The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury

by Jay Bonansinga

  “It’s good to see you, too.” Her voice is raspy. She tries unsuccessfully to sit up. Her midsection feels as though it’s filled with rusty nails. Her flesh radiates heat from exposure and sunburn. She lies back down, head throbbing. She coughs and lets out a hysterical laugh. “But you try and French kiss me again I’ll kick you in the family jewels!”

  “Very funny.” David shakes his head. His eyes burn with urgency. “Did you find Barbara? Is she okay?”

  “Long story. Who’s your buddy here?” Norma says, avoiding the question. She notices a second man—younger, dark complexioned, dressed in a hoodie and jeans—standing behind David, looking on nervously, wringing his hands.

  “That’s Rafael. He’s a good man. You’d like him. He’s stubborn like you.”

  Norma nods and takes a deep breath, her lungs and left side panging. She may or may not have cracked a rib going over the falls. “Nice to meet ya, Rafael. I’m Norma Sutters. How’d you hook up with this old fart?”

  Rafael Machado steps forward, looking down with a deferential expression. “We met on the road, I guess you could say.”

  David sighs with exasperation. “The man is being modest again. He saved my life down by Thomaston. I was about to become kosher lunch for a convention of roamers, and this man comes out of nowhere with an arsenal, makes the A-Team look like the junior league.” His eyes narrow. “Where’s Barbara, Norma? Is she all right?”

  Norma looks at David. “Help me up.” David gently raises her into a sitting position. She coughs and wipes her mouth, and then gestures at the canteen. “Mind if I wet my whistle again?” He hands it to her and she drinks. She exhales breathlessly, wiping her mouth, catching her breath. Her eyes are still watering. She takes a girding breath. “I’ll tell you one thing, I didn’t think there was any way in hell I’d make it out of there.” She looks at David. “Miracle you found me.”

  David licks his lips, kneeling next to her. His eyes blaze with fear. He’s a bundle of emotion now. “Did you or did you not find Babs? Answer me, Norma!”

  “Lilly found her,” she says, her voice softening as she studies David’s face. “She was with the kids. They were being kept in an old hospital. Some crazy-ass doctor was using the kids for research purposes. You believe that? They were using the blood of children to find a damn antidote.”

  “Barbara’s alive, though … right? She’s okay … right? Norma…?”

  For a long, agonizing moment, Norma looks at the man, and searches for the proper words. She wants to explain everything. She wants to tell David how heroically Barbara Stern had died, how she had always put the kids first, how she was a badass broad whom everybody—even the bad guys—respected if not loved. But before Norma can utter another sound she notices the look on David Stern’s face. He has already figured out the truth. From his body language, it’s clear he knows that his wife is gone.

  He turns away, looks at the ground, his expression starting to collapse as though all the air has gone out of him. He thrusts his hands in his pockets. His shoulders slump, and he purses his lips as if trying to solve a mathematical problem.

  Norma looks away. She speaks softly as she studies the stony earth. “Lilly told me how it happened. The hospital got overrun. Barbara fought to the bitter end, even tried to save some of the dudes that had kidnapped her. She was a very special lady. She was good through and through. She was also a fighter.”

  David nods and keeps staring at the ground and chewing the inside of his cheek. His clothes drip with lake water, his eyes misting over with agony.

  Rafael looks on sheepishly, desperate to assist in some fashion. He has a ratty towel in one hand, and he decides to offer it to the man. He approaches cautiously, taps David on the shoulder, and hands him the towel.

  David Stern looks at the towel in his hands as though he’s holding a dog turd. “I don’t need this.” He throws it on the ground. “Did I ask you for a towel?” He fixes his cauterizing stare on poor Rafael. “I don’t need a fucking towel right now! Okay?” His expression crumbles suddenly with grief and exhaustion, and he looks down, the tears coming. He starts to sob.

  Norma lets out a long, anguished sigh. There is nothing left to say or do. She looks down and waits for the worst of it to pass.

