The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past (16 page)

“I’ve been the same since I started
laying track. Since this kid from the city figured out how to fucking drive
this thing, how to take care of it, build on to it. Never changed. Never ate
anybody. Never killed anybody that didn’t have it coming to them. I’m exactly
as I seem. Just a man trying to see the coast. Go west, young man. Fucking pipe
dream. You set guns on me and my family for what? For this piece of machinery?”

Miss Moya laid her hands over his and
squeezed. Baylor felt the raw power, saw it emanating from her eyes, in her
words, as she said, “For these hands. For your mind. I need men like you. I
need men that have braved the storm and can fight, but also know things. I have
plenty of warriors, but warriors will only take you so far. They are but a
piece of the puzzle of tomorrow. This is about world building, Baylor. Not
conquest.”

Baylor pulled his hands away. He eyed
the scene as the beast eased out of the valley. Just on the other side of the
hill, he saw the piles of bodies, and off to the left he saw many men digging a
familiar shape. Another pit. Perhaps this one for him.

“World building? Last time I checked
they were barely enough of us left, and you went and cut down a lot of damn
fine people. Not exactly the ideal model for going about things.” Baylor felt
his temper flaring, felt himself about to do something entirely stupid, but he
thought of Jamie and Sophie and little Randal. If he fell now, without making
an impact, they’d be okay for a time, but this woman and her army would not
stop. Somewhere in the years ahead, she would come for them, for all of them.
He’d worked too hard. So many of them struggled to stake their claim. He wasn’t
about to throw it all away to put a bullet in this woman’s head. As much as he
wanted to, responsibilities stayed his hand.

“Viewpoints, Baylor. There is not enough
room for the weak when tomorrow comes.”

“So no room for crying old ladies?
Kids?”

“There is no tomorrow without children.
There goes that old-world brain, Baylor, chomping at the bit, making
assumptions, thinking it knows what it sees. We thrive on pattern recognition,
we see what we want to see, and a lot of times we are wrong. Do not mistake my
ways for simple mindedness.”

Baylor whistled a low tune just to annoy
her. He knew her type. He’d encountered plenty of idealists over the years.
Caught on a good day, he might even lump himself into such a category.

“This is our chance now. Our chance to
change it all, and it would’ve happened sooner if we had not lost him. Baylor,
what if I were to tell you there was a child that was immune to the infection?
A child that could’ve turned the tide before we fell further apart. But that
child was ripped from the face of this earth because of a brutal
misconception.”

Baylor’s heart was in his throat. He
kept his eyes on the track. If he looked at her, she’d know something was
wrong. He couldn’t risk anything. Words from the doctor’s notebook drifted
through his head.

“No one is immune.”

“Josh was.”

* * * * *

The flood of Creepers sent him into a
seizure. His muscles tightened, cramped, and he flailed inside the metal
coffin, banging his fists against the steel. There were more than he’d ever
encountered before, more than the army he marched on the Settlement, so many
more. Thousands and thousands. He steadied himself by letting them flood his
mind. When he first truly discovered his gift, he remembered filling the void,
working to stifle the hunger, but now, now he worked on expanding the void. He
opened himself up, added space, and let them all in.

The images flashed by so fast he barely
had time to analyze them. He floated above them. The wall of monitors had
become an ocean. One big rippling surface of memories and chaotic noise. Voices
screamed in his mind. Some on repeat, some fresh to death. He flipped through
them until he found what he was looking for then dove in.

The world warbled, like echoes down long
empty hallways, like light bending at undiscovered arcs, and then calm. He
stumbled about in the swarm. Rotting body pressed against rotting body, swaying
as one. They moaned and he moaned along with their catatonic lament. The
definitive song of his time. More than a sound. A calling. A warning. He
followed along.

