The Creepers Page 6

  Lyda, along with Ma and Pa Crannen, Pastor Craven, Ol’ Randy, and several other close friends had been preparing for the worst well before the wave crashed.

  There were those within their congregation that called them insane, laughed at them in tight clusters at gatherings, and lamented their warnings. When the strange tales of people eating people began to find their way onto obscure news blogs and conspiracy websites it was the Crannen’s who took notice. Shortly after, they asked Lyda to take a look one night after service.

  The medical accounts of the cases intrigued her, but when the world went to shit, so too, did all hopes of gathering information. What little they did know of the Fection was enough to spurn them to action.

  Lyda was instrumental in planning the framework of the micro society they were to form. Wherever they decided to hunker down there were two things she championed above all others, and those two things, education and medicine, were the only two things that would allow them to survive beyond the first generation.

  Once their plan was set in motion there was no turning back. All of them devoted their resources, money, and every waking hour to see it through. They purchased the tiny abandoned mining town of Tuls, Colorado off the internet for a small fortune. The mayor of Tuls, who held the deeds, but resided in Denver, told them he would be laughing all the way to the bank. He laughed alright, laughed himself to a horrible end when the Fection decimated the city.

  With their first hurdle out of the way, they took to their professions to build it from the ground up. The Crannen’s, lifetime farmers, began the long task of tiling the land and coaxing sustenance from the tired dirt. Ol’ Randy, along with a few of his Army buddies, retired carpenters mostly, began building. The old veteran wasted nothing though, and a majority of the Settlement’s buildings were refurbished from Tuls’s decayed past.

  Lyda began to scour the web, consignment stores, newspapers, anywhere that advertised medical equipment for sale. But as she searched, the stories began to pour in at an alarming rate. Time was running out. When they finally closed the gate, and settled in for the long haul, they were grossly undersupplied.

  After the first winter, with casualties mounting, the Crannen’s made the decision to begin plundering what they could from anywhere they could. It was dangerous, but necessary work. By the grace of God that first foray into the madness netted them a fully functional hospital bed, and one extraordinarily gifted Russian engineer.

  Lyda almost shot him. She fired at him, but the Lord swayed her aim that day. She remembered how he looked, emaciated, sunken eyes, dirty, he looked like one of them. He’d been living inside the air duct system of the hospital for almost a year. She couldn’t imagine how he had the will to hold on amid all that chaos, alone. But in the moment he stood before her, hands out, pleading, tears streaming from his eyes he did something that she’d never forget. He pulled a small gold cross from the pocket of his dingy shirt and kissed it, fell to his knees, and thanked the Lord. It was a sign from God, the supplies and Yannek, were a miracle from the Heavenly Father. They were on the right path, God approved.

  Lyda rejoiced, but their victory was short-lived, they lost three good men that day. The Lord always demanded sacrifice in these hard times. She wondered if Ryan would be another of those sacrifices. She prayed for it.

  The centrifuge hummed as gravity worked its magic on Ryan’s blood. Lyda checked the clock. Almost a full twenty-four hours had passed. The boy was dangerously close to the point of no return, but she had to check his blood work first. There was still a slim chance that the Fection had not spread, but it was highly unlikely.

  While the blood spun she busied herself with observing the sleeping boy for more pronounced signs. He was gravely pale, yet, his skin still retained a healthy tone. No yellowing or bruising, and his toes and fingers moved easily. He wrestled with the nightmare that contorted his face. None of the precursors of the Fection were there. He was minus an arm, he’d never play baseball with the other children again, but all things considered, he looked like he was going to make it. But the blood would be the great decider . . . it never lied.

  Lyda had seen many victims of the Fection show the same positive signs of recovery before, only to have them slip into death shortly thereafter. She checked the restraints and checked them again. When the already taxed medical system became flooded with that first wave of cases many doctors made the mistake of signaling the all clear. Those same doctors fell victim to their own false sense of security and the hubris of their craft. Their crisp whites turning blood red as they supplied fresh meat for the second wave.

