“This way—hurry!” The father grabs the mother’s sleeve and urges her—as well as his two teenage daughters, each dressed in the rags of rural drifters—toward a dense wall of pines about a hundred yards away. The father knows if they can just make it to the woods, they can flee their pursuers. He has no idea what these men want, but he knows it will most likely be very unpleasant. People have been getting desperate lately, fighting for scraps, attacking each other, stealing each other’s resources, raping, murdering, and plundering. These men in the flatbed came out of nowhere a mile or two back, just outside of Fayetteville, while the father and his family were searching for shelter in the barrens along Perry Creek.
Now the family reaches the bottom of the hill and are about to plunge into the safety of the thick trees when a bullet strikes the father between the shoulder blades, sending him careening to the ground and rolling another fifty feet through marshy weeds.
“Daddy!” one of the girls, the oldest sister—skin and bones in her cardigan and jeans—slips on the wet earth trying to lunge toward the spot at which her father now lies writhing in pain. The other girl, three years younger, helps her sister up.
The mother, her beleaguered face filling with terror, stumbles to a stop. “John! Oh my God!” She goes to the man’s side, kneeling, cradling his head. Breathless, she strokes his wet, muddy face.
“I’m—I’m—I’m okay I think.” Gasping for breath, the man on the ground is John Stack, a former insurance agent from Dothan who turned out to be more of a survivor than he thought. He had kept his family alive for this long, and he’d gotten this far on sheer stubbornness. But now he’s certain it’s over, he’s gone, and he’ll probably bleed out now in this relentless downpour that has made life even more miserable than usual for the Stacks.
Jennifer Stack frantically turns the man over, looking for the entrance wound. “I don’t see any blood, John! There’s no blood!”
The rain billows and curtains them, cold and miserable, as the magnesium-bright beams of light loom closer and closer, the rig roaring up to the edge of the forest preserve. John Stack lies back, looking up at the flickering heavens, trying to get a breath into his lungs, as the rest of his family hover over him. He looks up into the faces of his girls, Kayla and Kourtney, his faithful wife of twenty-one years, sweet Jen, and he manages to blurt, “Go!”
Jennifer Stack shakes her head, wiping rain and tears from her face. She has the damaged, run-down beauty of a matriarch who will not let go without a fight. “No way.”
“Get outta here!” John Stack croaks, his upper cervical vertebrae blazing with pain. “I’m not kidding. Run, now—GO!”
Both daughters shake their heads at him. “No, Daddy, I don’t think so.” The older one, Kayla, mutters this softly, her voice nearly drowned by the noise of the rain and the roar of a huge diesel truck engine. Next to her, the one named Kourtney tries to push her tears back down her throat but it’s not working very well. She cries convulsively, the moisture from the rain mingling with the snot and the tears on her dirty face.
The big truck has pulled up on the gravel apron thirty feet away from them, scraping to a stop. The sound of doors clanging open, male voices, and shotgun breaches snapping shut penetrate the white noise of the downpour. The shadows of big men approach through the rainy haze.
“Damn it, I’m begging you,” John Stack says with a groan. “Please get the fuck out of here! Now! I’m serious—please go! NOW!”
A deep, whiskey-cured voice draws everybody’s attention over to the truck. “Let’s everybody just take a deep breath and relax.”
Through his bleary, watery vision, John sees a tall, middle-aged man standing on the running board of the big Mack stake truck. Clad in a bulky camouflaged rain parka, with a lavish cowboy hat and shoulders as broad as bridge trestles, the man radiates quiet authority over the half a dozen or so gunmen now surrounding the family in the rain. The big man hops off the running board and ambles over to the muddy patch in which the Stack family now huddles.
The man takes off his hat in a gesture of Old World manners as he looks down at John Stack. “Howdy, folks. My name is Spencer-Lee Dryden, and this is not as it appears. Last thing in the world we want to do is hurt you or make you uncomfortable in any way. Trust me on that. We’re here to help.”
John Stack just stares, nonplussed, the rain enveloping him in its chill.
