The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury

by Jay Bonansinga

  While Rafael maneuvers himself between the seats and into the cluttered rear compartment, David maintains the horse’s speed with regular snaps of the reins while simultaneously keeping tabs on the raft floating along the filthy surface of the river. It may be his imagination, but it seems as though the raft is subtly picking up speed as it nears the south end of the lake.

  David sees the road ahead split off to the left, and he yanks the reins accordingly.

  “We need to get ahead of her, as far ahead of her as we can!” He hollers this over the noise of the hooves drumming on the wet gravel road and the cargo rattling in the VW’s rear seats.

  He steers the animal down the cracked, weedy, crumbling Main Street of another small town. It seems as though there are a million of these little river rat nests along the endless serpentines and alcoves of the muddy river. Now David barely notices the modest little houseboats and bait shops passing in a blur. In the heat of midday, the air has an inimitable fishy odor to it—a foul blend of mold, river rot, and walker-stench.

  “Is this it?” Rafael has returned from digging in the rear seats. He holds up a large coil of nylon mountaineering-style rope.

  “Yes—great—thanks—now look for that second bridle that we rigged for the horse!”

  “The one made of belts?”

  “Yep—that’s the one. Quickly. We’re coming up on Lake Harding!”

  Rafael gives a nervous nod, and he doesn’t ask what the hell Lake Harding has to do with anything, and he doesn’t pry into the identity of the mysterious lone passenger on that raft. He simply drops the coil of rope on his seat, turns, and dives back into the warren of crates, supplies, and firearms stashed in the VW’s rear seats.

  Meanwhile, David urges the galloping horse around a tight corner and down a narrow side road, splashing through deeper water. He can see the distant horizon over the rooftops of half-submerged boat shacks, a bridge maybe half a mile away, and just beyond it, the entire world plunging into the uppermost mouth of skinny Lake Harding. His blood pumps faster and faster as he frantically searches for a way to physically get close to the center of the waterway before the raft reaches that far horizon.

  He is approximately a quarter mile ahead of the woman on the raft now.

  He fixes his sights on the bridge, and snaps the reins, hastening the horse.

  His timing will have to be close to perfect if he is to save Norma Sutters’s life.

  * * *

  It’s known in geological circles as the Fall Line, a sort of miniature continental divide that runs across Georgia from Augusta to Columbus. Symbolically, it serves as an interstate line of demarcation, a Mason-Dixon-like border between the new south of Atlanta and the old, piquant, badass deep of Valdosta peanut farms and haunted old plantation homes. It is also a physical dividing line where the red clay earth gives way to sandier, grittier soil, and the rivers and streams “fall” from higher to lower elevations.

  None of this registers to the woman on the raft, despite the fact that she is still semiconscious as she drifts closer and closer to the threshold of that narrow, earthen-brown lake. Not a single memory of her middle school geography class in Jacksonville flickers across her mind, the lessons of which included topographical features of the south such as the Fall Line and its impact on the farms of the Florida panhandle. Nothing even remotely like panic kindles inside the woman as she floats faster and faster on the muddy currents toward her inexorable destiny.

  Dehydrated, flirting with sunstroke from prolonged exposure, soaked to the bone with sweat, vomit, and river water, nearly paralyzed with septic shock, she can hardly lift her head. Even her eyelids feel as though they weigh a ton. Lying tummy-down, her breathing shallow and wheezy, her ribs panging with agony, Norma Sutters feels as though the side of her face is glued to the slimy burnished boat door to which she has clung for over thirty-six hours. She has drifted down more than twenty-three miles of flood-swollen river, come dangerously close to getting devoured more than once, and tried unsuccessfully three separate times to paddle to the shore and climb out of this watery grave. She has prayed … talked to herself … cried … recited the 23rd Psalm countless times both silently and aloud … cursed the walkers with language that would bring a blush to the face of a longshoreman … sung “Oh What a Friend We Have in Jesus” so many times it made her throw up (twice) … spoke aloud the Lord’s Prayer forward and backward … screamed for help … tried to drink river water … vomited again … hallucinated synchronized swimming mermaids from an old Busby Berkeley movie, including the great Esther Williams, circling her raft … cried some more … and also, much to her surprise and delight, experienced moments of stunning clarity and soul-stirring serenity.

