The Creepers (6 page)

Bobby fell to the floor, knees to his
chin, hands clasped over his head and he began to cry.

“Bob-O, you okay?”

“Go away!”

The door rattled and looked as if it
would give in to Pete’s banging but it held, shaking and nearly cracking, it
held.

“But . . .”

“Please, I’ll be okay. I just need
time." The word tasted sour on his tongue, rotten, slow death rolling
through the syllable. He needed the one thing he no longer had the luxury of,
and as he sat, huddled on the floor of the bathroom, he realized the fickle
nature of time, the harsh sting of its bite, and yet, he could not resist it as
he did the Folks, he could not escape it as he and Ryan had escaped the
Settlement, and he could not defeat it. He was beholden to its will and now he
was completely at its mercy. He just hoped he wouldn’t turn during dinner and
bite one of his brothers. Bobby didn’t give a shit about the Settlement boys,
but he’d curse his own soul for all eternity if he was the end of one of his
own.

The door flew open and Bobby was greeted
by the tall, lanky silhouette of Paul, the slyest of his brothers.

“Quit yer crying, Bobby, least you get
to keep yer arm. Ryan won’t be as lucky.”

Paul grabbed Bobby by the arms and
lifted him to his feet. He rubbed away the tears, patted Bobby’s cheeks. “See,
nothing to worry about. You got one little cut I see and nothing else. No
bites, no worries, as the soldiers used to say.”

Bobby’s stomach sloshed something awful
but he straightened up. He took his blood covered clothes, threw them away, and
ran to his footlocker for a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He put the shirt
on first, wanting to put as much distance between the bite and visibility as
possible. He couldn’t afford to have the bandage slip off and reveal his
secret. His brothers wouldn’t question it, but someone else might.

His brothers sat around the small table
at the far end of the barracks playing spades. Bryan ran his thick fingers
through his sandy brown hair. He shuffled a deck of red-backed cards, dealing
them out.

“In next hand, Bobby?" Bryan asked
without looking, ever watchful of the deck. For what he lacked in the physical
department he more than made up for with brains. He beat so many kids at cards
that his footlocker was overflowing with candy, most of it well past its
expiration date, but nobody cared anymore, candy was candy. They got it for
being good or achieving good results in school. Even though he paid for it in
physical class he seemed not to care.

“Yeah." Bobby slid into the empty
seat at the table.

“Atta’ boy, Bobby.”

His brothers were good like that. Taking
a crazy situation and not making it worse. How many terrible punishments had
they gotten through with each other? Too many, Bobby thought. The four of them
had forgotten all about his little episode and tried their best to diffuse the
situation, and they were doing a damn fine job of it. But Bobby’s inner turmoil
knew no bounds, he freaked out inside, squirmed in his seat to hide it from his
brothers. It wasn’t long before their questions started, and he did well to
answer them, keeping nothing from them with the exception of his little secret.

*
* * * *

Ol’ Randy leaned against the low brick
building that served as the Folks’ lounge. It was a bank back before the world
went mad, one of the few structures that survived the initial onslaught, an
aging reminder of the past, a reminder of things as they should be, a proper
thing to build their little piece of heaven around, a normal thing.

Ol’ Randy kicked at the steel drum in
front of him, sending a shower of orange sparks into the chill night air. He
cracked his massive knuckles and rubbed his hands together over the fire as he
watched Lyda leave the infirmary. She scuttled towards him like a bony crab.
He’d been watching the building for hours, polishing off nearly two bottles in
that span. The ache in his muscles from an earlier class on hand-to-hand combat
washed away. Truth be told, Ol’ Randy was more of a gossip hound than the loose-mouthed
women of the Settlement, and while he honestly wanted to know how the boy made
out, he really wanted to see Lyda. There was a worry for that one lodged in the
pit of his stomach like a lead weight. He waved her over.

Lyda zipped up her shiny black camping
vest, and dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, trying her best to fend
off the cold.