* * *
It turns out that the bullets being used are nonlethal. In fact, the most recently fired projectile, which only a moment ago struck the homeless patriarch between the shoulder blades, is made of rubber, fired from an old 12-gauge riot gun that Spencer-Lee had procured from an Atlanta precinct house. The former city council member is a born politician, and when he was in office, years ago, he had a skeleton key that fit just about every door to every agency office, precinct house, and government building on Atlanta’s south side. Now he escorts his new guests to the rear of the flatbed truck with the bouncy enthusiasm of a Boy Scout den father. Any day Spencer-Lee Dryden has an opportunity to serve his fellow citizens is a good day in his book.
“It’s murder out there for a solitary family this day and age,” he is saying as he ushers the shell-shocked family around the rear of the flatbed.
Two men in long waterproof dusters and ammo belts are standing on the edge of the truck bed, waiting for the family. The men are holding blankets and thermoses of coffee. As the family approaches, the men proffer courteous smiles that would impress a hotel concierge.
“I promise you, you ain’t never gonna be hanging out to dry all by your lonesome ever again,” Spencer-Lee adds as the men help the father and mother board the truck. “From now on, you’re gonna be safe and sound, surrounded by others, part of a community.”
Kourtney Stack stares at the calloused, dirty hand being offered to her from one of the men on the flatbed, and she gets a little unnerved by the whole ceremony and starts backing away from the rig.
“Kourtney?!” the father calls from up on the flatbed. “Kourtney, what are you doing?”
All at once, Spencer-Lee sees several troubling developments presenting themselves, each requiring immediate attention. The girl is obviously hysterical. She turns and starts to flee in the direction of the distant woods. On the edge of the trees, a few dozen walkers have already appeared, snarling and drooling, drawn to the noise, lumbering this way. The father is screaming.
“KOURTNEY!”
The father pushes his way past the men on the truck, hops off the rear, and charges after the fleeing girl. Spencer-Lee races after the two of them, calling over his shoulder, “Stay with the other two! Be right back!”
Over the course of the next minute or so, the girl slips and falls, and the walkers surround her. The father howls with terror as he approaches. A few paces behind the father, Spencer-Lee Dryden sees this all happening in a kind of dreamy slow motion as he races toward the fallen girl, pulling a twelve-inch Randall knife from a sheath on his right thigh. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, the former politician played left-side linebacker for the Crimson Tide during his freshman and sophomore years, and he still has explosive strength and speed in spite of the expanding spare tire around his waist.
The stench of death rolls in despite the rain and the wind. The awful smell engulfs the area as the chorus of mortified vocal cords rises above the downpour. Spencer-Lee fixes his gaze on the oncoming wave of reanimated cadavers. Most of them are male, older, garbed in the tattered sun-bleached dungarees of farmworkers. Some of their faces are caved in, the mortified flesh hanging off the corners of their skulls, their dead, opaque eyes like milky blisters in their eye sockets. One of the creatures is furry with moss, as though the very ecosystem that spawned them is now slowly assimilating them.
Spencer-Lee starts in on the monsters with the practiced nonchalance of a stockyard worker putting down cattle. The tip of the knife flashes and pistons into skull after skull, sending stringers of fluid through the rain, causing the ferociou
s creatures to collapse one at a time as though puppet strings have been severed. The last one goes down like a sack of dung, splatting in the mud, the rotting blood already mingling with the first rivulets of floodwater seeping into the wetlands along the Chattahoochee.
By this point, the father has knelt by his daughter and helped her up into a sitting position. He comforts her with soft reassurances, stroking her hair and wiping the rain off her filthy face. She starts to sob, burying her face in the man’s jacket. “It’s okay, sweetie,” he says to her. “We’re going to take this one step at a time.”
“That’s a good approach,” Spencer-Lee says as he walks up to them, wiping the knife on his pants, the dark cerebral fluids making a black, oily stain on the fabric. He shoves the knife back into its sheath. His other hand fishes in his parka’s pocket and wraps around a small leather-clad object some folks call a sap, others call a blackjack. The thing weighs over a pound and a half, and is as hard and unyielding as a stone.
