Search and Destroy

by Jay Bonansinga

  “Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord.” The words come out of the former choir director from some deep well of emotion that perhaps she wasn’t even aware she had for this older man as she flops down on the stones where he lies. She feels his neck for a pulse and realizes he’s been dead for a while—maybe hours—the cause of death apparently three large-caliber bullet wounds in his chest. But from the way his hands are curled into claws, and the way the expression on his dark-skinned, deeply lined face is frozen into a furrowed look of anguish, it’s clear he died a difficult death, locked in a mortal struggle. The man’s blood soaks Norma’s skirt as she pulls his limp form into an embrace, stroking the back of his salt-and-pepper head. Norma softly weeps. “Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord-Lord Lord-Lord-Lord.…”

  Lilly arrives and keeps a respectful distance. The others approach behind her, keeping their weapons at the ready in case a sniper’s bullet happens to interrupt. Norma sobs, rocking the corpse of the man with whom she had been falling in love. Tears streak the ashy skin of her plump face. Lilly looks away. Then she notices something that may or may not be important.

  Blood tracks streak the pavers behind Harold Staubach’s body. Evidently, the man crawled quite a way before hemorrhaging the rest of his lifeblood and dying. What was he trying to elude? Or was he trying to chase after something in his death throes? Lilly looks up at the open doors and the scraps of litter skittering on the breeze across the front corridor floor. She thinks about it, then turns and scans the rest of the town.

  The revelation hits her like an ice pick between the eyes. She turns to Miles and Jinx. “Okay, listen to me very carefully. I want you two to go check the Sterns’ place, then check the station house. Right now. Tommy and I will go check the speedway. We’ll meet up back here in ten minutes. Watch your blind spots. DO IT NOW!”

  For the briefest instant, Jinx and Miles share an awkward glance. Then Miles turns and looks at Lilly. “What are we looking for?”

  Lilly has already started out in a dead run toward the intersection north of the square. She howls over her shoulder as she goes: “The kids! Gotta find the kids!”

  * * *

  Decades earlier, long before anyone would have even conceived of a dead person reanimating and consuming the flesh of the living, somebody got the brilliant idea that the one thing the town of Woodbury sorely needed was stock car racing. More than a new playing field for the high school, more than a revamped medical clinic, more than anything … Woodbury needed a speedway. A pair of local businessmen spearheaded the fund-raising efforts throughout the winter of 1971 and the spring of 1972. Using the time-honored carrots of job creation, tourism, and economic development, the steering committee raised an amount just shy of $500,000—enough to break ground and pour the foundation for the massive complex, which would include underground service bays, seating for seventy-five hundred fans, a press box, and state-of-the-art (for its day) infield pits. The remainder of the funds were raised the following year, and on July 1, 1974, the Woodbury Veterans Speedway opened its turnstiles for business.

  Had the racetrack been built in any other part of the world, it would have been shunned and seen by many as an affront to the agrarian charm of the farmland. But this was the South, and country folks around here appreciated the finer points of NASCAR like nowhere else. The smell of hot rubber and smoking tar, the whine of thousands of cubic inches of Detroit combustion filling the air, the glint of hot Georgia sunlight off Metalflake bonnets shooting past the stands in a beautiful blur, the snap of the neck as your guy edged into the lead for the final lap around the oval—it was all part of the fabric of the southern genome, as organically a part of those people’s lives as the sky for sparrows. And over the last quarter of the twentieth century, Woodbury became a marquee venue for the Southeastern United States Short Track Racing Association.

  It was only in the early millennium that the Woodbury Veterans Speedway began to decline—rising fuel costs, the proliferation of electronic entertainment, recession, and the expense of upkeep brought the heyday of racing in Woodbury to a close. By the time the plague broke out, the massive complex on the west side of town—with its flying-saucer-shaped stands, labyrinth of underground service bays, and upper decks the size of an aircraft carrier—had become more and more of a curiosity, more and more of a white elephant. For years, it had been used for storage, the parking of school buses, an occasional country music festival, and the rampant growing of weeds and kudzu that eventually wound and spiraled around the upper stanchions like Byzantine serpents in some Boschian nightmare triptych of the nine circles of hell.

