The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past (5 page)

“We’re going to be passing small towns,
but they don’t amount to much, a few houses, maybe a gas station or two. Most
of them are nothing more than dunes now with no one to beat back the desert.
But there is a stretch of highway that runs near the tracks. If anyone was
coming through on foot or with improvised vehicles, they’ll use that road.”

Bobby caught Baylor eyeing the other men
alongside them. That look told them all to keep searching, keep vigilant, no
surprises.

Bobby kept his rifle sighted down the
track. If anyone had prepped a trap for the beast, he’d see it in time to get
Baylor to stop them. The train continued its plodding course of a few miles an
hour, like a wounded animal braving the desert to flee a stalking predator.

Bobby squinted, suddenly dizzy, and he
rubbed the sweat from his eye. He fell back. The sky twisted overhead. Streaks
of blue and yellow then a crunch of red and black as his head slammed into the
train. Baylor was somewhere to his right, but all he caught of the man were
blurry smears. Hundreds of monitors blinked on inside his head. They were
vibrant and fresh and full of confusion, exploding on his gray matter with the
fury of a sledgehammer. Bobby tried to reach out to calm them down, but they
were so powerful, so out of his control. He’d never encountered this many fresh
minds.

The feedback he received didn’t make any
sense at first. Feet, legs, hundreds, filtered light, bodies pressed in tight
quarters. They were in some kind of pit, the sky overhead a blue rectangle. A
lot of the Creepers were definitely new, but there were many others that had
been weathered by the desert. Vomit rose in his gorge.

They were close.

“Mr. Baylor, stop the train!” Bobby
writhed on the floor. He rolled over, pressing his face into the cold metal of
the beast’s roof. He growled like an animal, fighting the sensation. He wanted
to let go, to pass out.

“Kid.” Baylor put a hand on Bobby’s
back.

“Stop the fucking train!”

Bobby grabbed the Mad Conductor by the
shirt and looked at him. His eyes conveyed the seriousness of his message.

“Hoss,” Baylor yelled, and followed it
with a series of high whistles.

The slow chug and release of steam
synced with the beating in Bobby’s brain. Sssh . . . chock . . . sssh . . .
chock . . . sssh. . .

“They’re out there.” Bobby pointed
starboard.

“Who?”

“T-the . . . Creepers . . .” He
struggled to get the words out. “And whatever’s left of Wyoming Blue.”

The woman looked at her blade, at the
man, shocked that she still drew breath. She should have looked at the fourth
man behind her. And she did, but not until after Howard’s bullet knocked a hole
in his chest. The man staggered then crashed to the ground in a heap, the
handgun falling uselessly away in the process.

Howard chambered another round. He was
scared. Thoroughly terrified to the point of shitting himself. He removed his
finger from the trigger, though he kept the gun aimed at the woman and her
captive.

“Easy, just take it easy.” The woman
kept her machete at an angle, only a few inches from the tan man’s neck. “Lower
your weapon.”

“Lower yours.” Howard gulped.

“I can’t do that,” She pressed the blade
into the man’s throat. He screamed, firing off foreign words in rapid
succession. “You see, little ranchero here killed my friends, and he helped
take a great many of them captive. I need to know where they’re headed. I
didn’t track them through four states and a fuckton of Creepers to be left
holding my dick.” She ran the blade back, cutting deeper.

“Que-que-que?” the man screamed.

“What’s he saying?” Howard asked.

“Fuck if I know. They know English. I
heard them when they didn’t think I was there, but now that I’m here he’s
reverted back to his native tongue. Which I’m about to cut the fuck out if he doesn’t
answer my question!” She grabbed the man’s face, squeezed, and then rested the
tip of the machete in his mouth.

The man’s legs kicked out. Tears rolled
down his reddish brown cheeks.

“Where did you come from?”

“Where the fuck did you come from?” she
said. “If you don’t mind, I have business to tend to. So shoot me if you want,
but this fuck is going to talk or he’s going to die. And if you’re not quick
enough, you’re next, stranger.” The woman pushed the machete into the man’s
mouth. He gagged on the sharp steel. Blood oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Howard froze. The scene unfolded by the
light of the fire. What would his father do? His father would have had some
delicate speech to quell the situation, a quick snappy dialogue, but the man had
had years to hone such speeches. Howard had only the language of those that
were left, and there was nothing delicate about it. The language his father
loved to fall into was a lost art that died with him on the rooftop.