  Up until these last thirty-six hours, Norma had been operating under the assumption that all the beauty had been wrung out of the world with the advent of the plague. The universe, she had thought, had turned bone-stick ugly, and it would remain that way—it had seemed to her—for the rest of her days, which now seem numbered, in fact countable on one finger.

  But she was wrong.

  Over the last day and a half, when she least expected it, she would see or smell or hear something heartachingly beautiful. Around Bush Head Shoals, the first night, she floated through a cloud of fireflies. Later, she rolled onto her back and counted the stars in the crystalline night sky, engulfed in the scent of gardenias. Her mother had worn a corsage of gardenias to church every Sunday, and the perfumed breezes on the river that night had calmed Norma and given her peace in the face of death. Later, around the mouth of West Point Lake, she had tried to paddle ashore and got cornered by a pack of grotesque, bloated, bog-dwelling walkers. Something distracted them, though, at the last moment, something like a scream, which had allowed Norma to paddle back out into the open water. Minutes later, she realized it was the screech of barn owls that had misdirected the monsters. She floated away thinking of fate, luck, the beauty of an owl, and the Good Lord working in mysterious ways. Not long after that, in the wee-hour darkness, fading in and out of a restless slumber, she heard the distant sound of a deep baritone voice singing a hymn. She believed it was “A Closer Walk with Thee” coming from somewhere over the trees, and it was perhaps the most beautiful thing Norma had ever heard. Or maybe she had imagined it. But that doesn’t matter anymore. What really matters is that the water had become her refuge, her prison, and now her grave.

  Right then, she manages to crane her neck slightly—she still can’t lift her head—and sees that she’s approaching a bridge.

  Just beyond the bridge she can see the water’s edge, maybe a hundred yards away, as straight as a chalk line. At first, she thinks she’s hallucinating. How could the horizon line ahead of her be that uniform, that level, that flat? It reminds her of one of those infinity pools she saw years ago on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach. In the episode, Robin chats idly with George Hamilton on the veranda of Hamilton’s lavish Brentwood estate. Norma remembers being fascinated by Hamilton’s enormous pool, which seemed to jut out over the San Gabriel Mountains, a magical, heavenly isthmus in the sky. It appeared as though one could literally jump off the diving board into a cloud.

  But just as quickly as the memory of that pool flicked across her mind, it disintegrates like a snowflake melting, replaced by another memory. She recalls the lessons from her geography class. She remembers the church picnics to Ocawallee State Park south of Augusta, and the hikes into the hills, and the babbling brooks careening down the slopes in narrow white-water rapids. She remembers the Ocawallee Falls most of all, her granddad explaining the Fall Line to her. Now her skin crawls as she recognizes the Lake Harding lock and dam—dead ahead of her—one of the largest waterfalls she has ever seen. It’s no Niagara, but it’s big enough to send her to Glory. Send her to that muddy river in the sky.

  Realizing this, she prepares to die. Her soul contracts into a tiny seed inside her, and she clenches her fists, and she closes her eyes. In her mind, she shuts out t
he world and prays. She speaks to her Lord and Savior, and she asks Him to welcome her as a guest, and to anoint her head with oil. She tells Him that her cup overflows with blessings. And she silently rejoices that His goodness and unfailing love will pursue her all the days of her life, and she will live in His house forever.

  Amen.

  A voice calls out to her, penetrating her thoughts and piercing the darkness of her last rites.

  “Norma!”

  At first, she ignores it, passing it off as an auditory hallucination. She doesn’t even open her eyes. She’s been hearing things for the last twenty-four hours, strange and wonderful and horrifying things. Why wouldn’t she hear her own name as she’s about to enter the house the Lord? Maybe it’s Saint Peter calling out to her, maybe an angel welcoming her to paradise.

  “NORMA!”

  She opens her eyes. She blinks as though coming awake from a dream.

