The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past (30 page)

“Winter will be here before long. I want
the area scouted and the crops harvested. We’re down a few but not out. I’m not
about to let this all go to pot.” She leaned close to Connor. “There’s fixing
to do and I can’t do it on my own. I need you, old man.”

“Anything you say, Jamie.” Connor
scratched his bearded face.

“When you walk the southern fences
tonight, you circle back and you go on that wall.” Jamie grabbed Connor by the
shoulder. “You get up there and you talk to him. I don’t care if you don’t
trust him. We need him, Connor. We need him more than you know. He can help,
but in order for him to do so I need you to talk him down. For Christ’s sake,
you were both doctors in the old world. Different subjects, but learned men.
Fucking act like it, or you’ll have a lot more to be pissy about than Sophie’s
decision.” Jamie nodded.

Connor let out a long sigh, slapped his
thighs, and shuffled out the door.

“Thought he was going to get off without
doing his part,” Jamie said.

“He’s a good man.”

“I know, dear, I know. But sometimes
good men need a push in the right direction. So few of them left.” Jamie
wrapped her arm around Sophie’s shoulder. “What do you say we have something
sweet with a cup of tea?”

“I could use that right about now.”
Sophie fell into the embrace. She didn’t know how Jamie kept upright most days.
All that she’d been through over the years, and now Baylor and Bobby—her
strength was a miracle in every sense of the word. Sophie hoped she’d be just
as strong one day, but it was so hard. The world never stopped tightening the
screws.

* * * * *

Pathos One laid the rifle across his
lap. He massaged his aching shoulder and rolled it back and forth to loosen the
muscle. He’d dropped ten today, their bodies now piled about the dark green
tobacco plants. The last one, a little girl, actually crawled atop the others
as if they were a perch. Pathos One blinked away the image, but it was forever
branded into his gray matter, singed and seared by the cruel iron of this new
age.

“How many?”

Pathos One turned to see Connor’s tired
face. He hadn’t seen much of the man since they’d arrived. He spent most of his
time holed up in his little cabin tinkering with things. Pathos One moved his
gear so the old man could take a seat.

They stared in silence for a long while,
staring out over the hills as the night enfolded the Blue Ridge Mountains,
casting blazing stars onto the tapestry of deep blues and black. The moon was
near full and she shone with a cold silver light.

“I’m always amazed that there’s still
time for beauty in our world,” Pathos One said.

“If there weren’t, what would be the
point, stranger?”

Pathos One let his silence answer the
question for him. The trees swayed in the wind. Their multicolored leaves,
harkening the fall, were hidden by the growing darkness. A low moan carried on
the wind.

“We have another watcher,” Pathos One
said. He hefted the rifle again, hoping the full moon would provide enough
light to paint his target.

“They keep coming and we keep killing
them like mosquitoes, the damn things. At least they’ll provide good fertilizer
for next year’s crops.” Connor cleared his throat.

“Death is the fuel of life, is it not?”
Pathos One eased the rifle against his aching shoulder.

Connor patted the stranger’s leg in
agreement. “You get to be my age, stranger, you’ll have seen a bit more than
you’d have liked to. Know what I mean?”

“I think I’ve already hit that point.”

Connor whistled. “No, not quite there
yet. Not by a long shot. I don’t just mean the tragedies, or even the
victories. I mean the little things, the nuances, the way a bird swoops low
over a pond to snatch a fish. The way a seedling first breaks through the soil,
and the feeling of pride that settles over you. You live long enough, you start
to see things differently. I thought I had you pegged. Thought you were just
like so many other rough hangers on. The stubborn fucking cousin that would
refuse to move out when asked. Had plenty of them, aunts and uncles too.
Fucking Irish Catholic guilt. Fucking Irish period.” Connor removed his glasses
and rubbed his eyes.

Pathos One settled the rifle on a
one-armed man in a tattered raincoat. The moon revealed a lone bear covered in
dried gore.

“Suppose what I’m trying to say is, any
man that will take up the defense of his new home can’t be all that bad. I
think you’re one of us. At least you seem to be, stranger. I’m not one to admit
my wrongs, ’specially not to a freshman, but here I am,” Connor said, hands out
wide. “They ain’t coming back. I wish it. I pray it every night to the lord
almighty, but he stopped listening a long time ago. So now I toil. I keep
going, keep helping as many as I can, so I don’t dwell. You need to pass this
duty off to one of the younger lads. You need to take a break.”

