Now Rafael watches the creature collapsing backward into the fire, tossing sparks into the air, ragged clothing catching, flames licking up its body, cocooning it in blazing light. How odd, Rafael muses silently, watching the abomination, that flames alone do not vanquish the damned. Could it be that they are now creatures of hell? Alas … Rafael has no time to make any further deductions. The savage, corrupted noises of the possessed rise above the rain all around the shelter.
As the shadowy figures converge on the oasis of light, Rafael quickly gathers his arsenal. By this point, he has fashioned a shoulder strap from a rope he found along the way, as well as a tarp to keep the guns dry. He hurriedly slings the bundle of weapons over his shoulder and secures them with his belt, then fires a few errant gunshots into the oncoming swarm.
He kicks the embers across the shelter, catching a few of the creatures on fire and causing enough of a diversion to slip away into the dawn.
* * *
Somewhere in the distant recesses of his memory, Rafael Machado remembers happier times. He recalls crossing the overseas highway that connects the hundred-mile chain of Florida Keys to the mainland. He remembers traveling the “All-American Road” in his aunt Anita’s battered Ford Galaxy, traversing dozens of bridges, feeling as if he were on a magic carpet, floating over the sun-spangled waters of the Gulf, singing joyous, off-key choruses of “Se Essa Rua Fosse Minha” (“If This Street Were Mine”).
Now, the pitiful condition of the road weighs heavily on Rafael’s heart as he slogs along the elevated highway in the rain with his mobile arsenal on his back. Weather-beaten wreckage litters the pavement, some of it appearing to have been there for so long the salt winds have rubbed the metal down to the primer. Many of the cars have been stripped, the tires gone, and the glass broken out—stalks of sea grass and weeds growing out of the cavities. Bodies lay strewn here and there, bleached by the sun into skeletons, some of the skulls petrified into black puddles of their own fluids now as hard and shiny as onyx.
It takes two days to make it to Marathon—the halfway point on the overseas highway—and by that time, Rafael has become dangerously dehydrated and pathologically weak. He hasn’t eaten for seventy-two hours and has subsisted only on the occasional few drops of rainwater collected in bottles found along the way. He can barely walk as he circles around a former colony of luxury beach house condominiums, now infested with the possessed.
In his personal lexicon, Rafael has started thinking of these desecrated souls as Hunger Demons or monstro da fome—“Hungries,” for short—and has chosen to avoid them whenever possible rather than wasting ammunition. He also has yet to see any other living human beings. Could Rafael be the last man on earth? The possibility chills him to the bone. But instead of dwelling on it, he focuses his efforts on a singular goal—survival. And right now, survival means finding water and food.
Marathon, Florida, turns out to be a ghost town. An atomic bomb could have been dropped here and it wouldn’t make the place much more desolate than it already is. Trash blows through the corridors of once-grand resort hotels. Alligators wander the sidewalks outside boarded cafes. The air smells of decay—mold and dead flesh—punctuated by the ambient drone of mortified vocal cords.
Rafael is about to give up his search and keep heading north when he stumbles upon a storage unit behind one of the condos that appears to still be intact. Making as little noise as possible, he snaps the crumbling padlock and unearths a treasure trove.
“Obrigado, Deus—thank you—thank you, God,” he mumbles almost reverently as he sorts through the contents of the unit. Most of the items are the useless and ephemeral trappings of resort life—long-ago-deflated beach balls, dusty Frisbees, disassembled patio tables, folded-up beach chairs, boogie boards, and various flotation toys. But there’s also a pair of rucksacks with shoulder straps, a large jug of sealed bottled water, a picnic basket filled with dishes and utensils, a family-sized box of individually wrapped packs of Pringles potato chips (still shrink-wrapped), a plastic ten-gallon container marked GAS, and the pièce de résistance, a small all-terrain three-wheeler in showroom condition.
An hour later, Rafael departs Marathon, Florida, on his ATV, with a full fuel tank in back, his newly acquired provisions, and a belly full of stale processed potato product and tepid drinking water.