The bodies had nowhere to go. He could
sense them trying to get out. He could feel their press. He probed the body he
was in control of and found an opening. He ordered the gangly corpse through
the horde until he found the edge. There was no way out. Walls repurposed from
old siding, flooring, and anything else flat they could find. Above, men moved
on top of the wagons, armed men, their eyes never leaving the horde.

Bobby worked along the edge. The flies
were thick and loud, as was the creaking of all the wagons moving together. He
could hear the crack of whips somewhere ahead. He saw a limp form hanging from
a harness. A human form. Then it all made sense.

It was ingenious really. They couldn’t
do what he could, so they did the next best thing. He could tell from the rusty
construction that this pen, this moving corral, had been such for a long time.
There were a few grade A Creepers trapped inside, but the majority of bodies
were new, which solidified Bobby’s theory. The fallen were being added as they
fell. Bobby kept moving the Creeper, studying the walls, looking for weaknesses
and finding none.

Even the main gate was drawn tight. He
could see how it would open for battle, but the men up top could make it into a
funnel to control the horde to a degree. He wouldn’t be able to unleash this
army without finding another way.

The Creepers moaned, waiting for an
order, waiting to obey, but Bobby had nothing for them. He left the Creepers
and returned to the confines of the metal coffin. The sound of Baylor shouting
had him reaching for his rifle, but the game had changed. He no longer had the
high ground or the upper hand. The situation called for new tactics.

Bobby drew the Auto Stryker and slipped
into the night.

“Get that ass in a chair, stranger,”
Jamie said, slurring her words badly. Her face was beet red and slick with
tears and sweat. She’d been at the helm all day, sipping on Baylor’s stock of
vintage scotch while she guided them home. “That’s a good passenger. Drink?”

Pathos One waved the bottle away.

“Suit yourself, but I’ll make a drunk
out of you yet.”

“Do you think it’s safe?” he asked,
nodding at the almost pitch black space in front of them.

“Quite capable of doing the task with a
buzz,” she said defiantly. Jamie capped the bottle and dumped more coal on the
fire and worked the controls to prove her point. She touched her nose with her
finger.

“All through college, I never met a
bottle I didn’t like. Couldn’t keep me away from it, but as I got older things
changed. Maybe it was when I reflected on my father and the years I’d lost with
him because of the bottom of a can of Budweiser.”

“Car wreck?”

“No. Old age. My father lived a life of
mixed sobriety, but he never truly laid his vices aside and moved past them.
I’m talking about the years he was there but wasn’t. The years where he’d pass
out drunk listening to Billy Joel records. There’d be moments, little instances
of joy.” Pathos One cracked his knuckles, flexing his hands, studying all the
things they’d accomplished, ended, and done since the day of the memory. “I
remember him teaching me how to draw a helicopter from one of those how to draw
books. He made it look so easy. But that moment, that rare moment, nearly lost
now, made me so happy. It brought me a joy I can’t even quantify.

“I felt the same way when I saw Bobby
reunited with Sophie and Randal, and now.” Pathos One threw his hands up in
defeat. “We always heard our parents say life was like that. That it has a way
of doing that to you, to them, to all of us. I spent my whole life trying to
understand why my father did what he did. And you know what I found out?”

“Nothing,” Jamie said, taking a long
swig from the bottle. “Drink.”

“Nothing. There were no answers for me.
No great truth that I’d read about in so many literary works. Sometimes there
are no answers. And that ignorance is devastating to the soul. My father never
found answers after fighting in Vietnam. He only found salvation at the bottom
of a bottle. Like I found salvation in helping Bobby and taking on the task of
cataloging the dead.” Pathos One stared at the floor.

“Drink,” Jamie said, putting the bottle
in front of him again.

Pathos One took a swig and then another,
rubbing his hand across his mouth to abate the burn. He felt hot already.

“My boys will be okay. By god, they’ll
be okay.”

“Will they? I can’t help but feel we’ve
done a great disservice to the saner members of the human race.” Pathos One did
not wait to be offered the bottle this time. He took it and knocked it back,
basking in the burn.