The father gazes up at him and starts to say, “Sir, I appreciate your generosity, but I think my family and I are going to—”
The sap strikes the man hard just above his left ear, making a sound like a muffled snare drum being struck, sending the father’s eyes rolling back in their sockets before his body goes slack. The man collapses just as the daughter starts to scream.
The scream is cut off by another impact of the sap striking skull.
Spencer-Lee Dryden signals for his men to come help carry the bodies. Meanwhile, seeing all this transpire from the vantage point of the truck, the mother and older sister have started to scream and yell, trying to wriggle out of their captors’ grasps. Spencer-Lee makes his way through the rain back to the rear of the rig. He pauses, looks up at the hysterical females, and gives them a sad, empathetic, almost parental look. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says softly. “It couldn’t be avoided. But they’ll be fine, trust me.” He smiles that same congenial smile his men have been exhibiting. “It’s for their own good. You’ll see. It’s for all of you. For your safety.”
* * *
John Stack comes awake in the rear of the truck just as it’s pulling around a hairpin turn and heading down a narrow farm road. The rain continues unabated, thumping off a canvas canopy above him, dripping on his face, cooling the feverish pain throbbing behind his eyes. Every few moments, the dull rumble of thunder rattles in the far distance.
At first, he blinks and coughs, trying to figure out where he is while ignoring the horrendous stabbing pain in his skull from the impact of the sap. His daughter Kourtney lies unconscious next to him, breathing normally, covered in a blanket. He checks her pulse, feels her forehead. She seems fine. He sits up and the pain shoots down his cervical vertebrae like a bolt of electricity.
“John?!” His wife’s whisper is taut with nervous tension. “Are you okay?”
“I think so … did you get the license number of the truck that hit me?”
“We have to get out of here.” She glances over her shoulder at the two men riding up front, near the cab, each perched on peach crates. They look like they’re either playing cards or trading cigarettes back and forth. “This is not good.”
John glances over at his eldest daughter. Kayla sits against the wheel well, her knees gathered up against her chest, holding herself as though she might crumble into pieces at any moment. Her slender face is slack, her eyes fixed on the middle distance as though glazed with catatonia. She has reached her limit, and has gone inward as though an internal circuit breaker has shut her down.
“Dad?!” Kourtney’s voice draws John’s attention to his other daughter. “Are we—?”
“Sssshhhhhh!” Jennifer Stack scoots over to her youngest, putting her arm around her, stroking the bruise that’s already forming above her temple. The girl’s eye is rimmed in dark, livid purple from the wallop of the sap. “It’s okay, honey … ssshhhh. We’re all okay. We just have to be quiet right now. We have to be quiet and bide our time and wait for the right moment to get the hell out of here.”
This last sentence Jennifer directs at her husband with a withering look.
* * *
From a distance, it looks like a military outpost or mobile surgical unit from some third world war. A half dozen trucks are parked in a circle around the main camp, enclosed in razor wire, some of the vehicles with machine guns mounted on their cab roofs. In the middle of the camp, a massive conglomeration of mobile homes and old renovated school buses sit in a row, connected like train cars. The windows are painted black, the doors boarded up. At first glance it appears to be a kind of surreal mobile commune—like a crazy, ramshackle version of Noah’s Ark—poised to transport the chosen people to the Promised Land.
Upon closer scrutiny, however, one might draw different conclusions—mostly due to the armed guards at either end of the convoy, the burglar bars on some of the windows, and the chicken wire nailed across many of the hatchways and doors. John Stack makes all these observations in a daze of confusion and pain, his back still burning between the shoulder blades from the impact of the rubber bullet. He tries to gather his thoughts as the flatbed truck pulls up to the compound’s makeshift gate. A few inaudible words are exchanged with the guards, and then the rig pulls through the gap.
Spencer-Lee Dryden walks alongside the flatbed with the proud smile of a real estate agent showing a property. “You’re safe now, folks!”
The rig backs up to the end of the train of campers and trailers. Air brakes hiss. Gears grind, and the rig shudders to a halt. The wind whips the rain in a minicyclone around the rear of the truck as guards hop off the running boards and go around to help the passengers off the flatbed. Pausing at the edge of the bed, John and Jennifer Stack share a loaded glance. Jennifer cocks her head at her husband as though waiting for him to make a move.