  She removed a rubber mouthpiece, salvaged from a dilapidated sporting goods store, from the tray beside the bed. Lyda squeezed Ryan’s clenched jaw, jabbing sharply with the tips of her bony fingers, she worked it open and jammed the mouthpiece in. She pressed his mouth closed and set a few strands of duct tape over it. She thought about her actions, how they would seem cruel to the uninitiated, but each precaution further protected her from a potential enemy, besides, the uninitiated were dead.

  “I hope the Lord values you enough to make it. I hope you make it so you can live a long, hard life. I hope every day is painful, and that you toil and scrap to get by. I will remind you every chance I get that my son was forced out so you could live among us. You will live the life not meant for my son. The Lord works in mysterious ways and this, this is but a test of my faith and my will. I will do everything I can, guided by the Lord’s hand, to save you,” she said, running a gloved finger across his slick brow.

  The centrifuge beeped and began to whir down. Lyda snatched a glass slide from the counter and took the tube from the centrifuge’s cradle. She gently put a drop of Ryan’s blood on the slide, applied methanol to bond it, added dye, and set it to dry. Back before the Fection she would’ve never dreamed of using a centrifuge on a blood sample, it just wasn’t necessary, but the Fection was different. Normally, a smear was used to separate cells from one another thereby giving the viewer a better glimpse of the infection. But she used the centrifuge to compact the cells so it was easier to spot the one, or ones, that stood out among the crowd.

  Lyda had spent many years in Sub-Saharan Africa studying Malaria. As part of her service to the church, and humanity, she helped identify and treat cases of the infectious disease. The Fection shared many similar traits with the mosquito born disease, but unlike Malaria, it did a marvelous job of hiding itself in the early stages of exposure. Upon entering the bloodstream the parasite lodged itself in the host’s liver. Once enough replication has taken place the Fection waged an all out war on the red blood cells. It behaved like a suicide bomber, closing in on a cell, hiding within it, and then it would explode, causing it to spread to the other cells for maximum damage. The Fection had no set timeline for detonation, it could take twenty four hours, or twenty seconds. Then the reanimation would begin, followed by the hunger, a perfect weapon. But Lyda, along with many other scientists and doctors, ruled out that possibility soon after the beginning of the First War. The Fection wasn’t manmade. It was natural, a test from God.

  As she slid the slide onto the microscope she expected to see healthy cells, but what she found was something entirely different. The Fection was there, but it was somehow . . . changed. The tiny banana-shaped parasites were not attacking the blood cells. There was something coating them, essentially trapping them, keeping them from doing any damage.

  Lyda rubbed her eyes.

  Something else about the parasites unnerved her. They were dead, and it appeared that they had been suffocated by whatever encased them. In all her experience with the Fection she had never observed a dead parasite even in the blood of a headshot case. The Fection, when under duress, would go dormant and wait for another host. Heat was the only sure way to destroy it. Soap, bleach, and antibiotics were useless against it, yet, somehow she found herself staring at dead parasites. What kind of devil was this boy? She wondered.

  Were the rest of his brothers infec
ted with the dead parasites? What would happen if the parasites were not encased in that strange barrier? So many questions, and only one of them she truly knew the answer to. If that barrier fell those dead parasites would rise again and wreak havoc on a host. She had seen it with frozen parasites, gone dormant for hundreds of years, early in her medical career, studying ice core samples in the Arctic. They may look dead, but she knew better. Another of God’s mysteries.

  Lyda looked over her shoulder. The sight of the boy repulsed her. He was one of them . . . in disguise. She had to tell Pastor Craven. The thought of the other four running around the Settlement, ticking time bombs, frightened her. Had the Crannen’s known?

  Cautiously she prepared a strong dose of sedative. Not enough to kill the boy, not yet, there was much she needed to discuss with Pastor Craven first, but enough to keep him safely knocked out. She checked the restraints again, and added another strap just to be sure.

