Authors: Norman Dixon
“Look what they did to me, boy,” Ol’
Randy said, as Cale dressed his wounds. He’d taken four shots, all went clean
through his legs, no shattered bones, the hardy veteran had suffered much
worse. He ran his hand over the dent that covered a good portion of his face.
Cale bit his lip. He didn’t know what to
say. Everything had changed when he went to sleep the night before. Normalcy
was gone.
“Oh, come now, son, don’t tell me yer
gonna’ buy this horseshit, I taught ya’ bettern’that.”
“You did, but . . . but murder. Lyda—it
just doesn’t make sense.”
“The world doesn’t make sense, boy, but
right is right." Ol’ Randy could see that his challenges unnerved the
young man. Good, he thought calmly, someone had to plant the seed of doubt
against Pastor Craven’s forthcoming elegant twist of the truth. While Ol’ Randy
could take whatever the murderers of the future had in store for him, he
wouldn’t let them mangle the boys’ innocence, nor Ecky’s for that matter.
Cale looked beyond the walls of the
brig. He didn’t respond right away as he seemed to be warring with his
thoughts, with memory, and with his own, somewhat misguided, beliefs. Facing
Ol’ Randy once more he said, “Do you remember my parents?”
Ol’ Randy was caught off guard by the
question. He was about to respond with a simple no, then he realized that the
question was rhetorical. He remained silent and let the young man speak,
watching a painful memory that marred the still-soft skin and peach-fuzzed
face.
“Of course that would be a miracle in
and of itself, sir. You didn’t know them, none of the Folks knew them, shit, I
barely knew them. But their sacrifice got me here and I helped a great many
people survive a potentially painful death in turn, just as the Folks, and
you,” he jabbed a blood-covered finger at Ol’ Randy and continued, “gave me a
chance.”
Ol’ Randy tried to find some measure of
where the young man’s thoughts were headed, but in those dark eyes he found
only confusion, a conflicted faith, the ideas of others, and a few of Cale’s
own battling one another, a young mind not yet made up.
“So I have to believe, despite what I’ve
heard, and despite the aftermath I’ve seen . . . that you gave them a chance. I
have to believe that you, and the Crannen’s gave them a chance for a reason. I
have to believe you are the better man, that you followed God’s will . . .
where we have not.”
Cale finished dressing the wounds. He
gathered the blood-soaked bandages and turned to face his wounded mentor. “I
will pray that they make it, sir,” he said with a wink and smile.
“Good, boy,” Ol’ Randy replied. But he
knew Cale wouldn’t be swayed so easily, and maybe the boy never would. He
leaned back on the cot, staring at the unpainted stone walls, and sent his
thoughts to the Almighty. He would not fight them. His days of fighting were
now over. So comfortable was Ol’ Randy that he drifted off to sleep almost
instantly, even the loud clang of the cell door being locked did not disturb
him. His thoughts were one with the Lord, and one young boy braving the
Colorado winter.
*
* * * *
Pastor Craven witnessed the face of God
in that blinding white pain. He felt that angelic breath as the heavy steel
hammer shattered his knee. And God spoke to him in a series of vivid images. They
reassured the battered man he was on the right path. That justification settled
all the chaos rumbling within his withered old frame. God had spoken, spoken
clearly, and those words propelled the Pastor beyond the searing crunch of
broken bone, bruised skin, and torn connective tissue.
With the Good Book tucked under one arm
and a crutch under the other, the Pastor hobbled towards the church, much to
the dismay of those that warned against it.
“God has spoken! God has spoken to me!
Raise the bell! I want everyone in attendance. Not a woman or child missed . .
. every last one of our citizens. I want them all! I must commit the Almighty’s
words to their memories!”
Pastor Craven shouted to no one in
particular, but they all heard his commanding voice. Everyone stopped what they
were doing and followed in his wake like the Piper’s rats. For a little while
at least, the threat of the undead was forgotten in the sudden swell of
emotion.
