Lilly hears a noise, looks up at the rearview, and sees a pair of withered, skeletal creatures—apparently once an aging couple in some nursing facility, their emaciated faces sunken like rotted gourds—emerging from the woods and trundling up from the shadows behind the vehicle.
The tattered, moldering creatures are most likely a former couple, still linked by muscle memory—the male in dungarees, the female in a threadbare robe so worn and darkened by the elements it looks like a layer of tar paper—dragging side by side up to the Escalade’s hatchback. None of the kids notices them, but Ash sees them right away and reaches for the passenger door handle. Lilly stops her, gets an idea, turns the key, starts the engine, and then flips on the rear wiper blade.
In the rearview Lilly can see the two creatures pausing, mesmerized by the back-and-forth motion of the wiper. Their glassy pale eyes fix on the blur of that rubber blade, and their heads swing mechanically, as though on spindles—back and forth, back and forth—in synchronized motion like two people watching a tennis match. Lilly wrenches the shift lever into Reverse and gives the SUV some gas.
The two former senior citizens instantly flop out of sight. The sound of brittle, desiccated bones crunching under the Escalade’s massive rear wheels is faintly audible above the rumble of the engine. The car shudders slightly as it backs over the obstructions. Then Lilly pumps the breaks and brings it to a stop. The freshly mangled and flattened remains lie in the road among all the other bodies put out of commission in the last hour.
Lilly puts the SUV in Park, turns the engine off, and sits there for a moment. She notices Ash gazing around the shadow-veiled crossroad at all the carnage. Lilly sees the extent of it—there must be twenty or more bodies—some stacked up like casualties on a macabre battlefield. Ash wipes her eyes. Has she been crying again? Lilly isn’t sure. Ash’s stoic exterior has now completely corroded away. But what’s left? This is troubling to Lilly on many levels. Lilly needs Ash to be sharp, lucid, and ready to rock at a moment’s notice. But more importantly, so do the kids. The kids need her now more than ever.
“You okay?” Lilly asks softly, studying her friend. The bruises, scrapes, burns, and cuts crisscrossing Ash’s elegant features—some old, some new—belie her seething inner pain, her loss. Lilly’s been there, she knows the look. “Ash?”
“I’m fine.” Ash looks up at her. “Lilly, we can’t stay here forever.”
“Nobody said anything about staying here forever, we’re just gonna stay until Tommy gets here.”
“Lilly—”
“Don’t even start, Ash. I’m not leaving without Tommy. Period. End of discussion.”
“We’ve been sitting here for hours.”
“And we’ll continue to sit here until—”
“I know, I know,” Ash interrupts. Her eyes glitter with anguish and tension. “We’ll sit here until hell freezes over, but you know what’s going to happen before that—before hell freezes over? We’re going to get…” She stops herself and glances over her shoulder at the children. Most of the kids display vacant, distracted expressions on their faces. Ash lowers her voice. “We’re gonna get swarmed, Lilly. Which kinda defeats the purpose. Wouldn’t you say?”
Lilly breathes in, tries to control her rage. “You want to take the kids, that’s fine. I’ll stay here and wait. We’ll meet back—”
“Would you stop! We’re not splitting up. Tommy will be okay … wherever he is. He knows where to find us. C’mon, Lilly. Please.”
Lilly looks down. Her stomach clenches. She can’t leave. She can’t abandon Tommy. But she also knows that Ash is right. They can’t sit here waiting much longer. If the walkers don’t swarm up on them soon, it’ll be Dryden who finds them. She is convinced the madman is still combing the area for them. Tommy is resourceful, strong, smart. At last, Lilly says, “I can’t do it, Ash. He’s as much my adopted child as the Quinn kids are yours. I can’t leave him behind.”
Ash burns her gaze into Lilly. “Listen to me. Logic. Think about it. You’re not doing Tommy any favors staying here. There’s a good chance we’re going to be dead meat long before he gets here.”
“I don’t care. Take the kids. Go. Leave me the pistols and some water.”
“No! Negative. We’re not going to do that. We get back to Woodbury, we can send out a search party. But we’re not splitting up.”
