The Creepers (41 page)

He continued the main army’s press
against the fence, using the silenced Creepers at the front as a shield of dead
flesh for those behind it. To his left and right, he ordered the others to
remain low. Bobby worked every remaining ounce of will into Ted’s rigor
infested body.

In his mind he grabbed hold of a
solitary monitor, Ted’s monitor, and pulled it close, until, he saw only what
those recently dead eyes saw. He had to fight to keep the boy’s body from being
obvious; it was a chore just to keep the gun in his hand. He knew there would
be no way to lift it further, let alone fire it. He shuffled to the edge of the
boys’ little circle away from the fire.

“Hey, where ya’ goin’, Ted?” one of the
boys asked.

Bobby went rigid and Ted all too easily
obeyed. Without thinking he said, “Fight." Ted’s clenched jaw opened, swollen
tongue clicking against dry cheek, and the word rolled out in a low drawl. The
word known to the living brain and body for years, forgotten now, in the hours
since first death.

“You should rest,” the boy said,
approaching Ted.

Bobby thought of turning, of shrinking
away, and of the fence. Ted’s hijacked body obeyed and he swerved towards the
fight saying, “They won’t." But the words came out a sloppy mess, though,
the boys seemed not to notice. They slogged their weary bodies up, restocked
ammo, and shuffled themselves back into the fight.

The moment their guns rocked the night’s
sky Bobby maneuvered Ted away, and further away, until he was all alone at the
back of the battlefield. How easily, he thought, he’d be able to tear the
throat out of any one of them. All those fighting boys alive and well while his
brothers rotted away. How easily he’d be able to return the torment, to kill
them all. He needed to provide Pathos One with a distraction.

Bobby urged Ted’s gangly body forward.
He let the gun fall from those stiff fingers. He raised those arms, so terribly
pale. He worked the jaw open. He fell upon the back of a boy his age, ripping
and biting. Before the boy could scream it was too late and Bobby stumbled to
the next, sinking Ted’s teeth into a thin, exposed neck.  

“Creepers on the yard!” the first victim
screamed.

Another boy fell as Bobby thought of
ripping out his throat. Through Ted’s blood-filled mouth he whispered the names
of his brothers. The boys did not react with bravery or well thought out,
measured, actions. With the threat right next to them now, they reacted like
all little boys; their morale fell apart and they cried, they called for their
parents, they fell into chaos.

Bobby felt the bullets rip through Ted’s
body, but they could not stop him now. They could not silence him like they did
his brothers. Already new monitors flickered on. Bobby picked his transmission
points well. The deeper and mortal bites, when applied to the vast network of
veins in the neck, so close to the brain, well, the quicker the Fection spread.

The boys scattered in every direction,
some fell to the ground in tears, making themselves easy targets. As more
monitors flicked on Bobby thought of cover, of closing in on the buildings. He
was trying to cut off angles of fire and at the same time provide Pathos One
with enough time to open the gate. He moved Ted’s bo—

He was back outside the fence. The
.50CAL roared, switching his monitors off with rapid efficiency.

*
* * * *

The sound of the rifle was like nothing
he’d ever heard before, and when the undead boy’s face became vapor, Pathos One
didn’t hesitate. He ran straight into the panicked mess, weaving past Creepers
and frightened boys like they were nothing more than slalom flags. Men were
jumping from the rooftops to save their frightened sons. The tide of battle had
shifted, and Pathos One pushed the envelope even further.

He opened the gate.

Undead hands pulled and pried at the
gap, stuffing the space with bullet-shredded, rotting meat, and the gap became
a funnel. The Creepers began to pour into the Settlement.

Pathos One turned his weapon on the
tower and opened fire.

*
* * * *

Hell.

God’s bountiful land, God’s safe land,
had in the span of mere moments, become Hell. An inferno, where wailing souls
cried with arms raised towards Heaven. The gate, His most precious gate,
protecting them from the horrors of the outside world, was no more. Throngs of
the unclean, undead filth poured in.

