The Creepers Read Online Free Page A

the rolling clouds. Night had fallen. Other than the unreliable moon,
the only light offered them came from a small flashlight. Beyond a few feet,darkness conquered all. Somewhere in that
impenetrable blackness,the Creepers lurked. The
sound of the explosion surely drew their attention.
    Bobby couldn’t answer Ryan;couldn’t face him. He was dead already. No shoelace,
no matter how big, would be able to cut off the Fection on a stomach wound. The
Fection would come quick. Ryan, however, had a slim chance, but miles away from
the Settlement, and no adequate medical equipment, amputation would bring death
quicker, much quicker. But Bobby knew it would be a cleaner, sinless death.
This wasn’t the First War though, and they were far from soldiers—even with
their extensive training.
    It was discovered, in the early stages
of the First War, that if caught quick enough, the Fection could be stopped
with amputation. No one knows the name of the first soldier to have the balls
to cut off his own arm. But once the word spread,it
became mandatory for every soldier to carry a machete or a blade of equal size
capable of cutting through bone quickly. If they were bitten on a limb and
couldn’t do it themselves,the man next to them
was expected to step up and do it for them. Bobby’s balls weren’t that big . .
. they didn’t even have hair on them yet.
    He remembered the stories told in the
Settlement schoolhouse. The Folks talked of a place deep in the South of Texas
called the Alamo, where great men fought to the last, long before the world
went mad. They used that ancient battle as a comparison to the battle of Newark
in the First War.
    Maps and photos of towering glass
buildings filled his head. The U.S Army took full control of the city of
Newark, New Jersey early in the war. The residents had long since left for the
death traps of the Turnpike and Parkway to flee the flood of Creepers moving on
the city. The Army lifted the bridges crossing the dirty Passaic River in an
attempt to slow the thousands of walking dead converging on their position. The
sludge coursing through the river was almost as foul the Creepers themselves…
almost.
    The Army’s perimeter was well fortified
and their supplies were well stocked. Their machine guns tore into the
Creepers. The bodies of the dead fell into the river and drifted away in great
numbers. But they kept coming, relentless,like
a swarm of wasps drawn to the scent of a fallen drone. The currents of the
polluted river kept the Creepers at bay, and those that made it across, awash
in the dirty brown water, were defeated by the steel retaining walls. Some,
though, made it to the banks, but they were cut down and kicked right back into
the filth.
    Eventually the Creepers caught on and
adapted to the situation as more and more of their number arrived. It was
rumored they were ten thousand deep and for every Creeper killed another three
filled that void. They formed chains, rotting hand in rotting hand, making
ropes of dead flesh, drifting in the current like bait on a fisherman’s hook.
They reached the bridges and piled onto the massive steel framework. The Army
reduced the bridges to slag with their artillery but the Creepers kept coming.
They attached themselves to the molten steel, searing flesh, but they felt no
pain. After weeks of shelling,rockets, and
airstrikes from attack helicopters, the Army had exhausted their supply of
propelled death. But the Creepers would not be denied.
    On the other side of the city,the Army conceded their border and pulled back as the
Creepers crashed the razor wire and barriers. The siege of Newark was nearing
its end. The majority of the soldiers made their last stand in the building on
1180 Raymond Street, the tallest building in the entire city. As the Creepers
drove further into the city,the Army took many
hits. The number of bitten soldiers was catastrophic. They used the elevators
to transport the wounded to a field hospital near the