Lilly glances out at the wall of trees, the thick skeins of undergrowth and kudzu like tendrils of cancer choking the life out of the forest. The shadows behind the deeper woods swim and dance. Is it the wind tossing the treetops? Or more walkers gathering, sniffing them out? The day is moving toward dusk.
Ash is right. If they stay there much longer it will be too late for all of them. Logic dictates you don’t let the safety of one compromise the lives of thirteen others. But Lilly can’t bring herself to leave. Her heart feels as though it’s sinking down into her gut. She has heard the stories over the years. The sheer terror of losing a child in a shopping mall or a busy street corner is one of the most terrifying things a parent can experience. But this situation is a shopping mall times a billion. Lilly doesn’t even know if Tommy was able to escape with his sniper rifle. He had an extra few rounds with him, but no supplies, no water or food. And Dryden fled at the same time Lilly peeled out of the clearing. She’s not sure what direction either of them took.
Lilly breathes deeply, trying to come up with the words that will convince Ash to keep waiting, when a small familiar voice rings out from the rear seats.
“Lilly, it’s okay.”
Gazing over her shoulder, Lilly sees Bethany Dupree staring at her with a heartbreaking expression on her face—a mixture of sorrow, sympathy, and hope. A sturdy little eleven-year-old with saffron-colored hair and a tomboy’s direct no-nonsense manner, Tommy’s younger sister now speaks with the clarity of a lawyer making a closing argument. “Tommy has gotten lost many times, and he’s always found his way home. He’ll make it back to Woodbury. Believe me, Lilly. You don’t have to stay.”
Lilly ponders the freckled little girl. “Okay, sweetie. Okay. Fine.” Lilly reaches down to the shift lever and snaps it into Drive. “You win.”
The Escalade roars as the rear wheels dig into the sodden road, launching the vehicle into motion in a cloud of exhaust and debris.
SEVENTEEN
The purple shadows of dusk unfurl across the tobacco fields of eastern Georgia, softening the light and cooling the air. Lilly decides to take Owens Road for the last leg of the journey to Woodbury. The crumbling serpentine of asphalt wends its way through the pine forests of Meriwether County, through rugged granite passes, past desolate crossroads and long-abandoned farms, and ultimately eastward across the outskirts of Woodbury’s defunct train yards.
Through the windshield, straight ahead, Lilly sees the first signs of the town’s outskirts. Her pulse quickens, the rest of the passengers gazing out their windows in silent awe. Some of the children have never even seen the place but have certainly heard of it. Lilly talks about it constantly, the way a person speaks of a former lover, past glories, the heydays of high school, all the agonies and ecstasies of growing up. In a psychological sense, Lilly did grow up in this town. She faced loss, personal demons, and unadulterated evil in the form of Philip Blake. But now, as she drives into town from the west, she wonders if Blake was indeed pure evil.
After all the water under the bridge, all the violence in the name of protecting her people, hasn’t Lilly done the same thing as Blake?
A bullet-riddled sign looms. SPEED ZONE AHEAD. Highway 109 curves to the left, and then the road narrows and turns into Main Street, the macadam appearing to be strewn with more and more storm debris, more and more unidentifiable human remains lying in morasses of dried blood, petrifying in the unforgiving sun.
Another sign looms, this one broken and hanging on its side: WOODBURY BAPTIST CHURCH WELCOMES YOU. The irony is not lost on Lilly. She remembers the first time she laid eyes on Woodbury: It was night, it was sno
wing, and a man named Martinez escorted her and Josh Hamilton into a militarized version of an iconic small town. It had been Mayberry by way of Beirut, a place of walls and concertina wire and gun turrets and flaming trash barrels. Now, the once-charming little hamlet—originally a place of low-slung Americana; quaint little feed stores and taverns; nineteenth-century gazebos and railroad switchyards; and manicured lawns with jockeys and bird feeders and bathtub madonnas—has been reduced to a gothic vision of hell on earth.