If anything had gone wrong he’d have
known. Her strides, though shortened from the chill, were confident,
purposeful, a satisfied woman, but her face wore the expression of a woman
haunted by many ghosts, too many to count, too many to forget, as if death
itself seeped from her pores. As she drew closer to the fire her eyes were
visible to him, red, raw, swollen and distraught. He did not greet her with
words, only a slight nod, and a pass of the bottle of strong whiskey he had
been keeping warm for just this moment.

She accepted the bottle, tilted it
towards him, then drank deeply, smacked her lips as she wiped some spillage
from the corner of her mouth.

“Hell of a day, Lyda?" There was no
need to ask about the welfare of young Ryan for, Ol’ Randy trained ’em better
than that and knew, as well as he knew God above watched over all, that the boy
had made it through.

“Just fine, Randal, just fine."
Lyda took another swig then passed the bottle back to Ol’ Randy.

Ol’ Randy raised his eyebrows at her
tone; on edge, not her usual self.

“The kid’s vitals are steady in case you
were wondering, but he’s not out of the woods yet.”

“Ain’t no Creeper gon’ take one of my
boys.”

“You don’t know that yet . . . there is
still a chance of the Fection spreading." She took the bottle again with a
shaking hand.

“Not the Fection, nor the Creepers I’m
worried ‘bout, dear, not worried ‘bout them at all. Lord knows we’ve all
suffered long with them walking the earth, but as bad as they are, I ain’t
worried ‘bout them being the end of me, or one of my boys. I’m worried ‘bout
you. I don’t like the way you handled him today, Lyda, not one bit, regardless
of what you think his presence may have caused.”

“Can the righteous shit, Randy, and all
day I thought you wanted some fucking company, eyeing my infirmary. You can be
a real asshole sometimes, Randy." She did not look at him even as she
insulted him.

“Got that devil tongue on ya’ woman.
Sometimes you ain’t right, Lyda, ain’t right at all.”

“We all have our demons, Randy."
She eyed him sharply, twin streams of icy breath rolled from her nostrils.

“That we do, but we all don’t showcase
’em in public . . . the demons are better left for the dark, alone time . . .
better left between you and God, and that’s it."

Randy leaned a little closer to the
fire. The shivering in his bones became more intense the longer he stared at
the woman. She actually scared him more than anything he’d ever encountered on
the battlefield, and Lord knows he’d seen plenty, enough to last a thousand
winters, or more. The careful calculation with which she chose her words, the
unspoken motives moving behind her deep blue eyes, the callous disregard for
her own soul, made him fear her ever so much. Randy could almost visualize her
desperate, hateful thoughts just by looking at her, and he looked away,
quickly, sickened by the ideas that nursed in her cesspool of a mind.

“Save it for the sermon, oh Heavenly
Father!" Lyda offered the bottle to Randy again, but snatched it away, to
his surprise, before turning back towards the infirmary.

“The Lord never forgets, Lyda. And
neither do I.”

She flipped him off over her shoulder.

“If she had her way, friend, those boys
would’ve been dead long ago. It amazes me that fear of imaginary savior
keeps that kind of hatred at bay.”

Randy turned to face the owner of the
pronounced Russian accent. “Well if it ain’t my fav-o-rite proud commie. I’d
offer ya a drink but the little lady ran off with it." He shrugged with
empty hands.

Ecky pulled a strange cigarette out of
his pocket. It looked as if it had been rolled in used notebook paper. Even in
the low light of the fire Ol’ Randy could make out basic arithmetic written in
a young one’s simple penmanship. He furrowed his brows at the grinning Russian.

“What?" Ecky returned the look.
“You take what you can get, my friend. No more rolling papers, but plenty of
tobacco coming through trade groups. Last trip out to get parts for generator I
used cardboard, wasn’t so good, but not too bad, you know?”

“To each ‘is own.”

Ecky smoked silently, enjoying the warm,
harsh smoke in his lungs, and the cold of the outdoors.