* * *
Over the next few days, as the rains descend upon the southern United States, Rafael averages just under two hundred miles per day. He uses the main highways whenever possible, skirting intermittent pockets of Hungries by taking rural access roads, and keeping a lookout for any sign of survivors. Along the way, he siphons gas from abandoned cars and finds extra ammunition on the floor of a tour bus. Around Orlando, near dusk one night, he sees lights burning in some of the buildings, perhaps powered by generators, but he decides to play it safe and keep moving. He has been in prison far too long to get trapped, ambushed, or cornered. Orlando doesn’t feel right. The next day, around Gainesville, he sees a group of people on horseback along a highway overpass, and he waves, and they do not wave back, and that is the extent of the interaction. He keeps moving. The key to everything, he realizes now, is to keep moving.
At the end the third day, at precisely 7:13 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, he passes a bullet-riddled, sun-faded sign posted along the gravel shoulder:
Welcome
We're Glad Georgia’s
On Your Mind
Site of the 1996
Olympic Games
Rafael notices an almost instantaneous change in the terrain. The scrubby, sun-bleached orange groves of northern Florida soften and darken and plunge into the rolling patchwork hills of thick piney woods and leafy, kudzu-covered tobacco farms.
He stops for the night at a derelict rest area, the ruins of the restroom building now a burned-out shell of scorched timbers, crumbling plaster, and exposed rebar sticking up like bare bones. He sleeps out back under the cover of another picnic shelter, hidden from view of the highway, safe within a perimeter of makeshift trip wires and tin cans. He dreams of his old girlfriend, and his mother’s death, and the execution-style murder of his friend Ramon, who was caught skimming off the cartel. He wakes up drenched in a cold sweat, the wind blowing intermittent rain across the shelter. Ironically, he feels invigorated. He has a weird feeling that fate brought him here. He has no idea why or how it will play out, but for the first time in his life, he feels as though he has a purpose.
Later that day, about seventy-five miles north of the state line, he begins to learn the specific nature of this purpose when the needle on the ATV’s fuel gauge hits E, and he pulls off the two-lane to hunt for more gas.
For over an hour, he wanders the back roads like a ghostly revenant in his yellow rain slicker, searching for a stray abandoned vehicle or a gas station that hasn’t been completely ransacked. He carries the bundle of firearms on his back, tucked into the rucksack, the muzzles sticking out the top like so many pieces of kindling. All the barns and farmhouses have been stripped of every last resource. The shells of old vehicles lie belly-up in the rain like the carcasses of dead animals tangled in vines and ironweed. All the tanks behind the feed and seed stores are as dry as flint. Adding to his misery is the fact that the woods are exceedingly rife with the pathetic spoor of Satan. Every five minutes or so, Rafael has to dodge another pack of them. He is tempted to open fire but he knows now the noise will draw more of them out of the shadows.
He is beginning to formulate an alternative course of action, maybe look for a horse to steal, when he hears the first signs of his destiny off in the trees to the north, near a small town called Thomaston.
Rafael slips into a stand of hardwoods and crouches down to listen. A single voice carries on the wind, barely audible under the droning white noise of the rain. It sounds male to Rafael, gravelly, taut with fear, maybe anger—it’s hard to parse out the exact emotion at this distance.
Rafael has a modest understanding of the language—his aunt Anita t
aught him rudimentary English when he was a boy—and he has picked up a few of the more colorful expressions over the years from his dealings with North American drug lords. But there’s something about this man’s voice that sinks a hook into Rafael—something humane, intelligent, even friendly—which is ironic considering the fact that the man keeps hollering the word stupid. Rafael knows the meaning of the word, and it intrigues him enough to pull a sniper rifle from his pack and move closer.
