boy like she did to Josh’s lifeless body all those years ago. Then the horns started to blare far and wide.

  * * * * *

  Bobby’s brothers waited for him at the edge of everything. Ryan quipped and punched Paul in the arm, while Peter tried to quell the argument that would surely follow, and Bryan sat legless and bloodied. Pure white snow like stars drifted in the deep darkness all around them. Phantom gunfire echoed through the timeless space with no beginning and no end—a series of slightly repeating images rolling over unto infinity.

  Bobby staggered along, moving his body, though he could not see it. His brothers were whisked away by a cloud of blinding snow. Somewhere in the sudden whiteout, Ecky cursed furiously in his native tongue. Sprays of red and then black again, then nothing but the deep echo of Ol’ Randy’s dying breath. Pages from the notebook flitted by, along with his mother’s crumbling tombstone.

  He tried to fight against the flood, but he was helpless in that vastness. Just another child lost. A child lost to superstition and circumstance. He’d become just another unforgivable doomed repetition, a casualty of war. The faces of those he’d ended came to him then, drifting up out of the darkness like Creepers from the depths of a black mountain lake.

  He felt his heart stop, a sudden flash of red-yellow in the darkness, and then nothing. The images ceased. The sounds silenced. Everything stopped. He felt it all slip away until only the cold remained. The spark of his consciousness, the last bit of warmth in all the universe, and it was fading, thinking its last thought. He didn’t want to let go, didn’t want to let go…

  * * * * *

  She felt him go. Moya laid the boy down in disbelief. The horns sounded in quick staccato blasts all around as the army spread the word of the horde on the other side of the hill.

  “This is not our first rodeo,” Moya shouted. She motioned for the guards to keep moving. “If we can’t clear them, we have no right to what we’ve come for, or to a future.”

  She stood over his frail corpse. Had it all been some kind of great joke? Payback for the lives she’d shattered over the years? Was there some great invisible deity prodding her with the sins of the past? She allowed her moment of weakness to pass. No, she told herself. No this is nothing more than the frailty of human emotions. You are better than this. She cracked her knuckles.

  “Miss Moya, I’ve found him!” Feriah shouted as she dragged the huffing fat man up the stairs.

  Moya stood with arms crossed. “It’s too late. He’s passed.”

  Feriah drew a blade from her belt. “Then allow me.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Feriah.”

  Pathos Two stumbled to the boy’s corpse. He fumbled with his leather bound bag. He plugged a stethoscope into his ears and pressed it against the boy’s bloody chest.

  “He’s not dead.”

  Moya’s eyes widened. “Keep us moving, Feriah. I want on that hill.”

  “Will do, but I don’t think the pen can hold anymore of them.”

  “Then kill them all.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “He’s in bad shape. I don’t kn
ow if I can save him.”

  “You’d better find a way, or you can make quite the meal for them below.” Moya squeezed Pathos Two’s shoulder until he winced. “And quickly.”

  “Do you hear that?”

  Moya leaned closer. “Hear what?”

  “That,” Pathos Two said, pointing at the boy’s lips.

  She did, but she couldn’t make it out.

  * * * * *

  Bobby was alone in all that darkness. Completely alone, and then another joined him. A tiny ember somewhere far on the other side of forever. He knew the presence instantly.

  Brother.

  Bobby felt his body, stiff and sore and weak, but alive, veins filled with lightning—a buzzing that began to piece him back together. His mind fired, left the darkness like a bullet from his rifle, propelled by the presence of the other. He reached out and found understanding. Not in words, not in images, but in being. The cold fell away and his eyes flashed open.