  When Philip Blake (aka the Governor) burrowed into power here a couple of years ago like some kind of satanic weevil—turning the town into a third-world dictatorship—the speedway became a symbol of all that was unholy about these apocalyptic times. The Governor transformed the semicircle of bleachers, the massive portals, the oval banked asphalt, and the vast, seared infield of dead grass and oil-spotted cement pits into a gladiatorial arena worthy of the Roman circuses. In kill-or-be-killed spectacles, ringed with clusters of captive walkers chained and drooling and clawing at the combatants, the Governor’s thugs would compete for the right to live or die for their beloved emperor. The theory—according to Blake—was that the bloody razzmatazz provided catharsis for the residents, kept people happy and docile and manageable. Never mind that the whole thing was faked in the best style of World Federation Wrestling. To Lilly, a longtime Woodbury denizen, there was something deeply disturbing about the events. The obscene, surreal feeling of watching the undead, chained under the metal-halide lights, performing for the crowd like organ grinder monkeys haunted Lilly’s dreams, and to this day continues to taint her memories.

  All of which is why she feels waves of emotion crashing up against her as she leads her team of rescuers through the chain-link gates outside the north corner of the speedway. They pause just inside the turnstiles.

  Over the last ten minutes, they have stumbled upon half a dozen more bodies: Clint and Linda Sturbridge, Mama May, Rudy, and Ian. Practically every new resident of Woodbury has been murdered in cold blood … but for what? Whoever attacked the town wasn’t interested in stealing any of the fuel reserves in the tanks out behind the market. They left the food pantry in the warehouse on Main Street intact. Not a single provision or supply was taken from the feed store on Jones Mill. What were these jackals after?

  “Jinx and Miles, you two go around the back and check the service entrance.” Lilly points off toward the massive gray mortar columns flanking the cracked pavement of the loading dock. “The rest of us will go in through the front.” Lilly turns and looks at Tommy and Norma. “Safeties off, rounds in the breach, and remember—whatever we find, walkers or hostiles or whatever—don’t get tunnel vision, stay off the walls, fingers off the triggers until you have a target.” She gives Tommy a look. “You remember what I taught you?”

  Tommy nods with a frustrated blush of anger. “I remember, Lilly. Jeez, I’m not a goddamn baby.”

  “No, you’re not.” Lilly gives the others a nod. “Let’s go.”

  They move single file up the ramp toward the high archway of the main entrance, while Jinx and Miles shuffle around the side of the building, vanishing in the shadows of the deserted loading dock.

  Wheelbarrows full of peat and potting soil stand near the portals; shovels and hoes and huge rolls of chicken wire are stacked near the entrance. A few carriages are parked under the portico, as well as bags of oats for the horses. For the last year, Lilly has been expanding the farming activities inside the arena, and she’s been using horses to pull the plows and help with the heavy work. Many of the animals are kept in the former service areas below the arena—the large rooms lining the corridors working well as makeshift stables. It’s been a wet spring this year, and Lilly has been hoping and praying that the overharvested crops will regenerate quickly. Now all thoughts of farming are obliterated from her mind.

  She leads To
mmy and Norma through the archway over which the wind-blasted sculpture of Mercury—Roman god of speed, travel, and, ironically, guide to the underworld—stands in eternal tableau.

  They are plunged into a dark, damp, moldy cement passageway. The air smells of dry rot, rat droppings, old urine, and spoor. To their left stretches the litter-strewn, blood-spattered mezzanine of deserted food stands and restrooms. To their right, the stone steps lead down to the service level underneath the stands.

  Lilly communicates with hand gestures and the muzzle of her .22 as she leads the other two down the steps. It is understood—in fact, unspoken—that the children would be brought here, probably by Barbara Stern, in case of emergency. The underground service areas are akin to safe rooms or bomb shelters. Lilly takes the lead as they reach the bottom of the staircase.

  A number of sensations hit them the moment they enter the passageway—the stench of horse dung and fermenting hay, the sound of dripping, the atmosphere as fecund as a greenhouse. They hear the snuffling, snorting noises of horses in their pens, some of the animals banging the walls nervously with their hooves, some of them whinnying suddenly at the scent of humans in their midst. Lilly moves with her Ruger gripped in Israeli commando position—both hands, feet shoulder width, muzzle forward, body angled—followed by the other two, both of them wide-eyed.

