Children Of Fiends (2 page)

Thompson thought, That and a crapload of hydrogen cyanide.
 

The vicar took a deep phlegm laced breath, “Our escape was not without great cost. Let us pray.” The men bowed their heads. “We have lost two very brave souls. Engineer Sandusky and Brakeman Lake were pious men and we commit their gallant spirits, Oh Lord, to Your everlasting and loving embrace. We have lost most of our equipment, but not our means for pressing onward. For our Creator endows us. We are men of means and cleverness made in Your divine image. With Your unequivocal blessings, we will prevail over Satan and his spawn. Amen.” The group again parroted, Amen

Plimpton said, “Thank you, Vicar. Inspiring words indeed and I am so glad that despite the current circumstances,” he looked to the sky for emphasis, “that you have reiterated the necessity of our quest and that we are guided by His hand.”
 

Thompson said, “Right. Beckman and Timbs on watch. Vicar, you and deacons Jones and Hoeg will take one tent. Councilman, you and Mr. Hanson another. The military will use the third. We will break out the weapons and distribute them accordingly.” He looked at the deacons and asked, “I am to understand that you are familiar with guns?”

“We are,” acknowledged Jones.

“Good. We will eat and rest until early light. It is my hope that at the next city we can pick up an abandoned sleeper car or at least a boxcar. The Northerners will continue to leave a freshly polished groove and frankly they don’t have many options of places to go from here.” He pointed at the tracks. “This line offers a turn to Phoenix or, at Colton, California, the option to head north. North and the approaching cold seems very unlikely, which leaves Los Angeles.”

The vicar said, “Never imagined we would have come this far.”

Thompson said, “From what we’ve left behind, I’d wager that the path back will be worse than the path forward.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Major. Forward is the only option, and not because we blew the tracks behind us all over the desert. The Lord lays bare the path before us. Astonishing I find it, is all.”

In Plimpton’s heart of hearts, he yearned to turn around. This was far more than any of them had bargained for - but there was no going back. Ignoring that he was a dead man at home, the fact remained that their spare fuel was gone. What they still had might get them back to Little Rock in some roundabout way, but to trek back the rest of the way on foot was… well, madness. Either direction filled him with dread. If he could read the minds of the men around him he would find them all in agreement. They were naked in a hostile land. Losing the one Sentinel and their ability to see beyond the horizon, plus their cozy accommodations, was just settling into their still shocked minds. It was only training and temperament that kept them all focused enough to deal with the immediate tasks at hand.

Dean had twice tried bunking near Eliza and the pucks, to ill effect. After the first night of insisting that they sleep in the observation car, he received a near mutinous demand from the crew to send the pucks back to their own space. Sleeping with a helmet on wasn’t sleeping. Without the devices, the Homo Telepathus’ could turn a night’s sleep into a trip down nightmare alley. As the children slumbered, their minds seemed to randomly reach out to others sleeping near them. The effect was to be pulled into one or both of their dream states at once and risk madness in the process. Sanders, after waking up inside Hansel’s dream of eating scores of helpless birds, and not being able to escape until Hansel got up to pee, had him screaming, “Enough!”
 
Eliza and the pucks moved back to their own car.

The train was in good hands and Dean was rather astonished to find himself entering their car, sleeping bag in hand. The thing that had passed between himself and Eliza had burrowed itself deep into his thoughts. In his professional life he had never found himself behaving like this: a foolish schoolboy. The children were already asleep. He slipped off his helmet. He was slightly startled to watch Eliza’s silhouette rise to a sitting position as he approached her and he stopped in his tracks unsure what to do next. She threw open her sleeping bag and stood clothed in a thermal shirt and panties. She stared at him for a moment. The light was so dim as to make it impossible for him to really see her eyes so he stepped closer. She let him pull her to him. They kissed. It was delicate at first, but quickly dissolved into hunger. She pulled him to the opposite end of the car and around a partition. They kissed, pulling their heads together tightly.

She pulled back and said, “ I wish I could still think of you as an insufferable chauvinist jerk. A handsome insufferable jerk.”

“Thank you? You don’t have a clue how beautiful you are, do you?”

