Crusade (Eden Book 2) (7 page)

“That was his blessing, so to speak. In the other room you’ll find some sleeping bags and blankets. I’ll wait here for his return.”

That night Kevin slept well for the first time in a long, long while.

When he opened his eyes, Robert was cold and aware that he had shit himself again, but somehow wasn’t as bothered as he would have been at another time. The room was dark but the dark was not unfriendly. He realized he was not alone in the room. These others bore him no ill will. For this he was glad and felt somewhat comforted.

Robert remembered his circumstances then: the wound to his side bandaged but incapable of mending, the stained mattress under him, the musty old comforter tucked over his body against the chill night air.

Bear retrieved his rolling papers and a zip-lock bag of marijuana from the saddle bags. He flattened a paper on his thigh and crumbled a bud onto it, picking out the stems. He folded the paper in half and tucked one end into the other, rolling tightly with his index fingers, drawing his tongue across the joint when he had it sealed to his satisfaction. He took a book of matches from the saddle bags and lit one. In the sulfur glow Robert watched the man squint his good eye and puff, getting the joint going.

Bear inhaled deeply and held it, then exhaled with a sigh. He stood and handed the joint to Robert. While he toked Bear moved the chair closer to the mattress and sat back down. Robert felt safer with the man looming above him.

“I never thought it’d come to this,” Robert said. “I don’t mean,
this
,
me
, here, now. I mean, the world, like
this
. I mean, who could have, right? Then you guys came today, and, well, you know what I felt? Something I haven’t felt in I don’t know how long.
Hope
.”

He pulled on the joint and handed it back over to Bear.

“I think what’s bothered me the most about this whole experience is how it’s brought out the worst in everybody. I mean, Weston, in the street today. Weston is the man who was going to kill…” He looked beyond Bear to the dark where the wild-man stood.

“What you did to Weston—I
get
it. It
had
to be done. What right did he have to try and kill that man? Right? So these last few hours I felt hope. Something I haven’t felt in god knows how long. Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome,” Bear said, passing the joint over to Robert. “But I need you to understand. Weston? He didn’t have to die. He died because I chose to kill him. His death is on my hands. I’m accountable. But I can live with that.

“And you know what, Robert? This world has brought out the worst in many, but it’s also brought out the best in others.”

“It doesn’t seem that way sometimes.”

“That’s because the actions of one bad man often seem to outweigh the good deeds of all the rest. The bad is an aberration from the norm. It draws our attention. Similar situation before all this, if you ask me.”

“We have to remake the earth. In place of the greed and competition that marked our former lives, we have to celebrate and cherish the ties that bind us one to the other. We have to work together
for
each other. We have to realize that the individual is nothing without…without the social, without the group. That what makes the individual special and recognizable only comes about—is only possible—through the communal, through the social.” He paused. “I know we’re high, but I’m serious about this.”

“I know you are.”

“We have to start to care for each other, Robert, really
care
for one another. Create institutions and systems, political systems, that reflect this.”

“I like that vision. Too bad I won’t be around to see it.”

The pain in his side welled up and Robert gasped, losing his breath. Bear reached over and laid a palm on his forehead. He got off the chair and sat down beside the mattress, his back against the wall.

“There’s no rhyme or reason is there?” Robert asked when he finally could.

“We make the rhyme. We provide the reasons.”

“Will this…” He tapped the joint and sent the blackened ashes floating to the mattress, “…will this be legal in your future society?”

“
Our
future society,” corrected Bear. “And I’d think so, yeah.”

“I’m changing,” said Bear. “It’s tough sometimes. I feel different here with you. Calm. Peaceful. I don’t always feel that way around other people. Here you go.”

Robert inhaled.

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Robert. Start at the beginning. Tell me who you were, where you were born, what your life was like.”

They sat next to each other and talked well into the night. Robert spoke of his dreams and his person and as he faded his eyes grew too weary to keep open, so he closed them and drifted off. In the middle of the night he passed. When he turned Bear finished it with a hammer, the wild-man standing silent witness throughout.

The tunnel was dark and damp and echoed as unseen water dripped from pipes overhead. There was something more sinister, some presence in the shadow behind. Something pursuing, closing in on him. He ran, fear gripping him, a panic unlike any other, and as he ran he could hear it coming for him, splashing through the water. The orange lights overhead flickered, dimmed, and disappeared. He stumbled along in the dark with his hands raised in front of his face. Some rational part of him told him to stay near the wall. That if he followed the curvature it would keep him from pitching into the mire and dank of the water channel. When the thing called his name from the blackness he panicked anew, racing headlong through the slippery murk.

