Keaton snapped his weapon up and fired twice. Baylor heard two distinct thumps as bodies hit the ground somewhere behind him. Keaton put the weapon between his legs and opened the drum. He loaded the gun in less time than it took Baylor to blink. The vortex of the cannon, that endless black hole, stared at him once more.
The Mad Conductor bowed his head in shame.
CHAPTER 25
Howard had a hard time keeping track of Bobby. His brother flickered in and out of his mind like a weak radio signal.
He sent a Creeper beneath the churning wheels of a wagon full of men with automatic weapons. As the wheels crushed its skull, he pressed the button. Wood and sheet metal tore apart, severing limbs, taking life, exploding outward to alter the battle further in his favor.
He’d laid the grid out perfectly. Each number a click. Each click an exclamation point of death. He worked the sides, funneling the army into a line while giving them the illusion of choice. An orange blossom tore limbs and further squeezed the column, while Bobby’s wild rush pressed from the other side of the hill.
Howard searched for Jennifer’s people between explosions. He jumped through the dead minds like opening door after door in a long hallway. Each new mind begged him for mercy, for love, for family, for life, for release, but Howard could only grant an end to the torment. Guilt worked his heartstrings. The time to unleash his empathy would come later. He needed to find the women.
If any of them had survived.
* * * * *
Bobby’s ears bled and his innards trembled from the shockwave. The din of the battle had become one long drawn out whine that set his teeth on edge. He dropped to his belly as men on horseback rode up to the destroyed pen. One of them barked orders accompanied by quick hand gestures. The man turned in the saddle as Bobby dropped the sight over his face. His eyes went wide.
Bobby fired.
The man’s head snapped back as he tumbled from the saddle. Bobby shot the next two in the back as they searched frantically for his position. He jumped up and ran to the order giver’s horse. He grabbed the reins, wobbling as he swung onto the saddle, which was fit for a much taller rider. It had been some time since he last rode a horse, but it was impossible to forget anything Ol’ Randy taught him. He’d learned how to ride dangerous mountain trails and how to fire while moving, but never how to do everything at once and control a horde of Creepers thousands strong.
Bobby pressed his chest to the mare’s neck, patting her as he guided her towards the Creepers. She resisted at first, whinnying and kicking, but he kept working her, kept whispering in her ear. She was no stranger to the chaos of battle, but the Creepers were a different beast. When the dead walked, the foundations of essential survival rose to the top—warning systems from the dawn of time. Run and live or stay and die. Bobby reassured her that life lie in a pool of the dead. She struggled against him for a moment then gave in to his commands. She snorted at him and all he could do was pat her neck to reassure her she’d made the right choice.
The dead horde parted, swallowing them in a rush of decaying flesh.
* * * * *
Moya stood upon the rubble as she whistled for her mount. The beast charged towards her call, crushing the dead beneath massive hooves. Gouts of brain and blood decorated the earth in its wake. She jumped into the saddle and rode after the boy.
He was another test. She could see it now, as the battle raged around her. He was put in her path to see if she was worthy of tomorrow, and just as Josh had been a catalyst for progress, this boy was a roadblock. She would not be fooled again.
Moya charged after the wild horde, quickly catching up to her troops in the process. Smoke rose from the train in the distance, but she couldn’t dwell on the implication. She had much more pressing matters to attend to.
“Break around and cut them off. Don’t let them take that hill,” she screamed, pointing towards the smoking ruin of the train as explosions ripped the horizon.
Her mind, having been honed by decades of war, could envision the boy’s plan. He guided them along, aiming them towards the train and the rest of her army. She dug her heels in, spurning her mount on. Her men rode along with her, picking off the dead in a mad dash to break their progress.
“Whose firing on us?” one of her men cried.
She didn’t know.
* * * * *
Baylor felt the blood trickle from his friend’s lips into his ear. His hand dropped in defeat and found something mechanical at the base of Post’s spine. He didn’t have to see it to know what it was. He’d handled all manner of firearms over the years and knew the familiar shape. He let his hand lay on top of it, but made no effort to grab it.
Keaton drew on a Creeper a hundred yards away and fired. The Creeper stumbled and exploded in a flash.
“God damn son of a bitch!” Keaton searched for another target. “This is soldier boy’s people. I told her the fat man’s numbers were off.” Keaton fired on another Creeper before reloading again.
Baylor tried to count the number of rounds left on Keaton’s bandoliers, but his eyes were swimming with dirt and blood. He flexed his left hand to ward off the numbness that threatened to end his wild plan altogether. He’d only get one shot. All he needed was a distraction.
Keaton had been through too much to be unnerved by the almost continuous explosions that rocked the field.
It was as if some military force in the mountains were shelling them. Baylor’s teeth rattled and the ground shook in waves.
Keaton dropped low. His bearded face was inches from Baylor’s. “Hell of a day for a fight! When I find the bastard, I’m gonna enjoy taking his scalp!”
“Not as much…”
“As much what?”
