The Creepers (20 page)

Shirley spoke up then. “Where are your
women? There was a woman’s voice on that loop ya’ll broadcast.”

I got a little spooked. I hadn’t even
noticed til she said it. There was no women around . . . at all.

“Yes, indeed there was . . . was. Silvia
was one of the last to give her life, to give her brave young life for us
all." True grief damn near bent that man’s head in half.

“For what,” Thorton asked.

“For them,” Danielson responded.

We was so caught up in his words we
didn’t even notice the room at the end of the hall. At that moment I felt like I’d
faint . . . Shirley did and Thorton nearly had his’self a heart attack. Just
inside that room, through a blood smeared window I saw our future.

Five infant boys.

And a rotten, stankin’ ass Creeper
standing over them.

“This some kind of damned joke,” I screamed
at him. I had my hands round his scrawny throat. I heard guns cocked and ready
all around me but I didn’t give two hot shits about it. Let ’em fuckin’ shoot
me. I been dragged across three states, through the shit of shit, on some
fool’s errand, Lord Have Mercy let ’em shoot me.

Danielson laughed. Son of a bitch
laughed at me. He says, “You’re not the first to react in such a way. I reacted
much the same way when I first saw it.”

“You tell your boys to keep calm or I
swear I’ll break your neck before they can put me down." I shook his bony
ass.

Danielson told ’em to ease up.

“By God what have you done. They’re
children,” Thorton cried.

“They cannot be harmed. The virus cannot
touch them, cannot alter them, their mothers passed on a special gift. They are
quite alright. The same can’t be said for you or your wife. But know I did do
this to shock you . . . it was necessary. I wanted you to feel strongly so you
can understand just what’s at stake here and the high cost of our future.”

“You’re crazy!” I said, but I let the
bastard go. There was somethin’ in his eyes.

“Far from it, Mr. Beckenridge, but I
will explain. First let us get some fresh air.”

We followed him up to the roof.

I was livid, confused, and I wanted
nothin’ more than to free them babies and head back home. I was never much for
the city life, but when we got up there all that stopped

A dead city, reclaimed by Mother Nature,
spread out before me. The smog was gone now and flocks of birds dipped through
the buildings in rolling black-gray waves. Some of the buildings looked like
they were cracked in half, as if Jimi himself took his hand to ’em . . .

“A big one hit us about six years ago. I
still don’t know why we were spared,” Danielson said. His tired face scared the
shit out of me like he was agin’ right before me.

“Was God that spared you all,” Thorton
chimed in.

“That’s right,” Shirley added, hookin’
an arm round her man’s waist. The color started to return to her face, but the
shock remained.

Everyone had had a chance to settle. In
that clean air, so high up, we was waitin’ for the man to say his piece.

“It wasn’t any god, or collective of
gods that spared us, Mr. Crannen, wasn’t any kind of intervention from some
interstellar, time traveling alien either. Just a collection of possibilities
that happened. A load-bearing wall held here, concrete poured just right
decades ago . . . there, wasn’t anything mystical about it. Just like
this—this—damn virus, our black death, Nature’s way of leveling the playing
field." Danielson shook his head as if he tried to knock the thought of it
all clear outta’ his mind.

“You’re wrong about that, sir, God has a
plan for us all." I thought Thorton was about to pull his Gideon’s on the
man.

“Like he had a plan for the mothers of
those boys downstairs?” Danielson said to him with a shrug. “No, Mr. Crannen,
it was not God’s plan that brought us to the cusp of the future. It was the
brave, selfless sacrifice of the women that once called this place home.”

 I seen many a man cry in my day.
On the battlefield, after a long night of drink, after the loss of a loved one
. . . I seen the toughest cry but none of ’em made me as sorry as Danielson.
Was a mix of hope, death, and memory in those eyes, in his words. And none of
us said nothin’ at all. We waited, let the man air it out.

“Tina went first. She just wanted to
tend to our garden. I cautioned her against straining herself so far along in
her pregnancy, but she insisted, she needed to be outside. She didn’t like the
city much, though, her place was in the hills, but we got stuck . . . like so
many others when they abandoned L.A. She wanted to see the sky that day . . .
and what a day it was, clearest day I think I ever saw. A day that never would
have been possible in old L.A—blue and not a cloud in sight, not even a wisp,
just blue forever.

“She was tending to our tomato plants.
She opened the old air duct to make sure the roots were taking to such a
strange environment. She never expected the bite, not up here, not after so
many years of being so careful. And that’s how long that thing had been in the
air ducts. Looked like some business man, or what was left of him, had been
bitten all those years ago and climbed into the system to hide . . . to die . .
. to come back. She had no chance.

“Weeks away from giving birth to our son
she was dead on her feet. Such a small thing, the bite, a rough circle of blood
and broken flesh just above her wrist, but the viral infection was already
spreading through her blood, through our son’s blood. Our life, or rather, what
little piece of diabolical Norman Rockwell life we had, was gone.

“That night after we held each other for
hours, after we said our goodbyes, she demanded only one thing of me. She told me,
‘No matter what, Gary, even if you have to cut the baby from my stomach while
I’m trying to devour you . . . you deliver our child. And if the universe is
truly cruel I hope you have the courage to end both of our lives. But before
you have to tread that path you deliver this child.

“She was so pale in the end. I’ll never
forget how her lips trembled, how her breath sputtered, her body racked by
terrible chills, the sweat . . . and then nothing. I listened to her heart stop
and I thought for a moment I’d be cutting our dead child from her womb but I
found a heartbeat. She woke just before I made the incision, gnashing her teeth
at me like an animal, and that’s what she was, an animal, my wife was gone to
whatever fate the universe had in store for her, but I delivered our child, our
son, while the shell of my wife fought blindly against the restraints. That
damned thing didn’t even feel the blade, it felt nothing. With our son wailing
in my arm I sent that terrible thing to its end.

