The Creepers (29 page)

He didn’t get a chance to follow his
thoughts as a knock at the door drew him from such fatalistic rambling.

“Who’s there,” he asked. His voice
strained and dry from the effort. Weariness weighed on him like an elephant on
the see-saw of sleep. He was quickly losing the battle against it. It had been
well over a day since he last had even a minute of rest. His body didn’t have
much left in the tank.

“Baylor." He didn’t wait for an
invite. He opened the door and leaned against it. “I know how tired you must
be, kid, but we got things to discuss. Things that may or may not impede my
work. I’ve spent too many years doing this and we’re close to reaching the coast,
a few years more at best. So we need to get some things straight.”

“What are you talking about?” Bobby
was having a hard time following the Mad Conductor.

Baylor chewed on his collar before
answering. “What, you thought I was fucking Robin Hood, aiding the meek?
Bwhahaha, kid, they didn’t teach you what this,” he waved his hands out to his
sides, “was all about at Jesus camp?”

“They said you were like Santa Claus.”

“Bwhahaha,” Baylor was laughing so hard
he coughed. “Kid, let me ask you something . . . do you believe in Santa
Claus?”

“I’ve killed more men than I have
fingers on my hands,” Bobby’s distant eyes looked beyond Baylor’s face into the
depths of despair the Mad Conductor, even in all his travels, could never know,
“I don’t believe in much of anything . . . anymore.”

“Good, because if I need you to use that
pretty weapon I don’t want any bullshit getting in the way. We never stop, this
ride never stops, we are progress and I aim to be one of the people that help
get what’s left of our world back."

“You have any thirty-ought-six?”

“I like the way you think, but this
isn’t a fucking charity, contrary to what the Jesus camp assholes filled your
head with.” Baylor held out an empty hand.

“You can have this.” But even as he
held Ecky’s weapon Bobby was reluctant to let it go. “He used it to keep me
safe,” Bobby locked Baylor’s gaze and finished, “he used it to keep this train
safe.”

“I can’t take that, kid.”

Bobby held the weapon out further. “I
can’t carry it." Tears welled in his eyes. “It has to be worth a few dozen
rounds at least.”

Baylor took the weapon and quickly
inspected it. It was in better shape than most of the military grade weapons
he’d come across, in fact, the only ones he’d seen that matched it were those
still carried by last remnants of the military. “Worth more than that. So clean
it would bring a tear to a Marine’s eye.”

Bobby dug into his bag, lifting out the
CB radio he said, “This should be worth a few more.”

“Still full of surprises. You look
tired, kid, but how about I show you a little of my baby girl? Show you what
they failed to tell you about?”

“Only if you stop calling me kid.”

“Bwahahaha . . . can’t promise
that."

Bobby followed Baylor out of the rocking
sleeper car and once again into the red-carpeted dining car, trying to remain
steady with each dip and bump.

“Tracks aren’t what they used to be, but
you get used to it."

As Baylor opened the door at the front
of the car Bobby was met with loudest clatter of noise he’d ever heard: metal
beating on metal, hissing steam, roaring flames, shouting men, a cacophony of
progress chugging across the dead American landscape. He knew where Baylor had
lead him, the dragon-looking front car, the engine, but it looked much
different from within. The black metal curved around him like a cage, rushing
wind howled through the bars like an arid desert breeze through a corpse’s
ribs. At the center of the dragon’s head, its brain really, before a brilliant
fire, stood  a massive man, a bulwark against an unimaginable tide.

The man’s back was bare, glistening with
a golden sheen of sweat and soot. Muscles like granite plates moved as he
hefted a shovel of coal into the fire. The man’s arms displayed such a complex
array of muscles that he seemed a machine like the train itself, a hardened
thing of solid construct with liquid fire running through its veins. Even
slumped Bobby was sure the man would stand a head taller than Ol’ Randy. The
man turned, a million years of movement like a mountain sliding into the sea,
as he became aware of their presence.

“Price, how’s my girl?” Baylor shouted.