He bounced off a wall and rebounded, landing on his backside in the water, immediately soaked through. He scrambled to his feet and found the wall and moved as fast as he could, open palms skimming its surface for a guide. The wall curved under his hands and as the tunnel turned in the dark he saw shafts of light some distance ahead. He shuddered as the thing behind him spoke his name in a low growl much too close. He made for the motes of dust swirling in the shafts of daylight—the only illumination in this infernal blackness. There was a ladder and if he could only reach it… But he could feel the thing’s hot breath on him, and he knew to turn and fight was useless. That this chase and battle were ones that would pursue him for the remainder of his days.

Buddy.

The cold steel of the ladder was under his hands and he rushed up it. Losing his footing he hung for a moment, his lower body swinging like a pendulum in the abyss. His feet scrabbled and found a wrung and he was up, hand over hand and foot over foot, leaving the echoes of the water below, leaving the thing in the dark. He reached the top of the ladder. The streams of light poured down from perforations in a manhole cover. As he put his shoulder to it he looked down and the thing was there, standing just outside the light, beckoning to him, speaking his name, a hideous trophy swinging in its grip while it called him down to his fate.

Buddy.

He pushed with his shoulder and the side of his neck. A mighty heave and the manhole cover was clear, but they were on him in their dozens—little arms and hands grasping him, muted faces staring at him, and perhaps most horrifying of all there was no emotion on the faces of these children who sought to drag him up onto the street. He shrugged them off and pulled back and lost his footing, slipping from the ladder, plunging backwards into the dark, falling, reaching for the shafts of light. The thing below scoffed and shuffled in anticipation, and it was laughing. It was waiting—

“Buddy—”

He woke to arms shaking him violently and he reacted. Instinct. His large hands wrapped around the neck of the man crouched over him, pushing him back and squeezing, crushing—

“Buddy!”

Another man latched onto his wrists, trying to pry them from the first man’s neck. In that instant Buddy realized he was choking Mickey and it was Bear who loomed above him in the wintry night, forcing open his hands. The fight went out of him. Mickey fell back gasping and coughing.

“Oh Christ—oh Christ—oh Christ.”

He scrambled back away from his sleeping bag and away from the fire around which the five rested that night. Julie and Gwen had been roused from their sleep by the struggle and sat staring wide-eyed in their sleeping bags, not comprehending. Julie had one hand wrapped around the out-sized .357, the other around her .380.

Bear crouched next to Mickey, speaking to him and rubbing his back, and Mickey coughed a few more times, shaking his head.

“Mickey, Mickey, listen, oh Christ man, I’m sorry, I—” He didn’t know what to say but he needed to say something.

The moon was full in the sky and their camp in the clearing was well lit. Around them was snow and pine trees and off to the left the train tracks and the sluggish, icy river.

“I’m okay, I’m alright.” Mickey said to Bear. Bear looked up from him to Buddy and stared at the latter, thinking.

“What happened?” asked Julie.

“Nothing, it’s okay.” Gwen assured the pregnant woman, closing one of her hands over the hand Julie gripped the Colt Python in, pushing it down, then doing the same thing for the Taurus .380 she held in the other.

“I swear, I’d—no, you’re right, it
won’t
happen again. It’s
me
man. I’m sorry.”

Mickey nodded. Bear continued to crouch next to him, eyeing Buddy.

Why’s the big guy eye-fucking you, Jig
?

“Oh shut up,” Buddy muttered a little too loud, aware that he was answering a voice only he heard. He shook his head and said, “Nothing, never mind,” to the group then walked off into the dark away from them and the fire. He silently cursed himself.

When he had his head straight he went back to the others. They were all sitting around the fire but no one was speaking. He knew they must have talked about him, about what had happened. Somewhere in the back of his mind a venomous voice assured him he was right.

“You okay Mickey?” asked Julie.

“Yeah, yeah, I just need a minute,” He stood and walked off in the opposite direction Buddy had come from, taking his assault shotgun with him. It was a USAS-12 auto-shotgun, though he never fired it on full auto. No need with zombies. The twenty-round drum magazine added some weight to it, but it was a big, blunt looking weapon, and for Mickey, a guy who didn’t know much about guns, its fierce-look was reassuring.