  The raft is just now drifting under a massive, rusty, iron girder bridge. She manages to gaze up into the cobweb-clogged rafters as she passes under it. She sees the graffiti of many generations tracing up the great, mossy pillars rising out of the muddy depths. The raft continues drifting, threading through the middle columns. The soft burble of water lapping against the buttresses, echoing, the raft drifting, drifting … drifting toward the opening on the other side of the bridge, a tranquil moment before the death plunge.

  “NORMA!—IT’S DAVID!”

  This is no hallucination. This is no voice in her head. This is real, a man shouting down at her from the far edge of the bridge, his voice echoing, bouncing around the iron trestles—a real voice, a real person.

  In one great, heaving paroxysm, Norma is yanked back into the here and now. David Fucking Stern?! All at once she wants to see this guy’s gray, goateed face leaning over the ledge. She wants to live another day to see this old curmudgeon with his silk roadie jacket and bad jokes and Yiddish sayings. She wants to go back in time, rewind the tape, rip the page off, and start over with a fresh one!

  As the raft approaches the opening, a tangle of dark-brown straps drops down from the sky as if pulled from a magician’s hat.

  “GRAB THE STRAPS!!” The bellowing call of David Stern reverberates around the iron echo chamber. Norma manages to raise her head. She sees the knotted bundle of leather belts hanging on a tether of rope ten feet away and closing, swaying in the wind, almost within reach. “GRAB THE STRAPS, NORMA!—GRAB ’EM AND HOLD ON!—GRAB ’EM NOW!!”

  Norma lifts herself up on one knee, the raft teetering and listing suddenly. She has one chance. She fixes her gaze on that pendulum of straps looming closer and closer. The light shines in her eyes as the raft clears the opening. She reaches up.

  She grabs for the bundle of belts, her hand greasy with sweat.

  Either due to the force of the current, her exhaustion, her sweat-slick palms, or the awkward and severe tilting of the raft, Norma feels the loop of leather slipping out of her hands as soon as she gets a good grasp on it.

  She loses her balance, the raft tips over, and she plunges into the cold, filthy rapids.

  THIRTEEN

  If she were looking back on it—perhaps writing in a journal, or reporting her impressions and experiences for posterity—she would be hard-pressed to remember just exactly what it was like to careen over the edge of that waterfall. She would recall very few details of sliding across fifteen feet of mossy, slippery rocks, or the subsequent twenty-five-foot drop through chaotic, churning torrents, landing blind and ass-first in the boiling vortex of white water at the base of the falls. She probably would remember only the eerie sound of dropping through that jet-engine din and then plunging into the deep, dark silence.

  Suddenly weightless and virtually insensate, she falls through the void for the longest moment. Her leaden body paralyzed with shock, numb, hypothermic, she sinks like a stone. Her eyes remain open and yet sightless, absorbing only the bubbling murk that swirls and enrobes her like a nimbus on her way down.

  She begins to see blurry shapes moving around her—dark, brittle, and tattered like bare diseased trees swaying in the eldritch underwater breezes—as she approaches the silt on the floor of Lake Harding.

  Landing in the thick, gelatinous mire, she starts to scream. There is no logic to the act—opening her mouth this deep underwater is a suicidal enterprise—but Norma can’t help it. She is taken by surprise, the daylight from the surface penetrating the depths just enough to cast the lake bottom in a greenish glow, illuminating something the likes of which she has never seen.

  An eruption of bubbles and a strangled, muffled, atonal shriek pours out of her.