The crisp air burned his nostrils, but
neither the stinging pain, nor the daunting gray shroud that blocked the sun
could dissuade him from his course.
He felt the Folks flow into the church
behind him. Strangely, he heard not even a whisper.
“Look at her,” Pastor Craven said, his
back to the congregation. He stood before Lyda’s blue-lipped corpse. He studied
her pale, folded fingers, keeping his gaze from the bloody hole in her head.
The wooden box she lay in painted a scene of some frontier whore put to rest
after a particularly wild night.
“She brought life into our world, she
saved life, where otherwise there’d be only death. She was, literally, the
hands of God. For God worked through her delicate fingers, mending wounds,
delivering babies, and even sacrificing her own for what was perceived as the
good of our Settlement.”
A sweep of angry mumbles worked their
way through the congregation.
“Oh yes, God hears your cries, God heard
dear Lyda’s and now she rests with her little boy and her husband in God’s
empire. We were lied to.” The Pastor swung about, shaking the Good Book over
his head, his eyes fiery, lips cracked, face gravely pale, he railed at the top
of his lungs, “WE WERE LIED TO BY OUR OWN! BY OUR MOTHER AND FATHER! THEY
BROUGHT THE DEVIL’S WORK WITHIN THE SACRED BORDERS THEY HELPED CREATE!”
The congregation gasped collectively.
While many of them held this belief they had never spoken it aloud.
“Yes, but it wasn’t only the late
Crannen’s that deceived us. Even one deemed our greatest protector against the
horde has turned against us. Look at him!" Pastor Craven pointed to the
open doors.
The Crannen twins held the wounded
veteran at gunpoint. They had him chained to a wheelchair, but not even that
could remove the brightness that lighted his eyes.
“Why don’t you tell them what you
brought back?”
“God will not forgive you, Pastor, say
your piece and be done with it,” Ol’ Randy said humbly.
“It is you who God will not forgive,
you,” he shouted, stabbing the air with a finger. “For you allowed, no, you
carried the very foundation of the Devil within our walls. You sought to spread
that undead corruption to our very citizens.”
“Burn him!” an old women shouted.
Ol’ Randy shook his head. How quickly
some rumors and religious fervor changed years of perception, and how quickly
rationally clear thoughts were obliterated by the falsity of distorted truth.
“No, God does not want that."
Pastor Craven hobbled in front of the coffin. He laid the Good Book on her
chest, making a mental note to remove it later, before she went to ground. “God
wants us to wipe the Devil’s smear from our world. One of the wretched still
remains and only that traitor,” the Pastor jabbed a bony finger at Ol’ Randy.
“Only our once beloved protector can tell where to find him. Speak now! Speak
for God demands it!”
The congregation turned to Ol’ Randy and
shouted, “SPEAK . . . SPEAK!”
Ol’Randy took a deep breath and remained
silent.
It wasn’t the
bone biting cold that stopped Bobby in his tracks. It wasn’t the few shadowy
figures shambling between gutted cars, and it wasn’t the elk crashing through
the trees on the town’s edge. It was the clarity with which the night revealed
itself. With the moon full overhead, and not a cloud to mar its silver beauty,
the sun’s reflected light opened the night, undressed it. Bobby had never
witnessed shadows cast in the middle of the night. During his few winters such
long shadows were reserved for long summer days, but now those days were behind
him.
“Moon is full,
solstice, good luck for us,” Ecky said, as he scanned the hillside town.
Bobby marveled
at the silvery glint that lighted on every surface like a diamond coating.
Transfixed, he held his breath, afraid that even the slightest tick of his body
would make it all go away. He had never seen anything more beautiful. The
threat that moved hundreds of yards ahead of them meant nothing to him then. He
didn’t even feel Ecky take the rifle right off his shoulder. He could only
stare in awe.
The stars rolled
across the sky. The hillside, suburban cluster of what used to be, swept below
the universe’s majesty, a forgotten footnote of a once proud people, a
brushstroke filled with afterthoughts. Vinyl siding, foreign and domestic cars,
some still parked neatly in their driveways rusting away with flat tires and
decades of dirt, filled the small town. Wraiths, remnants these things were,
and to Bobby they were mere hints of a history lesson of the world before.
