The Creepers (35 page)

As Franklin adjusted his sights he
turned to Sergeant Beckinridge to respond to the order given, but he never got
the chance. A second sniper’s bullet put a hole in his neck, severing his
spine. He died instantly.

Ol’ Randy felt that bullet tear a hole
in the very fabric of him. He cursed the Lord again and again—and then, he
cursed his maker some more. But in that moment he didn’t have the time to
contemplate the actions of Heaven. He had to act, or perish.

As he barked commands at this men, and
sent them out into the fire, the valley folded over on him. The great blue sky
tumbled down as if God cast it aside without so much as an afterthought. He
never heard the explosion, he never felt the shockwave, all he knew was an
unending ringing, a whine that enveloped him.

Dust drifted over him, filling his
nostrils with a tangy, earthy scent, and it was so thick it nearly blocked out
all light. Only a moment ago it had been broad daylight, clear, blue skies, but
now everything seemed trapped in an eerie dusk. Mumbled words, the vibrations
of many boots on the ground, shadowy figures moved around him. Black hands,
shrouded faces descended upon him, clutching and pulling at his vest, at his
gear, his hair, and they were not gentle. The voices were not those of his men.
They were not speaking English.

Ol’ Randy tried to move, but his
muscles, like his ears, were in state of frozen shock from the concussion of
the blast. He had the vague sense of motion, sailing through that murky dust in
the rough hands of his enemies. Before he even had a chance to gather himself
further, something heavy crashed against the back of his skull.

The dusty world fell into darkness.

* * * * *

Someone was yelling at him. His hands
were bound painfully behind his back. Figures moved in front of him. He counted
three through the thin blindfold. His rudimentary Farsi was no help at all. He
couldn’t even concentrate as more angry voices joined in the barrage.

Fear did not enter the equation. He
could only think of his men. What had happened to them? Were they all dead? Had
he, somehow in a miscalculation, caused the whole mess? No, he told himself.
These types of attacks were common place in the valley. Smash and grab. Smoke,
sand, explosions, covering fire, move in on a target, move out like ghosts.

He cursed himself for not anticipating
the call signs.

The voices died down and his blindfold
was removed.

He was sitting in the middle of a
mud-walled room. Bits of straw and small pebbles lay scattered on the floor.
Two Afghani men in olive green garb stood guard on either side of the lone
door, Kalishnikovs strapped across their chests. A white-robed man sat
cross-legged directly in front of him. And just behind the sitting man stood a
child holding a fist-sized chunk of Afghan bedrock.

“Allah has shined on you this day,
American,” the sitting man said, as the child stirred nervously behind him.
“You seem shocked . . . we are not all bangers of rocks in these lands. What is
your name?”

Ol’ Randy spat on the floor.

The man’s hand lashed out, smacking Ol’
Randy across the cheek.

“This is my home, you will show respect
as I did in the homes of your New York City. Now, what is your name?" The
man straightened his sleeve and said something to the men at the door.

They chuckled.

“What difference does it make? Ya’ll
gonna’ get on with killin’ me . . . go’ead and do it. I made my peace with God
years ago. Pain’ll only last a few days at best. Get to it, Haji.”

If the man felt the sting of the insults
he did not show it. A great mask of patience descended on his face, so calm, it
was almost peaceful. But the man’s eyes betrayed his nervousness.

“His name is Jack,” the man told the
guards in their native tongue.

“What’re you about?”

“You want to live? Then,” the man
slapped him again, “tell me your name.”

Ol’ Randy tested the rope binding his
hands. He wasn’t going to have his moment of glory. “Why ya’ care? To you I’m
nothin’ but some damn outsider . . . infidel, ain’t that right, Haji?”

The man shook his head. “Some of us want
to be left alone. Not all of us want to be part of something." He stirred
the dirt floor with his fingertip. “Or want it forced on us. You must
understand. I saw the world . . . had my fill, but in the end I wanted to make
my own way. To raise my family in peace. Not so much to ask, but it seems I
demanded a king’s ransom, for now, here we sit.”