“Just go along with it,” John whispers to her. “For now … just play along.”
“Your new home awaits!” Spencer-Lee says as he comes around the rear of the truck and gives them a hand as they step off the flatbed. The guards help the girls off the truck’s rear ledge—Kayla still semicatatonic, shuffling along as though drugged. The family is escorted across a small patch of sodden ground to a series of steps leading up to the rear of a modified Winnebago. Burglar bars are mounted across its back screen door. The odors of coffee and disinfectant waft around the door.
Spencer-Lee knocks twice on the corner of the trailer and calls out, “Got some newcomers, Sally! Open up!” The muffled sound of a bolt rattles, followed by a click. “Folks, this is Sally, my long-suffering better half.” Spencer-Lee announces this with pride in his voice, neglecting to explain what the woman’s function or purpose in this place happens to be.
The door squeaks open a few inches and the face of a middle-aged woman with a black scarf knotted tight around her head peers out. She wears an oversized olive-drab Dickies work shirt—the kind a janitor or a maintenance man might wear—with a name patch that says YOUR NAME HERE. “Sorry, Spence … had a kindergarten class going in the north wing.” The woman grins. “So we got some newbies?” Her eyes twinkle as she surveys the four disheveled members of the Stack family. “Welcome, friends. Looks like y’all have been through the mill.”
“Um … yeah. Hello.” John Stack glances at his wife and then back at the woman in the doorway. “I’m John.” He points out the others. “This is Jennifer … Kayla, Kourtney.” He notices a few of the men from the truck standing back a few feet behind Spencer-Lee, looking on, ever vigilant, with AR-15 assault rifles cradled up high against their chests like independent contractors in some Middle Eastern war. It feels wrong all of a sudden. It feels … all wrong. John Stack turns to the woman in the door and starts to say something else when the woman lets out a joyous chortle.
“Aren’t you the sweetest things?” She claps her hands together and pushes the door open wider. “Come on in, take a load off and let’s look at those boo-boos.”
Reluctantly, nervously, Jo
hn Stack leads his family into the long jury-rigged enclosure, the metal door slamming behind him. He doesn’t hear the bolt locking, but his hackles instantly go up.
* * *
If asked to describe the feeling inside the long chain of camper-trailers and buses, the word purgatory would invariably bubble up from John Stack’s imagination. Five or six individual families occupy the living quarters that stretch at least three hundred feet—the size of a modern cruise ship—spanning thirteen individual vehicles connected in the style of train cars. Most of the interiors are exceedingly tidy, with floors clean enough to eat off of. Some of the inhabitants, mostly children under the age of twelve, smile and nod at the Stacks as they pass. These young residents of the convoy wear similar secondhand work shirts in various sizes and shades of beige and brown, looking strangely like Hitler Youth or members of an Orwellian work crew as they push brooms around the open floor space. Some of the shirts have pocket patches emblazoned with the names of previous owners—Chuck, Stan, Fred, Dick, Hank—none of which corresponds to the current wearer. The air smells of cleanser and Sterno and soap. Long tendrils of houseplants dangle from many of the ceiling vents, and most of the windows are barred or draped. Work farm and cult compound are phrases that also bounce around John Stack’s mind as Sally, the official welcome wagon lady, leads the Stacks to an empty trailer near the front of the chain.
“I guess y’all can bunk here for the time being,” she says cheerfully, indicating a narrow chamber of white-sheeted cots, cabinets, small sofas, and a tiny kitchenette. John takes in all the disturbing little details: the rose tattoo on Sally Dryden’s wrist, the canned peaches on the kitchen counter, the little caddy of ancient, dusty magazines on the floor by the cot.
“I know it’s a big adjustment,” the woman in the baggy work shirt assures them. “But believe me, you’re gonna love it here.” She claps her hands again. “You got fresh towels in the pantry over there, clean shirts and pants, a first aid kit under the sink. Anything else y’all need—anything whatsoever—you just let me know. Now I’m gonna let y’all settle in, get your bearings, and I’ll be back in an hour or so to answer any questions you might have.”
The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury Page 5