Bobby wondered
how many of the small town’s inhabitants never made it out, how many decided to
end it in the face of what had happened to their world.
“Hey, come back
to real world,” Ecky said, snapping his fingers in Bobby’s face.
“How long has it
been, how many winters . . . no, how many years?” Bobby asked, stumbling over
the foreign reference to the passage of the seasons.
“I try not to
remember." Ecky peered deeper into the scope. He watched the few Creepers
working their way through the snow. He wondered what had brought them back, had
they missed some on their sweep all those winters ago, or had something drawn
them here?
“Maybe, but you
can’t forget. If the First War ended around—”
“—You mean when
we gave in to our primal fears and ran for hills? Was November of 2018.”
Bobby let the
years sink in. He let the world that came before him sink in, at least, what
remained of it. It was strange, though, he knew what a car was, what it did,
and even watched them in motion on the old discs, still, they were utterly
bizarre to him. He couldn’t even wrap his mind around what they’d be like all
running at the same time on debris free roads.
“I count five.”
“There are more,”
Bobby added.
“And you know
this how?" Ecky pulled back from the rifle with a wry smile on his face.
“There’s always
more,” Bobby said with a nod towards the far side of the town. Three more
figures broke from the tree line and shambled through the open field.
“Ol’ Randy
taught you well.”
“Do you think
he’s okay?”
Ecky handed the
rifle back to Bobby, dodging the question. He shouldered his CAR-15 and looked
up at the moonlit town.
“He’s okay . . .
isn’t he,” Bobby asked again. His heart thudded at the thought of something
awful befalling the closest thing he had to a real father.
“He’s okay.
Can’t kill that one,” Ecky said almost choking on the words. After having
witnessed all that unnecessary death he wasn’t so sure about even Ol’ Randy’s
survivability, but he had to keep them going. He had to keep moving, keep
pushing them both through the coming winter and beyond. To stop was to die, and
he had to keep young Bobby motivated to survive. Right now it was easy for him
to do, but he wasn’t so sure if he could keep it up once the adrenaline of
flight wore off, and the hunkering down of true wilderness survival began.
“We have to
clear town,” Ecky said.
“I thought you
already cleared it,” Bobby chided.
“Look, don’t get
smart. That was years ago and no telling what came through, what’s still
inside, for all we know people hiding in those houses."
“No
people." Bobby shook his head. The glistening gray light and nature’s
silence reaffirmed his statement. He knew there were no living, breathing
people in any of those houses. That time had long since passed. Only the dead
called Gainer home now . . . only the dead.
“Let me do it,
Ecky. They can’t change me! I have nothing to fear," Bobby began to
rummage in his pack. “I can use the hammer and be quiet.”
“First mistake
is last mistake, Bobby. Can’t turn you, no, they can’t do that, but dirty,
rotten mouths infect flesh, give you a different infection. No antibiotics, no
medicine, no sound living conditions, no Settlement,” Ecky nodded, “You are
dead before winter even gets going. Who knows . . . maybe I bury you in these
hills?”
“But I can do
it!”
“But nothing. We
wait till first light. We work in team. We clear. Slow work, safe work, we
clear, and like bears, we hunker down for winter. Elk are around, plenty of
snow and ice, plenty of shelters. If we are safe and smart we make it to
spring. Remember turtle story, Bobby, always remember turtle story.”
“Tortoise.”
“Whatever,” Ecky
said, waving a hand in dismissal. “Slow. No sleep tonight. We keep watch on
Creepers. I don’t want one stumble-flanking us.”
Bobby’s grip on
the hammer tensed, and he felt a stirring of glee with the reassuring weight of
the tool. He’d get some space back for humanity, as the vets used to say. The
moon stood sentinel over the hillside town, a gray ghost keeping watch on the
dead that were not quite dead anymore.