Her mouth sort of fell open then she shut it again, pulling his face in for another kiss. The train car was not warm and he was thrilled when her cold hands wormed their way underneath his shirt to touch his skin. His fingers played with the elastic edge on her panties. She pulled back. “Okay. Hold on.” They both breathed hard into each other’s mouths. She whispered, “Can’t. We can’t. Timing… I’m… Dammit, I’m ovulating.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How… very… scientific.”

 
She smiled, “Fine. Bad time of the month. Plus I don’t jump in bed – no matter how much I want you. Besides, we’d have a potential problem if we did slip up. I mean worse than just getting pregnant. No babies. Not for this world. Not now.” She nodded in the direction of the sleeping twins. “Despite the fact that we have been able to control the bug, there’s still a chance that you and I would have one of those.”

Dean smiled warmly and held her close. “Cold shower aside, you’re forgetting one thing. They sterilize us Halflies. Part of the deal. We can’t make babies. I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t been.”

Eliza found herself suddenly conflicted and she laughed at herself on the inside. She didn’t dare make a child, yet she was somehow crestfallen that it would be impossible with this man. He kissed her again, keeping it gentle. She kissed him back and she felt her heart speed up again, her legs sort of going numb, scalp tingling, and they were back at it and she was lifting her buttocks so he could pull her panties down. She slapped her hand on his again, pulling her panties back up, saying, “Wait wait wait. It’s just – well, it’s not like we can just… do it. I mean, look where we are.”

He chuckled and nibbled her ear. “Okay.”

They chose not to sleep apart so they zipped their sleeping bags together and made their bed behind the partition. Dean took off his jacket and boots, but otherwise remained dressed. Like everyone on the train, it had been days since they had bathed (a water stop in Alabama having offered a chance to quickly wash up). The strong odors that the two of them shared seemed to intensify their attraction rather than prevent it. The right combination of pheromones served only to make them feel closer. In the back of both of their minds they new that this was a dangerous distraction, but like a person who becomes a smack addict after the first taste, Stewart Dean and Elizaandra Sherr became hooked on each other. As they lay wrapped together, they whispered their stories – life before Omega. Neither was a typical life. She accepted that he had led a violent one. He mentioned his brief marriage. “It was short. High School sweetheart. We almost never saw each other because I was away so much. We had a son.” He paused to let that sink in.

Eliza said, “And?”

“And he would be twelve now. He lives along the New York Strip, near Connecticut. We haven’t spoken since I became infected. I don’t know him past being a toddler. I have a picture from a year ago. After nine years, his mother, in a moment of kindness, sent it on his birthday. As far as my kid is concerned, I’m long gone. His mom and the man who looked after him died in a storm a week after she sent it. Another woman watches him now and I’ve finally completely lost touch.”

She lay silently for a while and then held him tight. “I’m sorry. That’s very hard.”

“But for the best. Until now, I never expected to get a reprieve.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath. All the experts, including myself, agree that I am not contagious, but that hasn’t persuaded the politicians to let me roam. No amount of science seems to overcome their fear.”

“But MacAfee-”

“MacAfee would have told you anything to get you to go on this mission.”

He harrumphed and found her mouth, kissing her gently for a long time until reality tapped him on the shoulder with a wisp of Gretel’s mind probing about. Dean reached for his helmet, but Eliza stopped him, saying, “She’s dreaming.”

“That’s worse.”

“No. You can stop it. You just –” She tensed. “And here’s Hansel. They dream as one. They often think as one. It’s bizarre.”

“Again, worse.” Dean was feeling himself being pulled into a strange landscape filled with light. A perfect star filled night in a jungle valley at the edge of a vast lake, and everything was dark but also lit from within. If not for a terrible foreboding, he would have found it beautiful. And then Eliza was there, her mind mixing with his even as they still held each other. For the briefest of moments they dropped their guard and in their minds anyway, they were making love. She moaned both in the room and in the dream. Dean was stunned by the reality of it. That this was playing out parallel to the children’s subconscious quickly snapped them apart, leaving them back at the edge of the ominous lake – where death, sharp, merciless death waited. Eliza, still trying to shake off the passion, despite the fear that was creeping into both of them said, “This is how you stop it.” Like an echo, the mental equivalent of the word NO shot out from her. It was a scolding tone and like a vapor being sucked back into the bottle, the children where gone.
 