  * * *

  “They could be anywhere.” Norma sits on the passenger side of the VW Beetle horse-cart, wrapped in a blanket, sipping a cup of instant soup that David whipped up with his trusty acetylene torch and bottled water. “But my guess is, they’re back at Woodbury. At least that’s where they were headed when I pulled off my graceful stunt of falling into the damned Chattahoochee.”

  “There’s nothing there.” David glumly puffs his pipe, the stale cherry tobacco wafting. The Beetle sits motionless on a high ledge overlooking the piney woods west of the river, the horse grazing in the traces. David’s voice is hoarse from crying, his eyes red. But somehow, he seems to have worked through the initial shock. He has the vacant stare now of a soldier who has seen too much active duty. “Woodbury’s a shell of a town—like everything else in this world. People, families, life in general … they’re all fucking shells of their former selves.”

  From outside the driver’s window, casually whittling a small branch with his Buck knife, Rafael speaks up. “How far away is this Woodbury?”

  David shrugs. “I don’t know … maybe twenty miles, maybe less. Fifteen, maybe. But why bother going to Woodbury when there’s plenty of nothing to be found out here.”

  It’s Rafael’s turn to shrug. “I’m just thinking … what could it hurt to go back? See whether or not your friends have returned?”

  David puffs his pipe ruefully. “The way I left the place, it’s probably crawling with dead by now. The barricade along Folk Avenue is gone, burned down with the rest of the train yard.”

  Norma sips her soup. “What about the tunnels? The sewer system?”

  David shakes his head. “Part of the underground has completely collapsed into itself. At the end of Main Street. There’s this crater, looks like a bomb was dropped. Like a little mini Hiroshima.”

  “What happened?”

  “The fire did it. I guess. Maybe due to all the activity down there, trying to build a home in those tunnels. Maybe it weakened the original structure. All I can tell you is, for the most part, the underground is now either caved in or overrun with walkers.” He looks like he may break down again. He wipes his eyes, sniffs back the pain, and gives them a cockeyed, mirthless smile. “Other than that, it’s a perfect place to raise a family.”

  Norma sighs. She takes another sip and shivers. She feels hot one moment, cold the next. She may be running a fever. Her side pangs with each breath. “Is there any part of town that’s still in one piece? Still livable?”

  David Stern shakes his head, skeptically puffing his pipe. “There’s a part of Flat Shoals Road, some of the row houses are still standing. But that part of town’s been picked clean. It’s pretty grim, Norma.”

  “What about the crops, all that work we did on the speedway? Lilly told us some of the corn crop could come back.”

  “Burned to the ground.” He takes the pipe out of his mouth and spits. “Nothing’s coming back, Norma.”

  “And Lilly’s public gardens? All the plantings we did on the square?”

  “All gone. Basically scorched earth. Completely razed. It was the only way to keep the hop heads and the crazies from taking it over.”

  Norma finishes her soup, wipes her mouth, and stuffs the cup into a knapsack at her side. She takes a deep breath and thinks about Woodbury for a moment. “You know, the truth is, for all we know, Lilly and them might have already been there and gone by now.”

  David looks at her. “You think they might have gone back to Ikea?”

  Norma lets out a sigh. “No sir, I don’t think that’s a possibility.”

  “Why?”

  Norma thinks about it. “Because Ikea was just a temporary fix for Lilly.”

  “What do you me
an?”

  “It just isn’t Woodbury.”

  David smokes and processes. “Yeah, I know what you mean. She has a major thing for that little Podunk town. Doesn’t she?”

  “That’s an understatement,” Norma says with a dry little chuckle.

  “Babs and I thought she was crazy at first. We’d been through so much, been there since the Governor took over. God, how long ago was that? Three years, three and a half years now?” He swallows the melancholy pang, staring wistfully into the middle distance as if the memories live there. He shakes off the sorrow and spits again. “I’ll tell you one thing, though, something about that little town sunk a hook into Lilly. Like it came to mean something more than just a place to wall yourself off from the walkers.”

  “Tell me about it,” Norma says softly. “For the last few months, ever since she saw the ruins, she would talk about the town like it was this magical place, this Shangri-la that had to be brought back from the ashes. Lord knows, I tried to reason with her. Tried to talk her out of going back there. But she’d get this gleam in her eye anytime anybody mentioned the place.”