“You speak fancier’n a tap dancin’
lawyer. Where’d you learn?" Ol’ Randy shifted his weight which drew
another slap. “I don’t know what yer at, Haji, but ya’ better hope I don’t get
loose.”

“
Fool,
if you will not give me
your name then, Fool, it shall be." The man pulled the boy close, kissed
his forehead. “This is my son, he was born in this valley. This is all he
knows. Imagine that for a second. All he has known in his short life is war.”

“It’s all part of God’s plan.”

“Allah has nothing to do with this. This
is the work of confused men . . . on both sides, bringing war to my home. I
didn’t ask for this, I wanted no part in this, but if this is really Allah’s
plan, His will, then I know my part.”

“Just get it over with.”

“This will hurt, but I must prove to
them that I am willing to kill an infidel in order to protect my family. When
they leave I will see to it you are returned to your men, Fool.”

The man shouted at the boy.

Ol’ Randy recoiled at the sight of those
tiny hands clutching the rock. He closed his eyes and prayed. The first blow
sounded like a crashing wave inside his skull as the bones of his cheek
collapsed. His flesh ripped apart, the world turned white with foreign
laughter, and the stone fell again.

* * * * *

Even now, in a half-demented daze, he
wondered if the man and his boy knew the legend their act of kindness spurned.
He hoped they were alive, safe in the thin air, so far away. But he knew that
circumstance always had a way of finding you and using you in whatever way they
saw fit.

“He has a plan,” Ol’ Randy screamed.
Scratching at the walls of the pit, he screamed until his voice was nothing
more than a series of ragged breaths. He had to believe his own words. To an
extent he did, but at the back of his mind, always lingering, was the impetus
of doubt. Doubt of his own belief system, of his maker, of everything.

Hope, however slimming in these dark
days, was all he had left. Well . . . that wasn’t exactly true, there was
always the madness, and it was as constant as the flies.

A week after they left the comfort of
Baylor’s train they found themselves at the mercy of Mother Nature. The spring
rain would not relent. She would not stop her harrying either. She hammered the
small diner with a torrent that poured through the hole in the roof like a
waterfall.

Bobby busied himself, creating a bridge
with several Formica-topped tables over the counter, and what was left of the
prep area. It was far from ideal, but at least it kept them dry. He kicked at a
pile of remains that he could not identify.

“Be mindful of the dead,” Pathos said.

“Animal bones.”

“No, human. Look at the ribs and the
absence of a skull.”

“An animal could have run off with it.”

“Unless that animal had an axe for
teeth, I highly doubt it. It is my job to understand the dead, to catalogue
them." Pathos jotted something into the small notebook he kept in his
pocket. He didn’t want to risk the laptop in this weather.

“Why not put it with the rest of your
list?” Bobby asked, though, he still was unsure of what exactly that list
represented. Pathos had been very quiet after revealing his identity. The idea
of keeping a list of names and numbers, each representing a member of the
deceased, boggled Bobby’s mind. The idea of a census was utterly alien to him.

“Look at your young mind working,”
Pathos said, wiping the water from his brow. “I can see your questions. Don’t
be afraid to ask them. Even our prisoner here has the same questions. What,
where, why, how . . . all valid.”

“Yer a crazy bastard. I’ma kill you
first, then the demon next to you." Jackson squirmed against the
restraints. His face carried a rough bruise across his left cheek. Pathos had
to set him straight once already.

“Isn’t that pleasant? I’m amazed you
made it away from these barbarians with your mind intact, Bobby." Pathos
nodded at the boy, keeping his weapon close in case Jackson wanted to act up
again.

“They’re not all like him and he knows
it. They may not like me, but they’re not bad people . . . they’re not like the
savages." Bobby stared up into the gray sky. He welcomed the knifing rain.
It gave him pause, but more importantly, it gave him time to formulate a plan
to free Ol’ Randy and minimize the damage. There were many that needed to die,
that deserved to die, and for a time he thought that contained everyone in the
Settlement, but the long winter, coupled with new friends, new thoughts,
changed his perspective on things, though, it did not change the powerful need
to avenge his brothers.