The Escalade slows as it passes the old Chevron Station, now a blackened ruin with gaping, cavernous holes in the ground filled with storm waters, swimming with the bobbing heads of the undead. This is Bosch’s underworld, the ninth circle. The telephone wires have all broken off their poles and now skitter across the ground, snapping in the wind like bullwhips. Streetlight poles lie on their sides, blankets of broken glass glittering diamond-like in the waning light. More and more ragged, soulless figures—the damned, the revenants of the town’s former inhabitants—come out from behind fallen awnings and mangled billboards. Much of the barricade surrounding the central safe zone has fallen, some sections burned, others trampled. The massive eighteen-wheeler that originally served as a movable entrance gate now lies on its side, a blackened shell.
The Escalade passes the old watering hole at which Bob Stookey was a regular—Smitty’s Cafe—now a gaping wound of a building, the roof blown off, the exposed rebar and wiring like the ribs of a fallen dinosaur. Lilly starts getting a bad feeling as they slowly roll past the tumbledown storefronts of the old U-Save-It Pharmacy, Dilly-D’s, and Carrol’s Feed and Seed. It’s nothing specific. It’s merely a dull anxiety brought on by the palpable feeling of being watched. She can see the town square in the distance, the ghostly gantries of the Veterans Speedway rising up against the darkening sky, the clouds now the color of port wine. She slows the vehicle to a crawl. She and Ash share a nervous glance.
The feeling grows. It’s a little bit like being a child and coming home from school and finding something different about your bedroom. Maybe your mother has rearranged the stuffed animals, changed the water in the aquarium, turned off a light, or turned on a light. Something is different, and it has been changed recently. Is somebody hiding in your closet? Sleep will not come easy to you tonight when the wind blows the branches against your window.
Lilly keeps slowly driving toward the center of town. Something hums just beneath the drone of summer insects. An odor Lilly can’t remember ever having detected drifts on the breeze, a metallic smell like burned circuits. The ruins of Woodbury’s residential streets stretch into the distance to Lilly’s left. Through the side window, her gaze lingers on one of the houses. Is that a light behind one of the windows? Is that a shadow that just darted across the backyard?
Bethany Dupree is first to break the excruciating silence, her voice coming from the backseats, hushed and awed. “What happened here, Lilly?”
“Good question.”
“Do you think David Stern did this?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. I have no idea why anybody would do this.”
Ash mumbles something.
Lilly looks at her. “What was that?”
Ash stares out the window. “I said scorched earth … it looks like somebody decided it was best to take this whole place out rather than leave it for somebody else.”
“Maybe … but that still doesn’t the answer the question why.”
Ash shrugs. “Maybe David Stern lost his mind.”
“Yeah, well … who hasn’t?”
The two women share another glance. Ash can’t help but give Lilly a crooked smile. “Speak for yourself.”
“Sorry, I was just thinking—”
“Hey! What’s that?!”
Lilly shoots a glance up at the rearview and sees Bethany Dupree pointing at something off to the right. Lilly glances back at the windshield. She slams on the breaks. The vehicle skids to a stop. The g-forces throw Ash and the kids forward in their seats. Ash looks up, startled. “What the hell, Lilly?”
“Ash, check those two extra magazines.” Lilly’s voice has gone cold and colorless, her gaze locked on something floating in space, dead ahead, about three blocks away. “The 223 millimeter for the AR-15.”
“What is it?” Ash peers through the cracked glass of the windshield, searching the middle distance. “What are you looking at?”
“Reach under your seat and see if you can find that extra box of .22-caliber rounds.”
“What’s all the—?” Ash goes still when she sees the thing hanging in midair about two hundred yards away, dangling from the massive boom of a construction crane. The crane sits in the ruins of an enormous parking lot in front of the saucer-shaped stadium once known as Veterans Memorial Speedway. The sight of the dark object dangling at the end of a cable, silhouetted against the mauve-colored clouds, causes Ash to straighten as though an electric current has bolted up her spine. She reaches down to the ammunition.
“That was not here last time, that’s new.” Lilly Caul utters the understatement of the year in a low, taut voice, pulling her Ruger .22 from its holster. She thumbs the hammer back without even looking at the gun, her gaze locked on the figure hanging in the distance.