  They reach the end of the hall and see the metal door to the safe room standing open.

  Lilly’s heart thuds in her chest as she peers into the room, taking in the empty space, the kindergarten chairs overturned, water cups knocked over on the low tables, the children’s storybooks strewn across the floor. No blood, though, no sign of walkers. Some of the original items in the room are missing: the small toy box, some of the blankets, a crib. What the fuck? Lilly’s head spins. What is going on? She turns back toward the corridor.

  “What the hell, Lilly?” Tommy’s eyes water with horror, both his sister and baby brother missing. “Where the hell are they?!”

  “Maybe they’re back at their house,” Norma volunteers, knowing how unlikely that is.

  Lilly shakes her head. “We passed it on the way here, it was empty.”

  Tommy looks around the cold, stone passageway, his lips trembling with horror. “Still haven’t found David or Barbara—maybe they’re with the kids.”

  “Yeah, maybe … maybe.” Lilly mumbles this, trying to settle her nerves and think clearly. “Maybe we ought to go back and look in the—”

  A noise, faint at first, cuts her off. She snaps her gaze toward the far end of the corridor. The others hear it too, a garbled voice that at first sounds as though it might be a walker. Gun barrels go up immediately, hammers pulled back. The noise is coming from the side tunnel up ahead, about a hundred feet away.

  Lilly puts her finger to her lips. They slowly shuffle toward the intersecting tunnels, guns locked and loaded, muzzles raised and ready to blast away at the cranium of some moldering dead person. Lilly’s mouth goes dry as they approach the intersection. Somewhere behind her, a horse snorts softly, nervously. Other horses stir. Lilly’s hands are sweaty as she reaches the side tunnel and suddenly lurches around the corner with the Ruger’s muzzle up and out front.

  About thirty feet away, a middle-aged man—still clinging to life—lies twisted on the floor at the base of the exit ramp, one arm still reaching toward the top of the incline. Dressed in a tattered silk roadie jacket, the Bob Seger Band insignia on the back punctured with blood-rimmed bullet holes, he trembles softly as he labors to get air into his lungs. His grizzled gray face presses against the floor, puffing dust with each pained breath.

  Lilly lowers her weapon and rushes over to the injured man, the others close on her heels. Lilly kneels. “David,” she murmurs as she gently cradles the man’s head. “Can you hear me? David?!”

  It takes quite a while for the man to muster enough energy to speak.

  THREE

  “They took Barbara.…”

  The man on the floor coughs, swallows hard, licks his chapped lips, and takes shallow breaths. His face is pallid and glistening with sweat, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. His expression suddenly tightens into a mask of pain. “Motherfuckers … came out of nowhere … and they took my wife.…”

  Lilly turns toward Jinx, who has just arrived with Miles from an adjacent corridor. “Jinx! The infirmary at the end of the hall! Get a stretcher … and the first-aid kit! Tommy, help her!”

  With a series of nervous nods and awkward glances, Jinx and the boy back away and then hurry around the corner.

  Lilly gently raises David Stern up and then sits him against the adjacent cinder-block wall. She inspects his wounds. Two out of the three gunshots seem to have passed through the meat of his shoulder, exiting in a tuft of fabric out the back of his jacket. The third one appears to be lodged somewhere in the chest—no exit wound, not a good sign—and that’s when Lilly feels the man’s neck. His pulse is racing, and his flesh is hot.

  He coughs. “Fucking bastards surprised us.” He coughs some more. Norma and Miles come closer, kneeling next to Lilly in order to hear better, David’s voice crumbling with pain and shock and rage. “Armed to the teeth … paramilitary is my guess … had some kind of grenade launcher.”

  Lilly looks at him. “What the fuck were they after? They didn’t touch the storehouse … there’s not a drop of fuel missing from the tanks.”

  A thin, delicate spattering of blood spurts across his chest as David convulses in another spasm of coughing. He finally manages to look up into Lilly’s eyes. “They were after the kids, Lilly.”

  “What?!”

  “They took the kids.”