“You have forsaken us all!” Pastor
Craven moaned. He pressed the barrel of his revolver against Ol’ Randy’s head.
“A man, that at one time, I called friend and brother. You have forsaken your
kin for that filth!”

The army of Creepers, lighted by the
barrel fires, ragged shadows cast on the cave walls of frightened primitives,
washed into the Settlement, a crashing wave of locusts.

Pastor Craven pressed the iron sight of
the revolver into the leathery fold of Ol’ Randy’s neck. “You tempt me, Satan.
O’ how you tempt me, but the Lord has cast me in his image, and therefore I am
strong. I will not relinquish. I am steadfast. I am,” he clouted Ol’ Randy,
“pure.”

“You are a coward,” Ol’ Randy said over
his shoulder. He gripped the rock, as if somehow it would help him keep his
mind steady. But the world was something else. It wasn’t ending again, but
changing somehow, changing into something he knew he could never be a part of.
“You talk of God, but you know nothing of the Good Lord.”

Pastor Craven’s finger trembled on the
trigger. “I beg to differ.”

The Creepers rolled up the muddy lane,
surrounding Ol’ Randy and Pastor Craven.

*
* * * *

Cale traced the man in white with the
infrared scope. The featureless face darted behind the milky gray Creepers. Who
had turned on them? Why? It was too late to speculate now. The whole of his
life was about to buried and forgotten like the majority of the human race.

Devoured. Assimilated into the ever
growing undead landscape.

No, Cale thought, as he emptied the clip
of the .50CAL. He grabbed another from the bench at his side. The barrel
sizzled hot, orange, making his eye twitch as he tried to focus in on the
bright white target.

*
* * * *

Bobby watched through the eyes of a dead
football player, broken helmet, shoulder pads and all, as Pathos One played a
dangerous game of cat and mouse with the rifleman in the tower. Every time
Bobby tried to pinpoint the shooter’s location, he was ripped back to his
refuge behind his army. He lost track of Pathos One amid the mass of bodies.

Panic set in. Sporadic small arms fire
buzzed the air above the hijacked football player. Bobby flinched, nearly lost
control of the entire army. The sheer enormity of controlling them all, seeing
through some, attacking with others, had him scrambling to maintain his control
of the situation. The rooftop force had abandoned their posts. Most of the men
had formed up around the fields. They were in full retreat, heading for the
safety of the bank. They didn’t even bother to fire over their backs.

Cowards, Bobby thought, as the rifleman
obliterated the Creeper’s skull. Back behind the car, Bobby began to move. His
limbs were numb and his joints ached. He checked his rifle, added two shells,
and racked the bolt.

The .50CAL boomed again.

Bobby sent the last of his army, his
final wall of protection, forward. He zeroed in on the faint outline of the
tower’s roof, everything else was pitch black . . . and then he saw it. The
blazing barrel of the massive rifle glowed like a cattle brand. Bobby settled
on the grainy hood of an abandoned car.

Another three monitors winked out. The
barrel blazed, molten, a meteor streaking through the night’s sky.

Bobby aimed slightly above, and to the
left, hoping the shooter was a righty, had to be a righty, Paul was the only
lefty on the Settlement, he reminded himself. He fired. Without stopping, he
racked the bolt and charged ahead with his army. His position clearly given
away, he had no choice left, but to go all in.

Full circle. He entered the Settlement
for the last time. The ghosts of his brothers’ lingered somewhere in the dark.
His army howled, and he screamed in rage, in pain, in loss, and in vengeance.
But he stopped mid-stride. His harrowing cheer settled in a whimper.

There, in the middle of the road, was
the only man he could ever call father, with a gun to his head.