“Where?” She pushed the blade deeper.
“You answer in anything other than English and I’m cutting the left side of
your mouth open. I know you can speak it. You told your buddies what you did to
that girl. You told them in English. You laughed as you said this. Yes. Not
three nights ago on a hill outside the city. I watched you sleep. I watched all
of you, and you had no idea that death was but a whisper away, and she’s here
now.”

“Wait,” the man managed to gargle.

The woman drew the blade out.

The man wavered, spitting blood from his
mouth. His hands were bound behind him, so he did his best to wipe the corner
of his lips on the dingy plaid shirt. He laughed.

“You have no idea,” he said defiantly.
“Puta. Your friends are fucking dead. Not now, not all of them, but you already
know that, yes? They are taking a trip, going with Miss Moya, going to see how
tough they are. You never see them again.” He spat at her.

Howard registered something in her body
language. A slow twitch that began to build. Her legs stiffened, her gloves
squeezed the grip on the machete tighter. He could almost hear the leather in
them squeak. Her mouth peeled back, revealing her predator-like teeth. She
pulled the machete back and then walked away. She stood over the other man,
shaking in a pool of his own blood. The woman leaned close to him and whispered
something.

“You don’t scare me, senorita. I’ve seen
the devil’s work. I’ve seen the world end. Been here forty years, and me
familia been here longer ’an that. The dead take you, puta. The dead take you
and the dead take your fri—”

Howard cried out as she spun low and
brought the machete down on the man’s thigh. The cut was not clean, but it went
deep. The blade caught in the bone. She rocked the blade to the man’s screams,
until she finally managed to retrieve it. She wiped it on his pant leg and slid
it back into the sheath that hung from her hip. “No, ranchero, the dead take
you, when you stumble awake after you bleed out. I’m taking your limbs and
leaving you here with the others.

“You going to shoot?”

Howard could barely believe what he’d
witnessed. He lowered the rifle.

“That’s what I thought,” the woman said,
turning to walk away.

What the hell was he going to do? The
question hung but a moment, and then he lifted the rifle again, sighted the
man’s sweat-drenched face, and fired. His anguished wails died with the crack
of the rifle.

Howard looked at the woman. “His screams
will draw the coyotes, and that’s not a good thing. They’ve been well-fed for a
long time.”

* * * * *

The bodies were not as light as his
father’s. Without a word, he dragged them down the street while the woman tied
off the now one-armed man’s wound. He wanted them as far away as he was able to
move them. The fire wouldn’t be enough to keep the coyotes at bay, but if they
had a meal to occupy their time they’d stay clear. He managed to heft them into
a deep hole in the street. Their bodies crashed fiercely into the dark below.
The coyotes would have to work to get them.

Howard adjusted the rifle as he walked
back to the fire. He watched the woman from afar. Her psychotic mask of rage
was gone. She smiled at the man as she dressed his wounds. She talked to him
softly, saying something Howard couldn’t make out.

“Where’s your spot, stranger?” she
asked, ripping a piece of her shirt in half with her mouth. She double knotted
it around the man’s bloody stump.

Howard leaned on a broken building,
always mindful of his positioning. Just like his father had taught him.
“Somewhere far away from here. I came from the south. Nearly got trapped in a
swarm.”

“You’re far too clean for that. Where’s
your spot? These assholes dared venture into the city. They should’ve known
better. They’ve been at this a very long time. And so have I. No one who wants
to live goes into the cities.”

“You did.”

“Yeah, no shit. I scouted it for a few
days first. And guess what I found?”

“Me.”

“Cute, but no. I didn’t find a fucking
thing.” She went back to the man’s wound briefly, whistling a jaunty tune.
“Pretty amazing for a city this size. Must’ve been millions of Creepers when
the shit hit the fan.”

“Maybe something drew them away.”

“Keep playing your games.”

“Howard.”

“What a precious name. Since we’re in
the way of manners, my name is Jennifer, and this here is—” She punched the man
in his wounded arm. He cried out in pain, sobbing and blubbering something
unintelligible.

