The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury
Page 27
“Give it a try,” he urges Lilly while drying his hands on a towel. “If it feels weird, we’ll adjust it again.”
Lilly sits on the edge of a metal exam table on the far end of the cavernous tile room, a space situated directly under the east stands of the stadium. Once a service center office for stock car racers using the underground garages, the room features three halogen lights, two gurneys, a pair of emergency generators ventilated through an exhaust chimney, and metal shelving units stocked with pharmaceuticals, most of these items scavenged from the wastelands over the last four years. Some of the beakers and bottles lined up on the shelves—filled with everything from electrolytes to insulin—date back to the days of Bob Stookey’s stewardship.
The room holds profound significance for Lilly Caul. It is the place that Rick Grimes lost his hand to the brutal tortures of the Governor. It is where Philip Blake was nursed back to health after Michonne had gotten her grotesque revenge. It is the private place where Lilly lost her baby, the very tiles lining the walls calling out to her now. She is a born survivor, and this room will see her go on, continuing to struggle, striving for an ordinary life. With this in mind, she pushes herself off the edge of the gurney and puts her full weight on the makeshift prosthetic that David has been working on for days.
“Ouch!” She sniffs back the pain and leans on her good leg, lifting up on the contraption belted and buckled to her stump.
“It’s gonna take some getting used to,” David comments, grabbing her shoulder and steadying her. “Feel free to use the crutches.”
Lilly exhales painfully. Dressed in an old cardigan sweater, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, she looks like a woman twenty years older than her actual age, but there’s also a glimmer of strength and resolve around the corners of her green eyes. She has cut the left leg of her faded jeans to accommodate the prosthetic, which looks like a horse’s bridle has been buckled around her left ankle. The primitive-looking wooden foot, which David has hewn from a newel post, is currently hidden inside her boot. The stump is still tender, despite the fact that it’s been healing fairly well.
For the last month, Lilly has been resting up in the infirmary, doing physical therapy, living on soup, antibiotics, and painkillers, and generally taking stock. She has lost twenty-five pounds and written hundreds of pages in her diary. She has grieved the loss of her adopted son, as well as many others who perished in the exodus from Ikea. But in the four weeks since the events in the pit changed the lives of all those who remain stalwart citizens of Woodbury, the only time she had shown her face outside of the speedway complex was to attend the memorial service for Tommy Dupree.
The boy was laid to rest under an oak tree on the edge of a town park next to the graves of Josh Hamilton and Austin Ballard. Lilly stood on two crutches that day, her stump bandaged, softly crying as the others backed away to let her say goodbye in peace.
“Maybe I’ll use just one crutch,” she says now, putting a little weight back on the prosthetic. “A little practice and I should be able to get around okay.” She looks at David. “You do good work, Doc.”
“You feel like taking a little walk?” He gives her a grin. “It’s a beautiful day.”
She smiles at him. “You got any more of those exquisite painkillers?”
* * *
She emerges from the racetrack’s north vestibule tentatively, alongside David, blinking at the brilliant sunlight, feeling like a vampire taking her first steps. It’s a gorgeous Georgia afternoon, a warm, crystalline, dry Indian summer day. The cloudless sky is pure cornflower blue, as genial and serene as skies ever get in these parts.
Norma, Ash, and Bethany are waiting for them at the exit gate. Both Norma and Ash have fresh flowers behind their backs and big grins on their faces. Bethany stares with awe on her innocent oval little face. They take turns hugging Lilly and telling her how good she looks. She calls them liars, and Bethany giggles with glee when Lilly shows her the wooden foot, which looks like an appendage off of Frankenstein’s monster. Norma and Ash try to hide their moistening eyes.
They tour the town, walking slowly down Main Street, David and Norma pointing out all the restorations that are in progress.
Lilly falls into a syncopated rhythm with the single crutch, and soon she’s moving along quite easily. She sees that they have begun to fill in the crater at the end of the street with gravel and concrete. They’ve also cleaned up much of the rubble caused by the firestorms. Some portions of the building facades are in the process of being painted, and the barricades are back up along Dogwood and Pecan Street. Lilly sees the children now at the far end of the square, gathered in the furrowed dirt of a vegetable garden, fussing and planting handfuls of seeds. Tyler and Jenny Coogan stand at opposite ends of the garden, each cradling a rifle, each diligently keeping guard.
At the end of Jones Mill Road, Lilly and the others pause to rest and have some lunch. They sit at a picnic table at the crest of a small hill. Norma has filled a backpack with canned peaches, dandelion greens, beef jerky, and a horrible-tasting clear liquid that she claims is her latest batch of Georgia white lightning.
They eat and drink, and talk of the future, and at one point, Lilly gazes out across the patchwork grid of narrow streets, tiny buildings, and green public spaces—most of them enclosed behind the walls of the barricade—and she thinks to herself, This time, maybe, just maybe, Woodbury will live on …
… this stubborn, beautiful throwback, this place I will forever, from this day forward, call home.
Other Books in the Walking Dead Series
Rise of the Governor
The Road to Woodbury
The Fall of the Governor: Part One
The Fall of the Governor: Part Two
Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead: Descent
Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead: Invasion
Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead: Search and Destroy
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ROBERT KIRKMAN is the creator of many popular comic books, including Walking Dead, Invincible, and Super Dinosaur. In addition to being a partner at Image Comics, Kirkman is an executive producer and writer on The Walking Dead television show. In 2010, Kirkman opened Skybound, his own imprint at Image, which publishes his titles as well as other original work. You can sign up for email updates here.
JAY BONANSINGA is a New York Times bestselling novelist whose debut novel, The Black Mariah, was a finalist for a Bram Stoker award. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Los Dias Finales
Part 1: Exodus
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Part 2: Welcome to the Terrordome
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part 3: The Sky Is Bleeding
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Epilogue: Los Primeros Dias
Other Books in the Walking Dead Series
About the Authors
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, or
ganizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
ROBERT KIRKMAN’S THE WALKING DEAD: RETURN TO WOODBURY. Copyright © 2017 by Robert Kirkman LLC. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Jeremy Fink
Cover illustration by Blake Morrow
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-05852-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6275-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781466862753
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First Edition: October 2017