The work of complexity that was Price’s
back did not compare to the angles of his face. A massive chin that looked as
if it could smash continents apart and a wide mouth filled out his face. His
heavy brow jutted out over his bottomless black eyes. He wiped the sweat from
his face with a rag from his pocket that left a smudge of soot across his
crooked nose.

“This is him,” Price said, pointing the
shovel at Bobby. “Welcome aboard!” Price offered his hand.

Bobby feared the squeeze of that
handshake. He winced at its approach, but the man did not crack his hand off.
In fact, the gesture was firm but not overly crushing. It showed a stout
measure of restraint contained within that powerful form.

“This is the head of the beast, and this
big bastard is the fire inside of her. If it wasn’t for him we’d have never
made it this far. It’s not an easy thing, laying track." Baylor could see
the swoon coming over Bobby. The scents and sounds and heat seemed too much for
the boy. “Keep her going steady and smooth. We should hit the outpost by
mid-morning.”

“Sure thing, boss. Nice to meet ya,
kid,” Price winked.

Bobby waved his goodbye and retreated to
the relative safety of the dining car. He grabbed a hold of a bench as the blood
left his face. It went from burning hot to freezing cold. Baylor’s hand on his
shoulder did not help.

“It takes some getting used to. Sit
down,” Baylor said as he led Bobby to one of the benches. “I imagine it was a
lot like it was for me right after.”

“I don’t understand,” Bobby said through
gritted teeth.

“Right after the world fell apart. You
have an idea of what it was like before, but images and stories, even videos,
can’t begin to recreate the noise, and the silence that followed. It’s just the
opposite for you, born in silence.”

Bobby couldn’t quite follow but he had
the good sense to keep quiet. Something told him that the strange man across
from him didn’t speak of the past often.

“The world was so loud, screaming
really, a non-stop record of sounds much like this beast, a clatter. Phones
ringing, television mouth pieces, music, laughter, cries, hissing tires,
barking dogs, the sizzle of a hot griddle, the strange, brain scrambling buzz
of my electric toothbrush . . . so full of noise and so loud but, but you got
used to it. Until you didn’t even hear the sounds anymore. They became part of
the everyday . . . another forgotten thing in a trunk full of them, but then
the music died I guess you could say. Everything stopped.” Baylor clapped
his hands together with a crack.

“Stopped . . . not all at once but in
rolling phases. Power was unstable . . . on, off, on and off again, until it
ceased altogether. Taking with it most everything else. The gas went next and
with that the cars stopped. Then it was quiet. It made me sick at first, like
some giant fucking thing kicked the world off course, but it wasn’t some
universe-sized hooligan . . . it was something none of us could really see, not
without help anyway. But those first few weeks without all the noise were the
hardest. It was quiet, but so loud. The din left in life’s absence was
deafening.”

Baylor rapped his knuckles on the table
and added, “But you get used to it. And soon that silence, or in your case that
noise, is replaced by something else, and given time it doesn’t seem so lost.
Look, tomorrow we’ll be passing the outpost. In years past I’ve met some of the
. . . what did you call them?”

“Folks.”

“Yeah, fitting, I guess. But in the past
they’ve traded for news and supplies at the outpost. If what you say is true,”
Baylor narrowed his eyes and leaned towards Bobby, “then maybe it’s better you
stay out of sight, at least until I give the okay. You can stay because I like
you, kid, I really do, but I won’t have your presence fucking up my situation.”

Bobby’s heart rose at Baylor’s words.
There was still a chance Ol’ Randy would be there, after all, he told Ecky that
he would meet them. Maybe something came up that delayed him so he had to take
another way. That hope seemed to calm his uneasy stomach and nerves.

“I won’t fuck up your situation . . .
whatever that means.”

“Bwahahaha, kid, you’re a classic. You
got enough left in you for a little while longer?”

“I think so,” Bobby lied. He could barely
keep his eyes open. He hung on now with a cup curiousness and dash of hope.

“Well then, allow me to show what I’m
talking about, what we’re about.”