  She finds herself surrounded by the most lurid, atrocious, ghastly versions of the walking dead she has ever seen—and that’s saying something, since the woman has an uncanny gift for observation and has been dodging all manner of undead for the last four years. These creatures have either fallen or wandered into the deeper water over the course of many, many months—years, even—some of them former children, some former adults, and some senior citizens who must have died in the recent floods, all of them oblivious to the eternal prison enclosing them on the floor of the man-made lake. Their bodies have little substance or buoyancy, their flesh blanched of color, much of it eaten away by the fish, leaving behind skeletal remains with barely a suggestion of skin. They are inhuman cairn, as cold and ruined as cancerous, moving shipwrecks. Their emaciated, bony extremities flail and claw in constant slow motion, as though attempting to paddle their way toward food. In some ways, they look like spindly underwater fauna, aquatic plants with blighted leaves and bare limbs oscillating in the languid currents. Only their eyes, many of them rotted away down to the gristle of the sockets, reveal the pathos of the waterlogged human remains. The maggoty white concavities still covet, still implore, still long for something they will never see, never comprehend. Some of them brush their needle-nosed digits against the cold flesh of Norma Sutters’s leg, intensifying her terror, making her paddle frantically with little or no oxygen left in her bloodstream, no air left in her lungs, which now begin to fill up with water. The creatures surround her like a school of gruesome, prehistoric, deep-sea denizens with slimy fangs sharpened by the ceaseless flow of currents.

  Norma starts to falter, sinking in and out of consciousness, writhing in the jaundiced light, choking on the weight of her own flooded lungs, kicking at the monsters, falling to her back in syrupy, suspended animation as though weightless on some far-flung outer planet. She barely notices the flicker of silver light all around her, the roar of a fully automatic assault rifle sending round after round into the lake from somewhere up above. Norma can’t see any of the bullets or their trajectories—she’s not even sure that’s the source of the sudden introduction of noise and light—but she can see flash after flash, like lightning, accompanied by a muffled thrumming rattle behind the gathering throngs of underwater walkers.

  The commotion draws the monsters’ attention away from their human prey.

  A new shape appears above Norma—that same angelic presence, perhaps, that materialized above the bridge—now looming closer and closer, a celestial being in the green medium of the lake coming to usher her to heaven. Norma heaves and chokes, drowning now as she lies on her back, witnessing the miracle above her. The strangest part is that the angel coming for her has no halo, no cherubs holding its heavenly cape, no golden breastplate of holy armor. This angel is of the earth, visible even in the murky light as it comes for her. Old, gray, gangly, weathered, suntanned, and wearing a very familiar tattered jacket of silver silk.

  David Stern grabs Norma by the nape, lifting her off the lake’s bottom as though lifting a cat from its napping place. Norma goes limp in the man’s arms, not breathing anymore, so cold and numb that she can hardly sense being hauled upward through the layers of drift and cold and filth, upward toward the brilliant green light, upward toward … heaven.

  Norma blacks out just as she reaches the surface and feels the wind
on her face.

  * * *

  She jolts awake, head pounding, lying on her back on the high ground above the access road, smelling pine needles and somebody’s atrocious pipe tobacco. She’s also coughing convulsively. She’s never coughed this furiously in her life, a combination of hacking and vomiting. Her eyesight is blurry, obscured by tears, but she can sense a man hovering over her, pressing down on her chest between her breasts. She upchucks again as more water is forced out of her lungs.

  The man lowers his graying face to hers, and he presses his lips over hers, blowing air into her lungs. She pushes him away, making a yawping noise of protest—a cross between a bark and a squeal—not remembering much of anything other than the waking nightmare of being underwater with demons and angels.

  She rolls onto her side and vomits again, a yellow, viscous mixture of stomach bile and river water. She has not eaten in forty-eight hours.

  An excruciating moment later, she finally catches her breath.

  She rolls back onto her back, slowly coming to her senses. She recognizes the man hovering over her now but she can’t quite formulate a greeting yet. She remembers floating on that hideous piece of varnished wood and thinking she was going to die when David Stern had shown up.

  Meanwhile, the man in the soaked roadie jacket leans down to blow more air into her windpipe.

  “That’s enough!” she croaks at him, pushing him away. “You’re a married man!”

  David grins, tears in his eyes, strands of wet gray hair dangling down in his face. “Thank God, thank God.” He strokes her brow. He pulls a canteen from his belt, thumbs it open, and carefully touches it to her chapped, cracked lips. She chokes the water down. She coughs some of it up but keeps most of it down. She looks up and sees David giving her a stupid grin. “You’re back,” he marvels. “You’re back and just as obstinate as ever!”