“Ma-Manuel,” he gasped.

“Good, glad we could get that all out of
the way. Where are all the dead-dead? Where the fuck are the Creepers?” She
waved the machete at Howard.

“I killed them.” Howard scratched the
stubble on his cheeks. His only hope was misdirection. This woman had him on
edge. The men even more so. He’d been in the city nearly two decades and there
was little to no contact with the outside, even after he cleared the Creepers. People
simply avoided the cities as a precaution. It was the perfect defense for a
very long time, but now the outsiders changed that.

The woman laughed until she snorted.

“One by one, and it took years,” Howard
said, feeling the memories of all that carnage.

She kept laughing, smacking Manuel’s
leg.

Good,
Howard thought, as long as he
kept her guessing he’d be okay. But her intelligence wasn’t lost on him. She
spoke clearly, but crudely, and her body spoke volumes of her nutritional
health. She looked to be no older than him. Which meant she’d been raised post
war. Which garnered its own series of questions, but Howard kept them to
himself. He needed to break the tension. Although the woman held a playful tone
with him, he watched the opposite truth about her character develop.

Every so often, her eyes would dart
around to the windows, searching for more people. She never let her hand wander
far from the grip of the machete. Her temples pulsed as she ground her teeth.
She was afraid.

“Why did these men attack you?” Howard
said, moving closer to the fire. He sat down, which made Jennifer jump.

“It’s what men like Manuel do. We were
supposed to stop them, but we didn’t anticipate that second group.” She shook
her head. “Fucking came out of nowhere, and they had Creepers . . . led the
damn things right into our flank.”

“Who’s we?” Howard said in a soft tone.
He wanted to reassure her. He needed answers.

“Look, Howard, it’s give and get. I’m
not stupid. You’ve got that gun, and don’t think I haven’t noticed you keeping
a good distance so you can snap off a shot, okay?”

“Very well.” She was well trained. Her
fear was just a mask. He had to be careful.

“You didn’t just roll up here. You’ve
been here. Your fingernails are clean. I haven’t met a man with clean
fingernails since the trading post, and that’s been over a year now. Nobody
really has clean hands. Not like yours, not anymore. What’s your deal?”

“Give and get, right?”

“Right.”

“I was born here. I’ve lived here all my
life, and today was the day I was going to venture out into the world. To make
my own way, and well, Jennifer, you kind of fucked that up for me.” He didn’t
like to curse. His father did often but always warned Howard against it. It was
something from the way things used to be, but that didn’t really matter
anymore, or did it?

Jennifer studied him before saying,
“Where are the Creepers?”

“Give and get, Jennifer, but I already
told you. I killed them all. You still owe me a little more info for taking
care of the one you forgot. If I hadn’t of happened along, you would be dead or
worse.” Howard let the latter part sink in.

Jennifer reached into her pocket,
removing a black piece of cloth. She pulled her long black hair back and tied
it, shaking the leaves and twigs from her locks in the process. “That doesn’t
mean you get it all, Howard.”

Even covered in dirt and grit her face
held a fragile beauty. A small, narrow nose, sharp yet small ears, and a
beautiful smile. She still had all of her teeth, a bonus in Howard’s eyes. He
hadn’t encountered many over the years that took hygiene seriously. His father
would’ve beaten it into him had he been a violent man. It was paramount to
one’s prolonged health. He found her slender frame inviting, but he could tell
from her hands she held a wiry kind of power, like him, like his father. A
power borne from the hardships of post First War life. There was a lot of
strength in that tiny frame. The dead men in the hole more than affirmed that.

“We thought they were coming from the
ocean. Somewhere between here and Oregon. Running boats up the coast, avoiding
the Creepers, and then cutting across to the east. But we were wrong. And that
was our mistake, our downfall.”

“We?” Howard asked again.

“Wyoming Blue,” she said. The man
stirred, babbling incoherently in the throes of a fever. Jennifer kicked him.
“We were what was left of the military. If you could call us that. I think Post
would rather have referred to us as what was left of old America—the survivors
not willing to give up. We’ve been at it a long time.”

“But you’re—”