Baylor led them back through the sleeper
car and past the cramped kitchen car with its few seats and loads of boxes.
Supplies of food stuffs Baylor called them. There were so many, stacked floor
to ceiling, Bobby wondered how they kept track of them all. The scent of grease
wafted from the boxes.

As they crossed to the next car the
smell of oil dominated everything. It reminded Bobby of visiting Ecky at the
generators, and the heavy, metallic scent that seemed to coat the back of his
throat and inside of his nostrils. The car had no rooms, only long shelves that
ran the entirety of its length; each shelf contained wire baskets filled with
all manner of machine parts, and under those shelves long metal and wood beams,
hundreds of them.

“This is the future, kid, the situation.
See, a lot of people back east are trying to turn the tide. We’ve been working
real hard to make that happen. Got us a place in the mountains of North
Carolina, a factory, a safe area. Not sure how we got everything going. It was
only a few of us at first, trying to hang on amid all those silent trains. A
year or two later we became a few more, stragglers mostly, hopeless survivors,
but we’ve got a lot of people that know things. One thing led to another. Even
found a way to get the factory back on line. So we got this crazy idea that we
could make this thing run . . . take it across the country like those that came
well before us. And sure as shit we got the old girl running again.

“At first it was tough . . . only a few
miles at a time and the noise drew them in. Lost some people.” Baylor
patted the metal rails in a form of remembrance that was completely foreign to
Bobby. “Died in the name of progress. But the further out we went, using the
old rails, we realized we’d have to repair most, and in some cases lay new
track altogether. We’ve been working for years and years trying to reach the
coast. It doesn’t even matter if there’s nothing left over there . . . it’ll be
a victory anyway, an accomplishment we can bring back to home base.”

Bobby tried to soak it all in. So many
brave people clinging to hope in the face of utter despair, and yet, through
the darkest times, they succeeded, and were succeeding, still. It blew a little
oxygen onto the lone ember of hope burning low within him. Maybe there was
still a chance for humanity. His own importance in that chance was not lost on
him.

“Speechless, kid, she has a way of doing
that, but if you thought this was all crazy, wait until you see her ass. It’s a
thing of beauty.”

Baylor opened the next door to reveal
the head of another beast almost identical to the roaring inferno pulling them
along, only it was silent, dormant and cold.

“What, you thought we just turned around
like a car?”

“Fucked if I know.” Bobby found it
easier to keep Baylor happy if he quipped like he’d heard Ecky and Ol’ Randy do
so many times in his past.

“Bwahahaha, kid, maybe you’re the bit of
luck we needed." Baylor led the way back to the sleeper car unaware of
just how right that assumption would end up being.

Bobby knew nothing but the softness of
the pillow and the darkness beyond.

“Why are we slowing down,” Baylor
shouted, bits of egg flying from his mouth.

“Boss, you gotta’ see this shit,” Hoss
called from the roof above.

Even as he wiped his mouth he felt it,
something he shouldn’t have . . . they had come to a complete stop. Baylor
already had his pistol in hand as he took the rungs two at a time.

“What’s going on?” Jamie shouted after
him.

“Get the girl and get inside! To arms!
Get that stranger up here! It’s about time he paid his fare! Keep the kid out
of sight!" Baylor’s heart leapt like an animal trapped within the cage of
his ribs. He made it to the motionless roof in less than a second. The
sensation was not something he was used to and it had him stumbling along. When
he finally calmed himself enough to stand up he wished he hadn’t.

“What the fuck?" His eyes darted to
the dense brush on either side of the train, but if there were any enemies
tucked away, they were well hidden. That wasn’t what had him questioning his
sanity, though, the mass of Creepers blocking the track was. In the center of
the stinking mash of bodies, strung above the cloud of flies, were the very
much alive bodies of several men. They were chained to a tall structure that
resembled the swing set of a giant. It had the men a good four feet above the
tallest of the waiting Creepers, dangling like carrots at the end of a stick .
. . bait.