  “So I take it you would have preferred to stay back at Ikea?”

  “We had it made there, David. We had food, we had electricity, shelter, and we were on an upper floor. We were safe up there.”

  David Stern taps his pipe on the side of the horse-cart, thinking about it. “How long would that have lasted, though? Think about it.”

  “Look. Nothing lasts, nowadays. I’ll give you that. But you find a place like that, you hold on to it for as long as you can.”

  David looks at her. “Then why the hell did you come with her?”

  Norma sighs. “Lilly Caul has a way of … winning a person over.”

  “That she does.”

  “I ain’t ashamed of the fact that I trust her, I believe in her. You gotta believe in something. Besides, I guess I kinda see her point about Ikea being sort of a prison. On the other hand, a small town, if you can make it work”—she pauses, looks at David, thinks about it, shrugs—“you can breathe, you can feel almost normal.”

  David looks at the woman, really looks at her, maybe for the first time since they reunited. “Maybe she’s right, Norma. Who are we to say?”

  Norma shrugs again. “This day and age, you could live in a lot worse places than Woodbury.”

  David shoves his pipe in his pocket. Something changes in his expression. The change is subtle at first, but the grief seems to mutate. The furrowed brow narrows into something more like determination. He studies Norma. “We’d be starting from scratch essentially.”

  “Where else are we gonna go?”

  “It’d be dangerous as hell, Norma. We don’t know what we’re going to find there.”

  “What am I gonna do? Build another raft and float down to the Gulf of Mexico?”

  “It would be backbreaking work, and we’d be exposed for a long time, really exposed to all manner of shit from the wastelands.”

  “It’s worth the risk, you ask me.”

  “The barricades alone would take us weeks to repair, and we’d have to find a hell of a lot more fuel than we got in that storage bin.”

  Norma dismissively waves her plump hand. “I’ve been in far tougher situations. You try living alone in the choir loft of your church for eighteen months when the rest of your congregation wants to feast on your damn guts.”

  David exhales a pained sigh, turns, and ambles over to the edge of the hill. Thinking it over, he gazes out through a gap in the foliage at the verdant river deltas drying in the sun. The flood levels have already receded significantly, leaving behind tangled knots of old growth deadfall, human remains, pockets of roamers, and ground cover growing so profusely one can almost see it spreading into the nooks and crannies of the landscape. The air has an almost pleasant smell of fishy decay and fecund earth. David looks down and murmurs so softly his voice is barely audible. “I suppose Babs would have wanted us to go back.”

  Across the clearing, sitting in the Beetle, Norma smiles to herself.

  * * *

  Tommy Dupree doesn’t see the shiny object through the trees until he passes out of earshot of the others. Ostensibly, he has wandered away from their encampment to look for a stream or perhaps signs of an underground spring. They are down to their last drops of drinking water, and Lilly worries about consuming water from the stagnant tide pools. During normal times, dysentery is a horrible ordeal, but if somebody comes down with the trots out here, it’s a death sentence. Dehydration can be deadly, bringing on seizures and, ultimately, heart failure. They are also completely out of fuel, despite the fact that they have properly patched the bullet hole and conserved the last ounces in the tank. Their plan will be useless if they can’t locate any more fuel. The vehicle is the lynchpin—pivotal to their plot to draw Spencer-Lee Dryden into a trap and remove him from the earth. All of which is why Tommy now moves so quickly and stealthily through the thick foliage, snaking his way down a gradual slope toward a dry riverbed.

  Shirtless, a bandanna around his head, his flesh sunburned and scarred with scratches—both new and old—he bats at the thicker branches with his rusty machete as he moves toward the natural trench cut through the sandy earth fifty yards away. He carries a spare Ruger .22-caliber pistol—on loan from Lilly, its silencer screwed on to avoid attracting attention—tucked into the back of his belt, safety off, mag chock-full.