“I know very well that not all humans
are so . . . barbaric,” Pathos said as he touched his face. His eyes welled
with tears.

“Is that what happened to your face?”

“Like your brothers, I too, was a victim
of the reptilian brain. And so,” Pathos slid his notebooks in a pocket, “was my
wife." He laid his AK47 across his knees and tucked them in, as if trying
to shrink himself into non-existence.

“Fuckin’ serves you right. God’s
punishment.”

Bobby snapped his fist out, catching
Jackson on the chin. “Keep your mouth shut.”

“What’re you gonna do? You lil’demon,
you can’t kill me, ya’ll need me,” he spat.

Bobby picked up a piece of broken glass
and said, “we don’t need your tongue. My brothers were murdered, carving you up
wouldn’t even begin to set things straight." Bobby didn’t even feel the
glass cut into the flesh of his palm. The shear rage masked it.

Pathos’s hand on his shoulder made him
stop. He dropped the shard of glass and applied pressure to the wound. “Open it
again,” he hissed, “and it’ll be the last time you speak.”

“Don’t give in to it yet, Bobby. There
is a time and place for revenge, but not now. To do so would sully the freedom
of your friend." Pathos chambered a round. “Don’t worry about this
slovenly gentleman.”

Bobby tore a piece of his shirt off and
wrapped it around the wound.

“I always felt a great disaster was
coming. And the day the dead didn’t stay dead, well . . . I thought that was
it. Here was something oft fantasized about in movies, in books, and now it was
unfolding on my flat screen. But I was wrong, so wrong." Pathos One traced
the scars, following the many crags, peaks and valleys that had once been soft,
supple skin.

“No, that wasn’t the great disaster of
my life. When I found the depths of human depravity I knew the disaster on a
personal level. Or should I say when it found me." Pathos One cleared his
throat. The pain of distant memory sticking like the dry precursor of a
horrible cough. “We’d been drifting from shelter to shelter, moving with the
food, always staying ahead of collapse. Back east, Bobby, you have no idea the
concentration of people.”

“But I—”

“—I know,” Pathos shouted, “You’ve seen
pictures, but you do not know. You can’t even imagine the feeling. One day I
was going about my business shoulder to shoulder with the world. So close at
times I could smell last night’s supper, a culture, a favorite fragrance, a
hard day, within the confines of a commuter train I could use my sense of smell
to know all of those things. That’s how close we were. How physically close we
were.

“When it happened, when the cases
started to spread . . . we were told to keep indoors, to lock up and stay safe.
Which was fine while we had power and food and water, but when those
necessities started to fail, the lights went first, everything started to
collapse. Small fires, breaking windows, shouting, we were living in the end of
things. It was both a marvel and an absolute horror to behold." Pathos One
cried. His weapon rattled in his bony hands.

“My wife and I left our home for the
last time. They were broadcasting on loudspeakers. They shouted directions for
us to find safety in the camps. And so we did, eating rice, huddling behind
crude barbed wire, no toilets, no
true
shelter, but how could life last
like that? The answer is, it didn’t. It started with gangs within the barbed
wire cities . . . thugs really, demanding food and water, taking women at their
leisure. The military had given up their posts, and who could blame them? They
had families too.

“Doesn’t take much, sometimes it doesn’t
take anything at all, to send our reptilian tongues flickering. Once that
floodgate to the past is open there is no stopping it. No matter how hard you
try. We were in a rural town somewhere in Northern New Jersey. We’d been
several weeks on the road, surviving on what we could, avoiding contact with
the dead, avoiding contact with anyone. We didn’t know much about survival, but
millions of years of evolution had supplied the answers in our DNA. We only
needed to be pushed into a corner to unlock them. The Creepers were that
corner.