Dean and Eliza’s sense refocused on the environment around them: the rocking of the train car, the click clack of the wheels rolling over the tracks. She let her fingernails gently drag along his hip, whispering, “See. No need for a helmet.” She let his hands explore her until it became too intense, her hips thrusting of their own accord. She stopped his fingers as they slid below her panty line, holding his wrists. “Anyway, I promise if the children’s minds wander again, I’ll be there to protect you.”

He smiled at the notion of this beautiful petite woman protecting him, and then he remembered her heroics back on the Ginger Girl. Without trying to sound condescending, he said, “Okay,” and pulled his hands up to her waist, acknowledging the need to slow down. “The children,” he nodded toward where the pucks slept and then looked down at the narrow space between himself and Eliza, “Can they sense us doing any of this in their sleep?”

She unconsciously ran her fingers up and down his chest. “I don’t think so. I’ve experimented with interacting with their dreams. For whatever reason, they didn’t actually invade my thoughts. I was more of an observer that they only vaguely remembered when they woke up. Kind of a reverse of what happens when they are conscious. She paused and held her lips close to his, cupping his cheek, A moment ago you were in the dream, the jungle, and we were... you know...”

He kissed her, breathing her in. “Oh, I know.”

She sighed and directed his hand away from her breasts. “That was unprecedented. Until today, I’ve only share minds with the children. Something changed when the four of us were connected upstairs. That jungle. That place. It was too real.” She pulled away from him with a worried look on her face. “They’ve never been to a jungle. They have never seen videos of a jungle.”

“Maybe in a book?”

“Nope. Not really. Not with anything like the detail in that dream.”

He brushed some fallen hair out of her face. “Ever the scientist.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “We should try to sleep.”

“Yes, we should. But it was so real.”

Dean found himself pressing his hips against her. “Very.”

She smiled coyly and raised a finger of caution, then broke their embrace. They shifted so they were lying on their backs, holding hands, neither of them at all sleepy. For fifteen minutes they listened to each other’s occasional sighs and forced yawns, until Eliza finally said, “Fools.”

“Hmm?”

“This is foolish. I want to tear your clothes off and I don’t need telepathy to know you want the same. You of all people need to stay focused. This is going to be too much of a distraction.”

“True. But here’s the thing. The cat is already out of the bag. Even if we tried, we couldn’t ignore it. Better to embrace it and deal with it on that level rather than to pretend it’s not what it is.”

She didn’t answer, squeezing his hand instead. They lay quietly for a long time after that, still listening for signs that the other might be asleep. She finally rolled over and whispered into his ear, “I need to tell you something.”
 

Her lips brushing his ear sent a shiver down his spin and fully reawakened his desire. “You need to sleep.”

“You know this already from the dream, but I just need to tell you that it feels like someone poured lead in my heart while at the same time filling it with helium.”

“I like that. Me too.” He turned his face and they kissed without the added heat. Loving, giving, not taking. A little while after, they fell into a deep and contented sleep.
Hansel and Gretel lay awake as the lovers drifted off, and for a long time they batted their thoughts back and forth, finally concluding, I like how it feels.

Yes, but also disgusting.

I didn’t know that humans had this.

No.

I wonder if pucks have this?

I hope so.

I hope not.

As was his habit, Dean got up before the dawn. He kissed Eliza just hard enough to let her know that he was leaving their bed but not enough to fully wake her. She gently tasted her lips and a slight smile spread across them as she rolled onto her side and continued to snooze. He pulled on his boots, walked past the sleeping pucks and went into the observation car, quietly stepping between slumbering bodies until he reached the stairs where he spotted Cookie getting the morning’s meal together in the galley. Once up top he was greeted by Sanders who offered a “Mornin’, Cap.” Corporal Kelly was in the room as well, working as the rear lookout, and he gave her a lazy salute.