  The day has turned muggy, blistering hot in the sun, the air in the forests along the Chattahoochee sultry and hectic with gnats and cottonwood fluff. The motes drift lazily through rays of sunlight, which filter in radiant beams down through the high oak boughs, making Tommy itch and slap at mosquitos. Filmed in a layer of sweat and grime, he worries about the noise attracting walkers. He saw a few about a hundred yards back, burrowing into the carcass of a deer, gorging on entrails, too distracted to hear or smell him. Now he moves as quietly as possible through a narrow space between two needle palms.

  That’s when he sees the silver metal gleaming through a break in the foliage twenty-five yards away.

  He freezes. He crouches down. His hand goes instinctively back to the beavertail grip of the .22 in his belt. He stares. His throat goes dry with panic. The foliage is too thick for him to be sure, but the rust-pocked silver metal peeking through the netting of branches just beyond the other side of the dry creek bed looks so familiar, so specific, it makes his heart pulse in his ears, a snare drum beating out a syncopated rhythm to his thoughts.

  For a moment, he remains crouched in that cloud of gnats, paralyzed with indecision, staring at that shiny metallic harbinger silently screaming at him through the trees. He squints and tries to see the front end of the thing, or perhaps the red taillights of the rear end, but all that’s visible is that small patch of battered silver metal, slightly curved, ridged, and riveted along the seams.

  He hesitates, his arms and legs seized up with paralysis. His mind swims with an internal debate: Should he finish this whole drama himself right now—maybe becoming a hero—or should he go tell Lilly about it like a pussy? What would Lilly do?

  Right then, Tommy Dupree realizes what he has to do—the smart play, the grown-up thing—and he pulls the pistol. This is the only way. That son of a bitch is probably resting right now inside that beat-up trailer, secure in the knowledge that he’s hidden behind the cover of trees and vegetation. If Tommy hesitates or takes the time to go get help, the silver monster could be gone. If he gets too close, Dryden could hear him.

  No, the only way to be sure is to attack right now, from this vantage point. That’s what Tommy’s dad would have done. That’s what Bob Stookey and Musolino and Burt Stankowski and Eve Betts would have done. He kneels behind a fallen pile of timber and pulls back the slide, making sure a bullet is seated properly in the chamber. He picks up a small stone and tosses it at the thing. The rock hits the silver bulwark with a metallic thunk. He raises the gun, steadying himself against the hollow log, waiting for a do
or to burst open.

  Nothing happens. He aims at that silver metal peeking out of that wall of undergrowth, holds his breath, and squeezes the trigger.

  Once, twice, three times he fires—just to be sure—the recoil jamming his upper arm into the socket of the shoulder. Each blast makes a muffled bang, not much louder than a large twig snapping. He can see through the blue haze the silver metal trailer twenty-five yards away punctured in three spots, something pouring out of each bullet hole. Is it blood?

  He cautiously approaches the target, hopping over the dry streambed, scaling the other side, and then weaving through the thick foliage with his gun in both hands, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. He sees dark liquid pouring out of the holes in the silver metal. Pushing his way through the wall of scrub and spindly branches, he emerges into a small clearing of bare earth.

  He gapes at the massive silver thing leaking fluids where the bullets have punctured it.

  “Oh my God,” he utters under his breath, staring and staring.

  FOURTEEN

  Lilly Caul is opening the last can of peaches that survived the pandemonium in the soybean fields when she hears a commotion coming from the woods. Instinctively, she springs to her feet, the faint ache in her lower back panging. She had found a bottle of Advil in the Escalade’s glove box earlier that day and swallowed four of the tablets, which has stanched the worst of the pain, but it still simmers. She grabs the AR-15, swings the gun toward the noise, and calls over her shoulder to Ash and the children, who all sit on a semicircle of stumps and deadfall logs arranged around the clearing. “Everybody, stand up, grab the hand of the person next to you, and head back to the car very quietly, very quickly.”

  Some of the children look up, their attention yanked away from digging in their rucksacks, looking for the last morsels of food. Others, tending to their bumps and scrapes, glance up with a start. The clearing is a square acre of bald earth, sandy and sunbaked, bordered on all sides by a natural barrier of densely packed sugar maples and white oaks. The Escalade is parked along one side, camouflaged with palm fronds and large, leafy branches. Bethany Dupree, the oldest in the group, stands up and blurts, “Is it walkers?”