  In her haste to be out of the boy’s presence she did not notice that he had removed the IV.

  CHAPTER 8

  Pastor Craven gripped the pulpit in his bony hands. His knuckles stark white against the rich luster of the dark-stained wood. He bent over his bible like a starved vulture, skin hanging loose from his face and neck, wisps of yellow-gray hair clung to his liver-spotted scalp, barely a skeleton of a man inside his patchwork brown tweed. But he demanded full attention, and he got it. His sharp eyes acknowledged the weak crowd. He understood the reason for the thin flock this night, and he knew the Lord did as well. The first storm of winter wouldn’t be long now, and there was still much work to be done.

  The rows of pews creaked, someone coughed, but all were at full attention even in the thick warm air of the chapel. Pristine white walls surrounded them, and the worn eyes of a wooden Jesus reminded them of their savior’s sacrifice. Pastor Craven looked up at the fine craftsmanship with a bit of pride.

  It was he who rescued the cross from a church five winters ago. He was part of a small supply party sent to the town of Renard to salvage what they could. Surprisingly, when they arrived they found the town empty. No corpses, no Creepers, and no signs of past struggles, a ghost town. That was until they came to the church. The doors of the small stone monument to God were chained. The windows boarded.

  Pastor Craven ordered the chains removed, and after a stiff resistance from Ol’ Randy the doors to Renard’s church were opened. Nearly a hundred and fifty Creepers, that had been dormant inside for who knew how long, poured out. Rotted nuns in tattered habits, little dead girls in yellowed and frayed Sunday’s best, the preacher still clutched a crumbling bible in his worm eaten grasp. The collective moan sent their small party running, but Pastor Craven rallied them, warning them that this was a test from the Almighty. He told the party they were to cleanse the church for God’s sake.

  All veterans of the First War, and many harsh winters, the party fought through the town for almost two days. Using the bait and kill method, they thinned the herd, killing a few at a time and distracting them, while snipers picked them off from the rooftops. And in the end, they were victorious in clearing God’s house of the blight.

  “His son died for our sins,” Pastor Craven said, facing the congregation. “Yes, indeed . . . and we have died, have sacrificed in His honor against Satan’s horde, and will continue to do so as long as they walk the earth.”

  “That’s right,” a grizzled, middle-aged man said, waving his hat in the air.

  “Make no mistake, we are at war with the damned, with the souls that slighted the Almighty Father. Amen." Pastor Craven pounded his fist on the pulpit. “We’ve been at war for more winters than I’d like to count. By the grace of God we have endured . . . but there is much work still to be done, my friends. Our faith gives advantage. It gives guidance. It gives us comfort to sleep. It gives us food. It gives us shelter. It gives us hope." Pastor Craven paced back and forth in front of the pulpit. Sweat dripped down the folds of his neck, stung his eyes.

  “Hope, my friends, hope that will see us through this dark despair. Think about the other inhabitants of God’s land." He clasped his hands, bowed his head.

  “Kill ’em all!” someone shouted.

  “We shall, but, my friends, it is not the undead of which I speak. No, it is the other inhabitants. The dull, the uneducated, the savages that continue to defy the odds against the horde. What will happen when we stand victorious for the Lord? And what about the non-believers, the loners, the other pockets of society, and the ragged remnants of our pitiful government? When we win back God’s land we must not allow them to corrupt it again.”

  “Never!”

  Pastor Craven banged his hand on the pulpit saying, “Never! Never! We will not allow them to slight the Almighty ever again. We are few, but we are devoted, we are blessed, and we will win back God’s land.”

  “Amen!”

  “A new beginning under the Lord’s gracious smile. Think of it, friends, can you see it? The world of God from sea to sea, the bounty of the earth, the safety . . . I can see it. God has told me it will be so. We are like the old dog licking its wounds who then returns to his master to prove his worth. We must prove our worth, my friends, and prove it we shall. We will carry God’s word into a new day, a day free from sin, from the blight, a day that our children and their children can speak of our hardships with honor, without fear of the Fection, or the sin of their brothers and sisters. That day is coming.”