It takes a few minutes to make his way up the adjacent wooded slope, the leaf-matted earth dangerously slick. The rains have turned the brick-red Georgia soil to the slimy consistency of axle grease. He reaches the apex of the ridge and sees movement down in a clearing below, about thirty yards away. He looks through the scope to get a better view and sees a solitary middle-aged man dressed in a shopworn jacket, jeans, and hiking boots, surrounded on all sides by at least a dozen possessed souls. The man in the Windbreaker waves a makeshift torch—a thick pine bow, one end most likely dipped in some kind of accelerant—which now blazes and sputters and smokes in the rain, momentarily keeping the twelve or so Hungries at bay. In the narrow, magnified field of the scope’s vision, Rafael sees that the hapless man in the jacket has gray hair swept off his forehead, eyes wet with emotion, and wounds on his face and neck that appear to be third-degree burns. His clothing also looks like it’s been scorched and burned.
“Stupid—stupid!—STUPID!” the man keeps repeating, and Rafael realizes that the man is referring to himself. Rafael is not sure how he knows this but he just does. Either by the man’s body language or the tone of voice or something inchoate about the whole scene unfolding now. The demonic souls press closer to the unfortunate man in the Windbreaker, their blackened mouths working, their eyes like those of barracudas. The torch has limited power over the damned, the fire merely a distraction, the heat having no effect on the monsters’ deadened nervous systems.
All at once, a number of emotions and conclusions course through Rafael. He feels a tremendous wave of empathy for this man in the silk roadie jacket. But for the grace of God, Rafael could easily be down there, alone, surrounded, terrified, doomed. On top of that, the sardonic tone of voice and the way that the poor fool keeps repeating the word stupid—most likely a comment on his foolish mistakes that got him surrounded in the first place—resonate with Rafael. He gently puts his finger on the trigger pad and aims the crosshairs at the head of the closest possessed soul.
The first shot barks, the small spurt of blood mist visible in the scope, puffing off the skull of the first target. The possessed creature collapses. The man in the jacket jerks with a start, glancing over his shoulder for a second, but only for a second. He still can’t safely take his eyes off his assailants for more than an instant. He waves the torch. A comet tail of sparks trail through the air as the rain douses the flame. Rafael injects another round into the breach with the cocking lever, aims at the second target, and fires.
Through the scope, the man reacts again with a start as the second attacker goes down, bewilderment and apprehension on the man’s face. He throws another glance over his shoulder, and through the scope Rafael can sense the strange frisson of sudden eye contact with a man fifty yards away. It’s possible that the Remington’s barrel is visible glinting out of the foliage.
Rafael takes another breath and holds it, just as he learned in military school many years ago, and then proceeds to fire on the other assailants—one at a time, yanking the lever and injecting more shells in a rhythmic series of movements—systematically taking down the entire baker’s dozen.
After the final shot is fired, and the man down in the clearing is the only one left standing, and the cloud of cordite and gun smoke engulfing Rafael clears, the man in the silk jacket looks up. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t wave. He doesn’t change his expression from utter vexation. He simply moves his lips, the words inaudible from Rafael’s vantage point, but obvious to anyone who has a passing interest in reading lips. “What. The. Fuck.”
Rafael ejects the last shell, the dull clatter of the hollow metal bouncing off the rocks at his feet reverberating through the air, faintly discernible above the monotonous thrum of rain. The noise seems to put a strange punctuation at the end of this—what would Rafael call it? An act of mercy? An exorcism?
The figure down in the clearing has not moved from his frozen tableau. He continues to gape up at the ridge, his expression unchanged. It remains fixed, seized up with awe. The silence stretches. The rain continues unabated, soaking the ground around the fallen monsters. Then the man in the jacket looks down at the human remains strewn across the clearing around him, the sad lumps of dead flesh now as inert and harmless as animal droppings. He tosses aside the makeshift torch, the flame already guttered and reduced to a dying ember.
Rafael lowers the scope and wipes his face, the hood of his rain slicker dripping profusely. He can’t think of what to do or what to say. Should he withdraw and flee the scene? Does he trust this man? He waits. Exactly what he’s waiting for he could not say. As he waits, he puts the optical cup back to his eye and takes a closer look at the man in the roadie jacket.