“This,” Baylor said, as he pressed the gun to Keaton’s temple and fired.
* * * * *
Howard felt her presence immediately. He tried to ignore it, tried to convince himself it wasn’t real. Just a figment of his imagination brought on by the stress of the battle, by lack of sleep, by anything . . . anything but the truth.
Howard . . . Howard . . . Howard . . .
The field of battle slipped from his mind. The Creepers stopped their coordinated march, stood motionless for a second, then began to scatter as they searched for the closest living, breathing thing to feed upon. Howard collapsed at the sound of her voice, though he knew it by only memory. He knew he wasn’t actually hearing her, but that didn’t matter. Nothing did but her, and what he wasn’t able to do.
Howard . . . Howard . . . Howard . . .
His mind painted vivid images of her trek north. All those miles alone. All those nights filled with painful hunger she couldn’t satisfy, with a need for release he could not give her. He ground his fists into his temples as the tears welled and the anger ran out between his lips in a hiss. The structure he’d trained his mind to endure fell apart and Howard couldn’t put the pieces back in order.
The army, no longer under constant bombardment, regained composure, silencing the voices in his head. So many of them, so many gone, but Jennifer’s voice rang loud, echoed off his skull. Howard screamed and Jennifer answered over and over.
* * * * *
The mental break was almost enough to send him tumbling from the saddle. He felt his brother’s mind crumble as the waves of despair hit him. Bobby quickly found the source, having lived the brutal memory of her in a heartbeat. He reached into her decayed thoughts. He set her monitor beside the others, bade her calm and quiet, but the damage had already been done.
He extended his voice to Howard, but his brother would not let him in. Walls of raw emotion repelled each of his efforts. Bobby pleaded to no avail. He’d been into the pit of despair before. There was a way out, if only Howard would let him in, let him show him, but the harder he tried, the greater Howard’s resistance became.
Not wanting to risk it all, Bobby grabbed a hold of Howard’s Creepers and wrestled them back from the edge. Their hunger became his hunger. Their eye
s became his. Their broken, rotting mouths became his own, and he set them on any target he could find.
Bobby bent the Creepers towards the train as a streak of red on black caught his eye. The woman rode hard around the edge of the horde, a cadre of mounted riders with her, firing at will, blanking monitors with veteran precision, trying to break his press towards the train.
He fired a few rounds of his own, taking out one of her riders, then ducked back down. He promised his horde a way to end their hunger as he drove them harder, faster than their rotting limbs would let them. He lost many under their own weight, but the fresher ones continued on, faster and faster, swallowing those unlucky enough not to have a means to keep them above the field of battle.
Bobby’s horde, propelled by the flesh of his enemies, charged towards the smoking hulk of Baylor’s train.
Bobby only hoped the man was still alive.
* * * * *
Moya watched the dead move in ways she never thought possible, even if Josh had come of age. They ran, ran harder than they had any right to, and many of them fell apart from the effort. Even on shattered limbs, they crawled, relentless, but those still upright ground their brethren into the dirt in their rush.
Scalps slapped against her thigh and the wind rushed through her hair. The smell of smoke and death and blood permeated all. She relished in the terror of it. Her army was sorely damaged, but there were still wagons about, still men and women fighting hard for survival, for victory. Those gritty faces spurned her onward.
Moya leaned as her mount took the hill, swooping in a long arc that took her near the smoldering train and back down again. Her men followed the looping route. The twenty of them became a spearhead carried by the momentum they gained from the hill, and downward they charged towards the gnashing teeth of the Creepers.
She smiled as death graced her lips. “We killed them once! Conquered them all! We can do it again!” She raised her fist high into the air as she bore down on them. The faces of those not strong enough to survive, the faces of the weak, all of them stared at her with a wild hunger. Their moans were nothing but an empty threat, long ago rendered ineffective against her will. She balled her fist and swung at the maggot-ridden face to her right, but met only air.
Then she realized her error as the stock of the boy’s rifle cracked against her jaw.
* * * * *
Howard slipped into the vest he’d saved for himself. The weight of the explosives were reassuring. His mind was numb. Jennifer’s cries had been silenced, but he could still feel her presence like a heaviness pressing down from behind his eyes—a crushing blow that had him stumbling towards the chaos. All around him, the earth smoked. Men pleaded for a release from their injuries. The dead twitched reflexively, living in the trapped isolation of their last thoughts.
Soon they would all be released.
Howard held a fistful of detonators in his right hand and the lone trigger for his vest in his left. He moved among the wounded and dead with a nervous calm. His heart trembled for what was to come.
Bobby. His brother pounded against the walls of his mind. He let go just enough to let him see what was to come, to warn him, and to say goodbye. However short-lived their meeting, he owed him that much. He hoped that one day Bobby would reflect on this moment and understand why it had to happen, and then he put up his defenses again, like he had for so many years when he’d been the executioner of Los Angeles.
He could see his purpose now. In giving up his life, he’d silence so many, clean the world a little bit more, and repent to his love for not having the courage to free her earlier.