  For the briefest instant, Lilly stares with utter incomprehension, the silence punctuating the gravity of the situation. Norma and Miles look at each other, thunderstruck, speechless. They look back at Lilly, who’s now staring at the floor, shaking her head, trying to wrap her brain around it. She looks up. “They took all six of them?”

  David manages a nod, coughs, and closes his eyes. “That’s why they took Barbara … to keep them calm … I tried to stop them.” He breathes hard through his nose. “Harold tried to hide Mercy in the courthouse … but they found her … and when Harold fought back, they took him out just like that.” David snaps his bloodstained fingers. “Like he was a goddamn walker.”

  Lilly shakes her head, vexed, still groping for explanations. “But why—?”

  “Motherfuckers were like fucking robots.”

  “But why go after the kids? What in God’s name do they want with the children?”

  David’s eyes look glazed with pain. “Like fucking robots,” he murmurs.

  “David!” She shakes him. “Why the kids!”

  “Organized … stone cold … calculated.”

  “GODDAMN IT LOOK AT ME!!” She slams him against the wall. “WHY TAKE THE KIDS?!”

  “Lilly, stop it!” Miles reaches out and pulls Lilly back, holds her still. “Calm the fuck down!”

  Lilly catches her breath, shaking her head, staring at the floor.

  Jinx and Tommy return with a black satchel and a folded portable stretcher.

  They set the bag down and quickly unfurl the canvas stretcher on the floor next to David. Lilly’s mind swims as she glances at the shopworn black doctor’s bag. It’s the same bag that Bob Stookey used to carry around with him during times of crisis—a satchel once owned by a former practitioner from Atlanta named Stevens. The black bag radiates doom for Lilly. She saw that bag on a stainless-steel table next to her when she lost her own baby two years ago; the miscarriage and subsequent D and C performed by Bob became one of the great ordeals of Lilly’s life. Now Jinx snaps open the bag and frantically fishes through its contents.

  “I’m sorry,” Lilly says to David at last. “I’m losing it.” She strokes the man’s shoulder. “Let’s get you back to the sick bay. We’ll talk later.”

  Jinx presses a gauze bandage down on the worst of the chest wounds, and she holds it there while M
iles and Tommy carefully lift the man onto the canvas conveyance. Meanwhile, David is mumbling, “I don’t have a clue, Lilly … why they would … they would … go to all the trouble.…” His voice trails off as they tape the bandage in place, secure his skinny legs with nylon straps, and tuck his arms at his sides. David Stern loses consciousness then, his head lolling to the side, his body sinking into the folds of the canvas.

  * * *

  There’s a portion of the brain—way down in the cerebellum, in the tangled synapses of the basal ganglia—associated with the perception of time. Some neuroscientists believe that the deepest part of this area—known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus—is where the most immediate timekeeping occurs: ultradian time. This is where urgency is born. This is where the ticking clock starts, which tells us something is going to happen—maybe something awful—if we don’t get our asses in gear and hurry the fuck up.

  Lilly Caul always had a highly developed sense of ultradian time. As a child, she could sense the ticking clock as dinnertime approached, during tests at school, or when Everett was out looking for her after curfew. With almost preternatural sensitivity, she would feel the ticking time bomb in the back of her mind when a fire alarm was about to go off, or a school bell was about to ring, or a thunderstorm was about to erupt, or even the precise moment when her period was about to hit. Since the advent of the plague, she has noticed this sixth sense in the moments right before she smells a walker in the vicinity or walks into a trap. It’s not a psychic gift. It’s not magic. She just has a highly developed sensitivity to imminent change.

  All of which is why she feels time ticking away that night as she hurries to secure the town.

  “I got this, Lilly!” Jinx calls out from Lilly’s right flank, the dusk closing in on them, the crickets starting to roar. It’s already half past seven, and the two of them are approaching a single Port-o-Let unit situated out by the semitrucks on Dogwood Street. The two massive eighteen-wheelers face each other, forming a movable gate. The Port-o-Let was dragged over here by the Governor’s crew two years ago to serve the men reinforcing the wall, and now a wide pool of deep-crimson arterial blood leaks out from within the toilet. Something moves inside it. “Stand back.” Jinx raises her enormous, gleaming bowie knife as she prepares to yank the door open. “Here goes.”