*
* * * *

The world was afire, a white hot
conflagration of pain that spun in sharp circles. Cale stumbled back, hammering
the wind from his lungs as he collided with the tower’s wall. The .50CAL
clattered to the floor. His teeth swam in the hot, bloody froth. His jaw had
become a puzzle, the pieces of which, leaked out through the ragged hole on the
right side of his face. He pressed his hand onto the wound, felt the roof of
his mouth and the top of his tongue.

The fact that he could feel them,
recognize them, meant that he was not dead yet. There was still a battle left
to fight. He crawled to the rifle and hefted it on to the rail.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” an
unfamiliar voice warned from the ladder.

There was a loud bang, and then the
world went dark.

*
* * * *

“Look at the them!” Pastor Craven
screamed. “Look at them, Randal! They are the death of our world, a sleight against
the Almighty! Look at th—”

“Look at me!” Bobby cried. He bade the
Creepers part as he approached. They obeyed, receding away from him like the
tide. They rocked back and forth, awaiting his next command, swaying in his
thrall.

Pastor Craven laughed. “And so the spawn
of Satan returns to us. You will have much to answer for, boy. No doubt, your
brothers are already answerin’ for it in Hell.”

“Shut up!" Bobby trembled in anger.
The reason for so much of his pain and loss stood poised to take another from
his life. Years worth of torment rippled out of him, causing the Creepers to
moan a deep lament that, like a funeral song, seemed to come from everywhere
and nowhere, the long drawn out sigh of a forgotten god.

“Let him go,” Bobby demanded.

“No,” Pastor Craven said. “I speak for
the Almighty, and the Almighty says you are not of his loins. You are an
abomination. You need to wiped clean of our earth, His earth . . . like your
brothers.”

“Bobby, go live the life you deserve,”
Ol’ Randy coughed, “and let an ol’ man like me die. Lord’s callin’ me home now.
I can hear—”

“He ain’t listenin’ to you, Randal!
You’ve sinned against Him! Look what you’ve done, but there’s still a chance
for forgiveness, a chance to save your soul! Repent . . . cast this demon aside."
Pastor Craven’s neck tightened as he spoke the words. Even surrounded by
certain death he was determined to deliver his finest performance.

“I won’t do such a thing, Pastor, no
sir. Lord knows you’re wrong and Lord knows I love this boy like my own . . .
as I loved his brothers. I should’a let ’em go from this place sooner . . .
away from your hate.”

“No, you saved us, prepared us.”

“I failed you, Bobby, but not this
time." Ol’ Randy swung his arm back and around, rolling the rock towards
the Pastor’s elbow. It crashed against the brittle bone with a snap, but the
Pastor’s grip was strong, and even as his arm broke, he fired.

Ol’ Randy, half in a spin, caught the
bullet in the side of his neck. He felt the streak of fire as it ripped through
his insides. He dropped to the ground.

Bobby fired the moment he saw Ol’ Randy
make his move, but even he had been too late. His shot took the Pastor low in
his belly, and the hateful man lay curled in a ball, moaning, just behind Ol’
Randy’s crumpled form.

Bobby dropped his rifle and ran to all
he had left.

“Did ya’ get ’im?” Ol’ Randy gasped. His
face was so pale it was nearly translucent. In the dark he looked like a ghost,
an apparition of the father he should’ve been.

“I got him,” Bobby said. He cradled Ol’
Randy’s head in his lap. The boy in him cried and shook terribly, but he could
bury those emotion no longer. He wiped the blood from Ol’ Randy’s mouth with
his sleeve. “I got him, sir. Got him, good. Let me dress the wound. I’ll fix
you up in no time, sir.”

“No, Bobby, too late for that. Lord’s
been houndin’ me to come home for months now. I think I done pissed him off
good’nuff. . . .” he coughed hard, the blood matting his yellow-gray beard.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t go!” Bobby cried.

“Make me proud, son. Get away from here
. . . fix the world . . . save it . . . save us all." Ol’ Randy looked up
into Bobby’s eyes and said no more. The life left him, passing like a quite
breeze, onward and outward.

Bobby squeezed tightly, rocking back and
forth.