“What’re you on about, stranger? That’s
crazy talk,” Jamie huffed. The train eased around a bend, squealing into the
deep dark Missouri night. St. Louis was getting close. They’d reach it by
sunrise and it would mark their halfway point.

“Is it? Hear me out on this, Jamie,” he
said, studying the liquor before the glow of the fire box. “We’ve spent so much
time saving our own skin, preserving our own, that we’ve let our counterparts
seed devastation. Think about it. For all the good this train represents, and
no doubt has accomplished over the years, they’re still out there. Armies,
cults, and who knows what else. We let them exist. Sure we’ve fought them when
need be, but we never sought them out.”

“You’re talking crazy. The good far
outweigh the bad, stranger, and don’t ever forget that. God has his reasons and
the devil has his as well.”

“Open your eyes, Jamie. The second order
was lost. Look what happened. Law and reason were abandoned. This wasn’t a
shock. It was natural. Those of us that could’ve stepped in headed for whatever
fucking safe haven we could find. I left more than a few innocent lives by the
roadside. Them or me. Them or me, right?”

“Right, and you’re still drawing breath
and hogging my bottle because of that decision. Don’t let them haunt you.
Baylor always said that. Survival is a dirty game. I know what you’re at, and
I’m telling you to leave it alone.”

“Leaving it alone, leaving people like
those riders alone to fester and prosper, will be our downfall.”

“Would you like we just start a lynching
party and go state by state killing the undesirables?”

“If it meant that their family would
survive . . . would thrive,” the stranger pointed the bottle into the darkness
of the other car, “then, yes. Absolutely. I’d lead the charge. What happens if
they come back? It’s all done. They survived. What stops the next potential
threat?”

“Being prepared to face whatever may
come. Being able to stand up and stick a gun in its ugly mouth and putting it
in the dirt. My mother always said don’t go looking for trouble because it will
find you before you find it.”

Pathos One drank from the bottle again
then passed it back to Jamie. He swayed. The train clattered along at its
snail’s pace. Something darted across the tracks, animal eyes flashing in the
lantern light, then vanished like the taillights of an old car on a rainy
night. “I just wish there was something, some solution to the problem of our
time.” He leaned into the wind. “How will we ever achieve normalcy again?”

“There is no such thing. Normal is
relative, just like time. All we can do is make their lives easier by teaching
them, passing things on, keeping them safe, and letting them do the same with
their children. Such is life, drawing horrors from the depths of the well into
the light. Good times and bad, like every goddamned song. Ups and downs. If it
was all flat, there’d be no need to progress. There’d be no meaning.” Jamie
sipped the bottle. She tossed another stack of coal into the box.

“Struggle builds character, shapes life.
It certainly did mine.”

“And mine. How’s that buzz doing?”

“A bit more than a buzz, Jamie. I think
I’m good and ripped.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I think I can actually change
this world. I think if we start, I mean really sit down and figure out what we
want, what kind of place we want to build and what kind of place we want to
leave for them, I think we can make it happen.” Pathos One laughed into the
night. The hopes of his life echoed in the dark.

“You’re starting to scare me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re starting to sound like
Baylor.”

“That how he got the name Mad
Conductor?” Pathos One always wondered, long before he ever set foot on the
train, how the man had come by the name. He’d seen flashes of what some might
consider crazy, but were far from mad.

“He didn’t get it from dreaming. He
didn’t get it from building something as crazy as this route. No, he got it
from killing people, stranger,” she said softly. Her eyes welled, but she was
able to draw the tears back inside. “Not a damn one of them deserved any
better, but the toll, righteous or not, it wears you down. I know its worn him
down over the years. It’s a side of him none of you have seen. Not you, not
Bobby.”

Pathos One could only think of those
caught in Bobby’s wrath. Those he perceived as innocent over the month’s since,
but were they really? He’d battled the thoughts on many sleepless nights.