Through the crosshairs, upon further scrutiny, Rafael sees that the man is ruggedly handsome—or perhaps was handsome earlier in life—and has a spark of intelligence in his droopy eyes, despite the severe burns marring half his face. His neatly trimmed goatee is iron gray, and his hair, drenched and matted to his skull, is streaked with silver. The man also looks older than he first appeared, the crow’s-feet around his eyes deep and prominent, the lines on his face abundant and etched into every corner.
At last the man in the clearing calls out, “If you think you’re hiding from me, that yellow raincoat is about as subtle as a scream in the dark.”
* * *
“¿Habla inglés?” the man in the silk jacket inquires after they’ve gotten out of the rain, keeping their distance at first, standing at opposite ends of a deserted covered pedestrian bridge two hundred yards north of the clearing.
The man waits patiently for an answer, wiping his face with a handkerchief.
“Sí … I mean … yes,” Rafael replies, his hand resting on the grip of a pistol. “But I’m not Spanish.”
“Oh yeah?” The other man’s eyes glint with mild interest. “I thought I detected an accent.”
“Brazilian.”
“Ah, of course, my bad.” Despite his injuries, the older man smiles. “In that case, I’m sure you speak better English than I do Portuguese.”
Rafael shrugs. He shivers, his skin crawling with goose bumps. He can smell the sharp tang of decay all around him. The bridge—which once provided a quaint passageway for hikers, bicyclists, and nature buffs—spans a small creek, which has now flooded and risen to the point of saturating the adjacent woods and bubbling up through the cracks and seams of the bridge’s warped flooring. The air inside the structure is fetid and moldy, and the unrelenting rain rings off the bridge’s roof, so noisy it practically drowns the voices of the two men.
“Name’s Stern,” the man says above the drone. “First name David. Or Dave, if you prefer. Although the wife hates it when people call me Dave. Barbara says it reminds her of the Wendy’s hamburger guy.”
Rafael only comprehends about 50 percent of what David Stern is saying. “Rafael,” he says finally. “My name … it is Rafael Machado.”
“Nice to meet you, Rafael. I appreciate the save back there.”
Rafael shrugs, not fully understanding.
David looks at him, then nods at the weapon. “You seem pretty handy with that sniper rifle.”
“I was … soldier … long time ago.” Rafael shrugs again. “I saw the Hungries had you. What is the word?” Shrug. “Surround? Surrounded … trapped?”
David Stern chuckles, then lets out a chortle of laughter. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “‘Hungries’ … I like that.”
“They are possessed, no?”
David’s laughter dies. “Wa
it … what? Possessed? Like by demons, you’re talking about?”
“Demons, yes … Diabo … um … what you would call Satan, yes?”
David sighs. “First of all, I’m Jewish, so … there’s really no such thing in my religion. Second of all, you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
Rafael chews the inside of his cheek, hesitating for a moment, comprehending most of the words. He’s not sure how much he should tell this man. What if this is all an elaborate trick? What if this is a scheme of o Diabo to capture his soul? Finally, Rafael says, “I guess so.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Here and there.”
“Look … Rafael, is it?”
“Yes.”
“You saved my life. You seem heavily armed. I’m hurting. I’ve been through some stuff. It doesn’t matter. But maybe we can help each other. Whaddaya say?”
Rafael takes a deep breath, and for a brief instant, he envisions himself being alone in this apocalyptic world, living off scraps, surrounded mostly by unclean spirits dogging him at every turn. He flashes back on those lonely five years he survived solely on sweet potatoes, collards, rainwater, and a thin tissue of hope. He remembers those nights he hunkered in the dark, listening to the jackal calls, nearly losing his mind curled up in the corner of that tawdry outdoor pen, exposed, insane, completely alone. He looks up at the injured man in the jacket. “Yes, that would be good … we should help each other.”
And then—for the first time in years—Rafael Rodrigo Machado proffers another human being a good, clean, sincere smile.
* * *
They pool their resources. David Stern has stashed away a horse and buggy about a mile from there, and they walk the distance side by side in the rain, keeping an eye on the periphery of the woods, getting to know each other, as well as keeping tabs on the shadowy nooks and crannies of the flooded landscape, watching for any errant Hungries.
The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury Page 2