“She ain’t right.”

Ecky knocked the ash into the can and
said, “All bark, no bite that one. She would love it,” his eyes narrowed on the
infirmary, “to kill the boy, to kill them all, but she fears God, like you.
Won’t happen for fear of unknown . . . still scary thought, rest of boys will pay
too, it is a shame really. But we play hand that is dealt to us.”

“What keeps you up at night, Yannek?”

Ecky finished his cigarette and stared
off into the distance. “People who are not afraid of unknown . . . people
outside Settlement. Like ones who scavenge trade groups. You can see it in
their eyes, the emptiness, and it is either you or them. That is what scares
me, friend. The reality of it.”

Bobby stood naked before the flagpole.
His small frame shivered in the steadily falling snow, ankle-deep, barefooted,
he tried to move, a ring of ice pulled at his neck. He reached back with numb
hands. They closed around a heavy, familiar, cold steel chain that clacked when
he tugged.

He looked frantically about, but
everything was white, snow-blind as Ol’ Randy would say. Bobby squinted. He
could make out vague silhouettes of the Settlement’s buildings beyond the white
sheet of winter. He screamed, or at least tried to, not a single breath escaped
his lungs, not a sound, save for the howling of the wind, the light crunch of
the falling snow, and the sharp clang of the chain. Terror gripped him, yet,
his heart did not beat in response, he spun, causing his neck to bend at an
awkward angle.

His heart wasn’t beating at all.

He lifted his hands before his face.
They were pale blue, and two of the fingers on his left hand were bent
completely back, broken, but he felt no pain. In fact, as the realization set
in, Bobby did not feel the cold at all, the shivering stopped instantaneously,
just a last gasp of the mind, involuntary motor function, pointless, useless
now. The only thing he knew for certain, other than being trapped, was hunger,
a hunger so fierce it put fasting to shame, it gnawed at his insides even as
they slowly rotted away, it made his veins itch as the blood coagulated.

It happened, it finally happened, he had
become one of them, Bobby had become a Creeper. But he could still think, could
still understand. There must be some mistake, he thought. The tug of the chain
reminded him, cruelly, there was no mistake. This was the end. Rest in peace
Bobby Carroll, another casualty in the war against the undead, a good boy, a
fierce soldier, a veteran of thirteen winters, such a shame.

Out of the wall of white a fist-sized
chunk of Colorado rock flew through the air. He tried to move out of the way,
he really did, but his body no longer behaved properly. He stumbled. A low wet
moan escaped his mouth as the chunk of rock smashed against his chest.
Somewhere inside a loud bang resounded. With that painless sound the white
scene of terror faded from his eyes, and he found himself within the dark
confines of the barracks. Pastor Craven stood over him.

“Rough night, son?” he whispered.

Bobby snapped upright as he,
unsuccessfully, tried to will his body through the rough wooden headboard. All
around him the other boys slept peacefully, unaware of the demon in their
midst. Most of them worshipped the man as a great purveyor of peace and love,
the messiah returned in these end times, but they didn’t know the darker side,
or perhaps they did and just chose to ignore it, their hate for Bobby and his
brothers making it easy for them.

“Now, son, don’t go waking the good
ones. They’ve earned the extra sleep this morning. You have not. Now get
dressed while I wake the rest of the vermin." A sliver of moonlight cut
through the window, flashing across the Pastor’s eyes, transforming him in that
moment, into a stalking beast of prey.

The beating of Bobby’s heart returned
tenfold.

“Get up, get up now, and meet me outside."
Pastor Craven thumped Bobby on the forehead with the Good Book.

Bobby didn’t utter a word. He knew it
would only make what was to come, worse. Like a good little soldier he obeyed,
dressing quickly and quietly in the dark room, before slipping out into the
cold Colorado morning. The darkness of winter night had yet to release its
grasp on the earth. Somewhere behind that barrier the sun waited to rise, as if
afraid to confront its rival.