“He has his way, stranger. He’ll kill
every last one of them and come home to us with a smile like nothing ever
happened. He’s been killing those that’d get in the way of progress for more
than twenty years. Think about that, about the weight of it. That’s why I’m
telling you to forget it. I love Baylor more than anything on this earth. I owe
him more than I can ever hope to repay, but it kills me to see those marks on
his soul. I can see them every time I look into his eyes. The years of
bloodshed. All those decisions on our behalf, and I love him even more for it,
but it kills me.” She began to cry.

Pathos One put his hands on Jamie’s
shoulder and squeezed. He didn’t know what else to do.

“And I see that same look in the boy’s
eyes. Saw it the moment he nearly got himself killed that day on the train.
Baylor’s no stranger to taking the life of a young one.”

Pathos One gasped.

“Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of
choice. I’ve seen the young propagate violence just as easily as anyone else.
Sophie knows it firsthand.”

Pathos One hugged her. She never took
her eyes off the track, working the sticks while giving him a simple kiss on
the arm in thanks. He suddenly felt heavy and stupid. The dreamer in him had
averted the eyes of the realist. There was a lot of dirty work involved in
world building. He’d helped kill, but could he continue to do so without
hesitation? Could he do what Baylor had done?

“We’ll be coming up to St. Louis soon.
Should catch her right at sunrise. You won’t want to miss it. Get a little
rest.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay
here and ride out the night with you.”

Jamie laughed. “Is that a proposition,
stranger?”

It was not. But under the hood and
behind his scars, he blushed.

* * * * *

Sophie felt the warmth on her cheek. The
car was filled with a deep orange haze. Shadows flicked intermittently as the
train clattered past a thick patch of weeds. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes
and went to check on Randal. He was sitting up in his makeshift crib playing
with his feet. He rattled off a litany of ‘da,da,da,das’ and smiled at her. She
picked him up and set him on her hip.

She didn’t smell anything cooking, which
had her reaching for the shotgun. She’d never known a day to start without
Jamie cooking something. She could hear laughter over the clatter of the train.

“Sophie, come see!”

Sophie left the shotgun behind and
carried Randal to the next car only to find it empty.

“Up here, dear! Come look!” Jamie called
from above. “Here, hand me the child. You have to see it. It’s amazing.”

Sophie handed Randal to her then quickly
climbed the ladder.

The stranger sat on the edge of the car,
legs dangling over, staring into the distance. She followed his gaze and froze.
Randal giggled from beside her, but she hardly heard him, or Jamie’s near
constant laughter.

In the distance, before the ruin of what
was left of St. Louis, stood a relic from the past, a landmark of man’s
progress. That wasn’t what stunned Sophie. She could care less about what
happened before. It simply didn’t matter to her. The thousands upon thousands
of birds perched on it did. Thousands more swooped under and over. The sky was
a moving, speckled sheet of nature’s brilliance. The songs were unlike any she had
ever heard before, and she knew, on a greater level of existence, she would
never hear again. A teeming monument, a mock tombstone before the ruined city,
and its plaque read: We are not dead yet.
Far from it
, she thought, as
she looked at Randal and what remained of her family.

The wind in her hair reminded her of
him, but she could not think about that now, would not think about him. The
hurt was too great. She breathed deep of the sweet air and watched the birds
carve patterns into the bright sky. A myriad of blues and yellows mixed with
hints of gold along the arch, and the black silhouettes of the birds painted
over the decay of yesterday.

Sophie kissed Randal and squeezed
Jamie’s hand.

“I don’t remember this on the trip out
here,” Pathos One said, letting the sun touch his scarred face.

“Because this route wasn’t on the
itinerary, stranger,” Jamie said with a wink. “You thought we ran one route
over and over for twenty years?” She laughed and stuck her massive breasts
outward in defiance. “Would’ve never made it this far. The only part of the
trip we haven’t expanded on yet is the last quarter. Think of this as a
pleasant detour.”