  Pastor Craven closed his bible. He rarely read it these days. There was no wisdom in the text to guide him through such times as these. He relied instead on experience and prayer. The Lord spoke to him often, and he felt it his duty to convey those words to the rest of the Folks. He felt the stagnation of many winters held in check, barley surviving, and now he felt something stirring, though, he could not explain it, or even understand it. But he knew it was coming.

  For Jesus told him so.

  * * * * *

  Bobby was terrified. He had maybe hours, two or three at best, before he became one of them. He expected it to be different, he expected to feel . . . something, aches or pains, fatigue, but he felt none of those things. Aside from the slight sting of the wound, he felt perfectly normal. But his mind was a cyclone of emotional worry, and fear, like an injured animal limping off into the deep forest to die. The thought had crossed his mind several times already, and since returning from Corral duty he packed his rucksack with supplies. He intended to leave the only family he had ever known behind, but first he had to see Ryan one last time.

  He watched his brothers dominate a lopsided game of football. Three on six, and they were still up by six points. While the native Settlement boys became overconfident with their superior number Bobby’s brothers used team work and tactics to outwit them on every play. Curses and cheap shots were thrown, but Bobby’s brothers capitalized on them as well. Over the years the five brothers learned to survive on many levels, and though the native boys learned the same skills, they only applied them in practice situations. They were taught how to survive the harsh winters, survive the wilds, survive with only the resources of the land, and any inhabitant of the Settlement excelled at this, but the native boys did not truly understand the many applications of survival tactics. Nature was harsh, but the mental and physical games of adolescent dominance were even more so.

  The storm clouds scudded across the Colorado sky, an orange purple mash, foreboding, mangling the last rays of the day’s light. Winter was almost upon them, and if the storm was any indication, it would be a long one. The wind blew bitterly cold. Bobby’s breath showed. His fingers numb.

  “You guys are a bunch of cheaters,” a small, blonde-haired boy said.

  “Your mother’s a cheater,” Paul answered with a wry grin.

  “Yeah, well at least I have one!”

  Bobby could sense a fight brewing. He stepped in between his brother and the smaller boy and said, “Easy now. It’s almost time for supper. We don’t want Pastor or Ol’ Randy coming
by and giving everyone a round of latrine duty.”

  “Shut up, freak.”

  Somewhere between the detonation, the ensuing bite, and the prosaic way in which Bobby came to understand he was about to die, the boy in him ceased to be. He turned so fast none of them were ready for it, small fist hitting small face with a crack. No one intervened, Bobby didn’t follow up with another punch, he didn’t have to. The small boy was out cold on the hard ground. The other boys stepped back, including his brothers, afraid of what they saw in his eyes. It wasn’t the look of boy become a man, it wasn’t sharp angry fear, it was desolation on an epic scale, an empty void where no light would ever find its way.

  “I’m going to see Ryan. You guys can come if you want,” Bobby said, turning towards the infirmary.

  His brothers followed him in silence across the yard.

  Most of the Folks were in between shifts. Those that were done with their duties for the day were either at the chapel, or eating in the mess. The rest of the them were preparing for guard duty, or night classes. They were so busy with their tasks, that they didn’t notice the boys, or maybe they did, they just didn’t question their presence, more bees about the busy business of the hive.

  Bobby peered into the fogged windows of the infirmary. The harsh lights within, coupled with the condensation without, made for strange undefined shapes, but they did not move, which gave Bobby a measure of calm. If any of the Folks were inside he’d never get to say a proper goodbye to his brother.

  “Bobby, it’s c-cold what are we doing?” Bryan asked with chattering teeth.

  “I already told you. We’re going to see Ryan. I don’t see BB. Hurry up." Bobby checked the door. It was unlocked. The sterile scent of winter met the pure scent of ozone as he opened it and stepped inside.