“Tina was the first, not truly a
sacrifice, but a victim of circumstance, of progress in a way. It didn’t make
sense. Howard, our son, shouldn’t have been alive, but he was. Something
happened in that span of hours. Everything in my experience, everything I’ve
read, taught, and studied for years said I was crazy, that it couldn’t be, but
the body is an amazing organic machine, and the birth of another life is even
far more grand. Yes, something happened, perhaps it was mother’s instinct to
make sure life went on, the will to live, who knows, but there was a shift. Our
son, born covered in his mother’s blood, should have been infected, even if he
was born alive, he should have turned, but he didn’t. When I looked at his
blood beneath the microscope it was there, the infection, but it was contained.
He was immune.

“Shaunna was next. Once I told the rest
of our camp about what I . . . what Tina discovered, she was ready to die. She
looked me straight on and said, ‘I have three months to psych myself up for
this.’ 

“I don’t really sleep anymore, can’t
really, it’s a lot of laying there, waiting, waiting for what, I don’t know,
but there’s hoping, too, hoping for sleep, for a moment of soothing blackness,
for a moment without the horrors my eyes have seen.

“I didn’t have the courage to put
Shaunna out of her misery, nor did her husband, and it was a good thing because
we discovered something else. In the presence of their children our dead
mothers became docile . . . as if held in thrall by the sight of their
children. It is something more than that, but I have not the technology, man
power, or time to quantify it, let us call it something special. You people
might call it divinity, and those of us that don’t believe will call it the
unknown, the absence of knowledge.

“Doris, Maggie, and Sharon were next.
There was no hesitation. They were not pregnant, they had no ties to any of the
men in our group other than the fact that we had all survived together, but it
didn’t matter to them. They knew the stakes, we all did. We were breeding, a fucking
back room, back alley breeding program.

“But not everyone could handle the
drastic nature of our experiment. During the first year there were three
suicides, two more the year after . . . I lost count after that. I even
considered punching my own ticket, but the guilt of leaving my son and the
other children behind, not to mention the men that have weathered the storm
with me, dissuaded me from that path. So we pressed on. That’s when the kids
started to tell us about their waking dreams.

“It’s not so strange really, at first it
would’ve been impossible to notice the little lulls, the momentary lapses, but
with so few of us remaining you didn’t have many distractions. My son being the
oldest of our children spoke of it first. Late one night he said to me, ‘Daddy,
I hear them whispering to me. They don’t know what to do.’  When I asked
who he was talking about he told me, ‘The dead.’

“As he got older these episodes started
to happen more and more. Howard and Silvia helped me with the next round of
births. When he was with me, the mothers did not rise like they had previously,
there was no unrestrained quest to fulfill their hunger . . . there was peace,
a calm. Howard told me, ‘I tell them not to worry. That it is okay and they
listen to me, dad, they listen.’ 

“After that Silivia suggested we reach
out. The whole thing was her idea. She claimed that we’d stumbled upon
something beyond us, beyond survival. She called it, ‘A way towards the
future.’  She went on and on about what the world could be with these
children. For fuck’s sake she was only twenty-two, and yet she could see beyond
anything I could imagine. She used to draw these tables, sort of, family trees.
Her idea was simple genetics, much like the archaic practices of selective
breeding in royal courts, but in reverse. Her theory was that if we could get
these kids out into the world, into the hands and care of those few sane groups
of people left, there was a chance for mankind in this insane new world.

“I told her she was crazy. The sheer enormity
of such an idea was off any rational chart . . . but what else did we have to
lose besides hope? And dear Silivia’s plan was set in motion.”

I forgot how to breathe, wasn’t even
really aware that I was breathin’ at all. I think my heart beat, or that
could’ve been Shirley’s rhythmic sobs. Pa, Thorton Crannen, knelt on that
rooftop and prayed, but for thanks or what else I can’t rightfully say. For
myself I could think only of those babies with that thing in the room with
them. . . .

0800HRS:  ROOF OF THE CAPITOL
RECORDS BUILDING

This mornin’ I stood before the graves
of the most amazin’ women this world’ll ever know. I watched the sun come up
with them, with Bobby, Silvia’s son, cradled in my arms. I still can’t believe
the depth of human will. I even question God’s motives, his sanity even, for
making such a series of events come about. This ain’t right, but it’s life,
it’s our lot in it, and I’ll do my part. These kids is special.

After we met with the rest of these
folks it was clear what needed to be done. We are the only ones to answer this
last call, and we have the means to bring these kids to a home, a permanent
one. But I’m afraid of what might happen when we come back with them. Unlike
this boy’s mother I can’t see that far ahead, but Ma and Pa always could and
they’re ‘isscussin it while I commit this to paper.

“We left three and we are comin’ back
eight. Boys, you listen here now. I hope we’re sharing something stronger than
each others’ company, but if not, the world got the better of me and I am with
the Lord, so think of this’n here collection of scrawls to be yer birth
certificates. Now they ain’t tell me about your fathers but here are your
mothers.

Silvia Abernathy – Bobby’s mom.

Beth W. – Peter’s mom.

Caramia Chanen – Ryan’s mom.

Deliah Parker – Paul’s mom.

Anna Blank – Bryan’s mom.

May they rest in peace. They died for
you . . . for us. Let us never forget.

I feel sorry for you boys. I truly do.
But I’ll do my best to see you through this craziness. And one day, maybe your children’s,
children will have conquered the dead once and for all. It’s important to know
where you come from and I hope this helps you all. What a world we live in . .
. what a world.