Howard moved among the dead as they clashed with what was left of the massive army. Bullets cracked. Teeth ripped flesh from bone. The world worked its grindstone in overtime. The cycle of it played out in hundreds of tiny windows all around him. Life and death, and somewhere, rippling on the edge of it all, the torment. His torment. His thumb danced over the trigger.
No.
Not yet.
No.
But it was too late for no. He could see the swell of the massive instrument of death below him. Howard caressed it with dead hands as he began to fire the last of the detonators.
* * * * *
Bobby ordered them to drop and they obeyed, collapsing the instant he projected the images outward. The red-haired woman’s charge braced for an impact that never happened and they’d gathered too much speed to stop. Their horses ground some of the Creepers to mush, but the rest rose, knocking them over, sending them to their deaths, to a level playing field full of waiting teeth.
He let the Creepers go as he swung the empty rifle at the red-haired woman’s face. The impact sent both of them flying. The wind rushed from Bobby’s lungs. He bounced and rolled, but found his footing. He looked back and found a lone Creeper with a mouthful of entrails ending its hunger with dead delight.
Then the woman rose from the field, her fists out wide, blood dripping from her ruined mouth. She darted to the left, dispatching two Creepers with rapid strikes to their brittle skulls. She stepped over one of her men caught in the throes of the change. She ended his struggles with another swift blow, but she never took her eyes off Bobby.
Her red hair was like a fiery halo encapsulating her tanned face. She moved closer, stopping only to clear her path.
Bobby tensed, watching her approach, but at the same time he felt Howard slip away, and saw what his brother meant to do.
No, he shouted with his mind. He reached outward, stretching his mental limits farther, farther than he ever had before. His eyes burned as if they were about to melt out of their sockets. He felt his thoughts separate then, felt them leave his mortal body and disperse among the unimaginable spaces. The woman wavered and then she too was gone.
No, not yet, he screamed. He imagined what Howard wanted. He imagined his brother ignited in a release of rising fire. The field rocked as the bomb from below exploded, ending them all. He imagined the sounds, the smells, the lights, and then he left Howard in true darkness. He isolated him, relegated him to the special compartment of his mind he kept for the truly dead in his life.
Howard was dead. Dead to himself, dead to Bobby, dead to the world, or so Bobby thought for him. It wouldn’t stick, but it would buy him time.
As Bobby crashed back into his body, the woman’s fist sent him spinning away. The sun was above and then below. A stinging flash of pain. He slipped in the slush of battle, his world jumping up and down before him.
“I see the truth of you now!”
Bobby sent the Creepers against her. She spun in fantastic twists, ducking, weaving, while her fists made music. The Creepers bit and scratched, but she was unfazed, unafraid, a maiden of pure terror.
Bobby was tempted to turn all of them inward, but if they had any hope of ending this, he had to press what remained of the army. He had to curtail the last dregs to ensure his piss poor attempt at victory. He clutched the empty rifle in nervous hands.
* * * * *
Baylor dragged himself inside the beast’s ruined maw. Years of painstaking metal work lay in ruin all around him. The fruit of his efforts had been rendered into unrecognizable slag. He kept pulling the trigger of Post’s handgun. The dry clicks kept his mind off the inferno in his right side.
The sound of the Creepers lament was enough to make a sane man roll over in defeat, but he was far from sane. He’d cashed that check in decades ago. He moved into the second car, which was relatively undamaged by the blast, the beast having absorbed most of the impact directly. He flipped open the concealed compartment. Part of him hoped to find Bobby safe inside. The sight of the lone rifle, like some slab of granite on a neatly manicured spread, sent chills through his body.
He leaned against the peeling trim of the car’s hallway. He slid down the wall with his shoulder to avoid the pain in his broken right arm. The slight shift had him seeing another realm, one composed entirely of raw nerve-induced pain. Flashes of red rent his mind as bone scraped bone.
He drew long sharp breaths to chase it away. Baylor lifted the rifle out of the compartment and headed to the roof one pain-filled rung at a time.
The field spread out before him in a mural of pure madness, like something he’d glimpsed a terribly long time ago in an almost forgotten art history book. Things that should not be pulled men apart. Sporadic gunfire called out like the dying voice of a dying breed. All around, what was left of the army fell under the constant press of the Creepers. They ate bullet after bullet but they kept coming, and they were coordinated.
Baylor’s heart stirred at the sight. The Creepers moved in individual units, faster than he’d ever seen them move before, searching out targets. They were hunting, stalking what was left of the army. Baylor propped the long rifle on his knee and peered through the scope.
The sun bled onto the world, setting it afire in shimmers of red and gold. The dead were about to rule the day once more. Even something as sure as Moya’s army could not stand against them. No one could. No one except Bobby. As Baylor watched the battle grind down, he felt much like the dinosaurs did when watching the meteor burn through the atmosphere. His time was almost up. There wasn’t room for those like him anymore. The world was different now.
The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past Page 25
