Free The Creepers (Book 2): From the Past by Norman Dixon

just as clearly as she knew it was etched
on her face. The fierce lines of love.
     
    Jamie said, “Don’t let go of that love,
dear. Hold it tight and keep it close. When it gets bad, it’ll be all you have.
Nothing I say or do will make a difference then, but that love will. You fight
like I taught you. Stand defiant in the face of anything. We’re tough bitches.”
     
    “Always,” Sophie said, wiping away the
tears.
     
    “That’s right.”
    * * * * *
    Pathos One tapped furiously at the keys.
It was happening again. There was no escaping it. This flux in the world, the
steadily building rage, the explosions that begot explosions that became
inextinguishable fires tearing humanity apart from within. It would never end.
The train swayed hard. Three rounds sent beams of bright white light through
the dark cabin. More followed, like hard rain on tin roofs.
     
    Pathos One dropped to the floor but kept
typing. Men yelled overhead, returning fire in short bursts, but above all the
noise he could pinpoint Bobby’s steady, brutally efficient shots, one after the
other. Carefully chosen targets exited this life on the dusty plains.
     
    Pathos One closed the laptop. He grabbed
his AK-47 and bolted for the rear of the train. He opened the door between the
cars and fell back as a burst of automatic weapons fire ricocheted off the
thick steel. A tall lanky man with a gray beard fired at him from the back of a
horse. Its mouth was thick with froth—long, stringy strands trailing behind in
the wind. Another series of shots tore through the wood around the frame.
     
    Pathos One rolled to his right and
opened fire. The man tried to pull the reins to exit the angle of fire, but his
reaction was too slow. Pathos One’s shots ripped his chest apart. He fell
backward off the horse. Pathos One got to his feet and cleared the gap between
the cars.
    * * * * *
    Who’s there?
     
    Help.
     
    Why?
     
    They called to him, but he had no time
to comprehend their voices. Bobby aimed like the Folks taught him. He could
hear Ol’ Randy all those winters ago, ‘Center mass on a moving target. Don’t
get cute, Bobby. Focus. Give yourself the best opportunity to drop the sons of
bitches. Lot more ’an Creepers you need be worryin’ about.’ Those words never
rang more true. A squat man in a wide-brimmed hat worked the reins of his horse
hard. Bobby timed the rise and fall of the horse’s movements, counted the
beats, and fired. Accounting for the draft of the train and the elevation, his
bullet smashed the man’s chest and sent him back and off the horse, where his
body was crushed by the man behind him.
     
    Bobby felt each thrump from Baylor’s
grenade launcher. Parts of horses and men and desert sand burst into the
endless blue sky. But they kept coming. More and more exited the dust cloud the
closer they got. The pounding of their hooves was terrifying.
     
    Just before the bulk of the riders
reached the town, Bobby unleashed the Creepers. He aimed for the beasts of
burden, those hammering hooves. Disruption. The attackers were riding too hard
to stop their momentum. Bobby felt the bone-crunching impacts as thundering
beast met rotting flesh. The Creepers were enough to send men crashing into one
another.
     
    Men
cried out to their brethren as they rode past, but were ignored for they were
already dead. The Creepers fell upon them, fed upon them, converted them, and
Bobby welcomed them into the fold.

CHAPTER 7
     
    Never let your guard down, son.
     
    He had not. If he learned anything from
being raised by a diverse group of people in a highly unique situation it was
this: know your surroundings. He did, on a level so intimate he could
anticipate the next crumbling building with an uncanny accuracy. He’d sit and
watch them fall, calling them out to his father. He knew every street that had
been and every pitfall-filled avenue that was created after the shocks. They’d grown
in frequency over the last few years. The city was