“She sent you, didn’t she?”

Connor laid a hand on the long rifle and
eased it down. “She did, but that’s not the only reason I’m here. You spent
time with the kid. You have knowledge of what he did first hand.”

Pathos One felt a chill settle on his
spine. Something in the old man’s words set him back. “I did. He tried to
explain it, but it was all very esoteric to me, though I could understand what
he meant. But why, Connor? What’s going on? What’s this all about?”

“Like I said earlier, you’re needed
elsewhere. We need that brain, we need those hands, and I need answers because
we’ve got problems.”

“What kind of problems?” Pathos One
rolled back his hood and met the old man’s gaze eye to eye.

“There’s a watcher along the southern
fence,” Connor said, his voice cracking.

Pathos One jumped to his feet. “Show
me.”

The
stranger and the old man climbed down the steep ladder and hurried across the
weeded path towards the southern fence. Streaks of sliver glinted off the cold
perspiration on the back of their necks.

Pathos I – Traveling Historian of the Dead

November 18th, 2041

Pathos I Journal Entry [7889]

I watch the snowflakes daub the corpses,
whites contrasting with brown-grays. This morning’s watcher was some kind of
first responder in his former life. The yellow stripes on his jacket have grown
pale from age. I settle my breathing and drop the crosshairs over him. He
stands atop what was once a pile but now has grown into a small mountain. It is
the same on the other side of the camp and has been for months now.

The watchers keep coming and we keep
killing them.

The scouts have come and gone over the
past few months with nothing to report. No one in the forests surrounding the
area. The watchers come north over the hills but never follow the same path.
There is no explanation for their behavior. It is beyond anything we’ve seen
over the decades of this war. So we hunker down, continue life as usual,
harvest the crops, and prepare for an attack that may never come. It is a
terrifying existence, but hasn’t it always been since we lost it all?

The nights never get easier. Sure, some
might give in to sleep easily and wake when necessary, as has been documented
of soldiers in various wartime scenarios over much of human history, but not
all of us possess the ability to rest with ease. I am one of the latter. The
nights are hard, lonely, and often unforgiving, even with Jamie’s efforts to
comfort me. I wake defeated every morning, and it takes some time to shake off
the torment.

But something about this brutally cold
morning is different. At first I can’t quite put my finger on it. The crosshair
bobs over the Creeper’s horribly weathered face. The deep, shadowy sockets,
hiding raisin-like eyeballs, stare uphill, as one would stare at an empty
world. The Creeper emits a low predictable moan as I ready my response.

But the Creeper’s moan is soon joined by
another, and another, until the hills are reverberating with the sounds of
thousands. I think this is it. This is the attack we’ve been waiting for. I
fire up the warning siren and drop the watcher, checking my ammunition as the
sound of them begins to set my teeth on edge.

Men and women snap to attention all
around the camp. Soon many rifles join me on the wall. I can’t pinpoint the
sound at first. It is too jarring. I’d been through completely overrun cities
and heard sounds similar, but never like that. There was a kind of organization
to it, as if someone were carrying a tune.

Then I see them, a few pale bobbing dots
along the snow-covered tracks. As they come into focus, I try to tell myself
that I’m ready. We all have that gut check moment. I can feel it sweep over
everyone on that wall.

The moans roll in waves that resemble a
song from long ago, a song I heard the night of my senior prom. And then I
realize that we were not under attack at all.

I realize our missing pieces have
returned.

The Creepers trudge up the track,
slipping and fighting the snow as they carry the weight of the beast on their
backs. Their moans echo far and wide off the hills, but they no longer
embroider fear on our flesh. Instead they inspire hope.

Baylor and Bobby’s hoarse voices
shouting along with the moans inspire something beyond hope. They are fact,
living and breathing. They are prayers answered, miracles, whatever you want to
call or claim their presence at that moment to be. A long tassel of dark hair
covers Bobby’s eyes and Baylor looks damn near unrecognizable but… 

They’ve come back to us at last.

The Creepers Book Three

New Breed

Coming Spring 2016

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Norman studied
Cartooning & Illustration at the School of Visual Arts. He lives on Hilton
Head Island with his wife and their two daughters. He has been known to dabble
in pen and ink as well as digital art. You can follow him on Twitter:
@normandixonjr