“It could be anything,” Ash murmurs. “Suicide … a message to prospective looters. There’s no reason to believe we’re in—”
“Why bother leaving a message, though? There’s nothing here. There’s nothing left to loot.” She swallows hard. “No … I think this is meant for us.”
“What?!”
From the rear seats, another tiny voice tinged with terror interjects. “I think we should go somewhere else.”
Another child says, “Me, too. I think we should leave this place.”
“Everybody stay calm.” Lilly puts the vehicle in Drive and slowly proceeds along Main Street. “I won’t let anything happen to you. We’re just gonna take a closer look. No big deal.”
In the rearview, most of the children appear skeptical, their little faces wrinkling and frowning incredulously, as though they know, deep down, this thing in the distance is about to become a big fucking deal.
* * *
They reach the central intersection of Dromedary and Main and slowly roll past the devastated town square and firebombed courthouse. The building’s facade is literally burned off, exposing the charred bones and insulation of the first floor. The door hangs open, ash and cold embers still swirling across the vestibule on the breeze. The enormous copper dome on top has caved in on one side from the blaze, the lawn strewn with human remains, most facedown and scorched beyond recognition. The air smells of burned rubber, acrid smoke, and brimstone. The crickets and cicadas continue to drone, a low, sizzling white noise.
The silence in the Escalade’s rear seats seems to deepen and intensify as they pass Lilly’s public garden, which now looks as though an army has tromped through it, the vegetation either ground into the earth or blackened by the firestorm. To Lilly’s ears, it sounds as though the children are holding their collective breath. In the distance to the north, massive solar panels litter the street, broken into pieces. To the south, the railroad buildings and newly constructed stables have been completely razed, demolished, burned to cinders.
Lilly blinks at the bracing horror of seeing at least a dozen scorched corpses of horses lying strewn across the desolate rail yard.
“Oh, Jesus.” Ash’s voice shatters the silence as she gapes up at the body dangling fifty feet above the abandoned construction site in front of the speedway. Upon closer scrutiny, it looks male, young, motionless, just swaying gently in the breeze, although it’s hard to ascertain its age or gender with the shroud of dark fabric hastily tied over its head. Ash’s voice is reduced to barely a whisper. “That’s not a suicide, Lilly. Somebody did that recently.”
Lilly pulls the SUV up to the speedway entrance, where a huge, weathered, bullet-riddled sign says VETERANS MEMORIAL SPEEDWAY—ESTABLISHED 1974—RACES EVERY SATURDAY NIGH
T. She stops the vehicle, slips it into Park, and lets the engine idle. Her heart pounds. Her throat feels tight. The old fears start crawling up her gorge like cold centipedes as she scans the stadium’s littered, weedy parking lot, the overturned construction equipment, the ransacked gardens, and the scattered heaps of unidentifiable remains.
The site of a dead man hanging from a cable as though lynched is only part of Lilly’s dread.
The racetrack itself has become a potent symbol of Lilly’s identity within the larger symbol of Woodbury. More than a petrified dirt oval surrounded by broken-down bleachers and miles of cyclone fencing, more than an iconic piece of southern leisure time, more than a place to grow crops and build wind turbines and have community meetings … the racetrack represents the Reformation, the Rebuilding, the Reclaiming of Civilization. Once upon a time, it was the site of Philip Blake’s brutal gladiatorial games between humans and walkers. It was the place the Governor took alleged enemies of the state down into the cavernous warrens of underground service bays and offices to be questioned and tortured and raped. Miraculously, Lilly Caul had transformed all of that savagery and horror—albeit fleetingly—into a peaceful community center in which to share and generate resources.
Now she fixes her gaze through the fractured prism of the Escalade’s windshield at the slender male corpse hanging by the neck from a construction crane. “How do we know for sure this is recent, Ash?”
“Look at him.” Ash stares through the open side window at the body lazily turning in the breeze. “He’s still … he hasn’t turned yet.”
“How do you know he’s not … he hasn’t been shot in the … you know what I’m saying?”
The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury Page 22
