By dusk that night, this odd couple has become inseparable. Bob shows Reese around town and even gives him a peek at the tunnels. Walking with a pronounced limp, and still groggy from exposure and malnourishment, Reese is eager to rescue his brethren, but Bob tells him that he’ll have to heal up a little more before accompanying the rescue team to Carlinville. The young man wants to know when they can leave, and Bob guesses it won’t be until the end of the week, in three or four days, and the kid should rest until then, get his strength back, prepare himself for the long journey. This seems to satisfy Reese, for the time being, at least.
That night, the sun sets behind the jagged spires of ancient live oaks to the west along Elkins Creek, turning the daylight amber and filling the air with a haze of cottonwood fluff in the lengthening shadows.
Inside the arena, most of the workers have departed, leaving behind only two souls, who now crouch together in the dying light, planting the first of the zucchini seeds. The task is a simple one, but not without symbolic meaning. Lilly is well aware of this fact as she kneels on makeshift kneepads with a small trowel, notching out a narrow trough in the black Georgia clay.
Calvin hunkers next to her with a handful of small gray seeds.
He drops them one at a time, in a neat little row, as Lilly carefully covers them with loose earth, patting lightly. Squash plants have long taproots that enable zucchini to do well in dry climates. The growth cycle is about a month, so the yield is also good throughout the summer. Lilly digs another trough and Calvin drops in more seeds, and they repeat, again and again, until Lilly notices Calvin mumbling under his breath every time he opens another package and drops a handful in the ground.
“What did you say?” Lilly asks him finally, sitting back to wipe the perspiration from her brow.
“Excuse me?” Calvin looks at her for a moment as though she’s lost her mind.
“You’ve been mumbling something every time we plant more seeds.”
He chuckles. “Oh, sorry. You got me. Little prayer for the harvest. I was praying.”
Lilly loves this. She gives him a sidelong glance. “You sure it’s a good idea to bother the Almighty for something this … small?”
”It’s a habit I picked up from my grandpa. Old codger was a tobacco farmer down in Calhoun County, used to grow watermelons in his backyard the size of Winnebagos. Always told people he had a secret formula. When I was twelve he finally took me out back and gave me my first plug of Red Man tobacco and showed me the secret formula.”
“He prayed when he planted.”
Calvin nods. “He said a Hail Mary over every row he planted—even though he was a lifelong Baptist. My grandma Rosie used to give him guff about it.”
“Hail Mary … seriously?”
“Gramps always said there was something about the Italians he knew up to Jasper, had a vineyard up there, and they was always beating the pants off Gramps at the Georgia State Fair with their prize tomatoes.” Calvin shrugs. “Started hearing Gramps mumbling all the time, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy farm … watermelons.’”
Lilly laughs, and it feels spectacular, it feels liberating.
“He always said it like that,” Calvin marvels with a chuckle, “like it was some kind of magical incantation … watermelons … watermelons! I thought he was so cool. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like him. He always had a plug of Red Man between his cheek and gum, and of course I had to try it.”
“Didn’t he give you some that day?”
“Yep.”
“Did you like it?”
“Lord, no. I puked my guts out all over the seat of his John Deere tractor.”
Lilly chortles. She hasn’t laughed like this for what seems an eternity, maybe not since the plague broke out. In the grand scheme of things—in the history of humor—Calvin’s little story isn’t that funny. But Lilly needs to laugh right now.
He looks at his watch. “I better be getting back to the courthouse. Kids are probably eating the sofa cushions right about now.”
“I’ll walk you home.”
They finish up and throw their tools in a nearby wheelbarrow.
The air has cooled significantly from the full-on sun of the afternoon. The breeze smells of lilac and clover and wet hay molding in the fields. On their way back to the courthouse, Lilly and Calvin discuss the young man from the church group and Bob’s master plan of using the tunnels to get to Carlinville. Nobody knows how far the main circuit runs—the town is a little over ten miles away—but Bob assures everybody that they can safely clear the passageway and get to their destination via the tunnels.
Lilly can’t imagine the tunnel extending that far—nor can she fathom traveling that distance down a filthy, subterranean channel—but Bob claims that the historic surveys have so far been accurate up to three miles in every direction. Apparently the runaway slave culture back in the nineteenth century was bigger and broader in scope than most modern historians had conceived in their wildest extrapolations. And Bob is confident that, with the young newcomer’s help, he can get the rescue party close enough to the place where the church group is now under siege. The plan is to then dig up through layers of sediment to the surface, rescue the people, and use the tunnel to get back to Woodbury.
“On paper it makes sense,” Lilly says as they cross the deserted town square and approach the courthouse building. “But it seems … I don’t know … like a stretch. I trust Bob. But on the other hand, nobody knows what the hell we’re going to find under there … or if we’re just going to hit a dead end.”
They pause at the stone steps leading up to the courthouse door. Calvin turns and touches Lilly’s arm. His hand is work scarred, rough on her skin, but also tender. “It’s in God’s hands, Lilly. You were right. We have to do it. It’s the right thing to do.”
She looks into his eyes. “Maybe I should say a Hail Mary over it.”
“Couldn’t hurt.” He smiles at her. His hand remains on her arm. “The Good Lord will watch over us.”
She touches his cheek. “Thank you.” A flutter in her heart, a spark of electricity traveling down her spine. Has he moved closer? She can smell his scent—Old Spice, chewing gum—and she feels a tremendous urge to bury her face in his neck. His eyes are so clear, washed clean by his grief and humility and deep, deep faith. “To be perfectly honest,” she whispers to him, “I wish I had your faith.”
He leans in closer. His hand moves to her cheek. “You’re a good woman, Lilly.” He reaches up to his collar and pulls a small crucifix on a chain from around his neck. He carefully opens the clasp and puts it around Lilly’s neck. “Here, this has served me well.”
She swallows a surge of emotion rising up in her. “Oh, my God, I can’t take this,” she says, taking a closer look at the tiny gold cross.
“Yes, you can. I just gave it to you.” He smiles. “Wear it in good health.”
“Thank you … thanks.”
He touches her hair. “My pleasure.”
Has he moved closer still? Lilly can’t tell. Her heart is racing. Knowing it’s wrong, knowing it’s too soon, knowing the town will disapprove, she moves in, her eyes closing.
Their lips come to within a centimeter of each other when a child’s scream rings out from the second-floor window above them.
They freeze like animals in the wild confronted with the headlight of an oncoming train.
ELEVEN
Calvin and Lilly slam through the door of the second-floor administrative office and lurch into the room. Quickly scanning the space for any sign of danger, rampaging walkers, or some kind of struggle, they see only a lone little girl standing in the center of the outer office, where all the desks have been shoved against the wall, and the moth-eaten drapes now shroud the boarded window.
“It’s Luke,” Bethany says when Calvin rushes over to her, kneels, and takes her by the arms.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Daddy,” she says. She wears her footie pajamas and holds a Maurice Sendak storybook, and she yawns as she explains. “Tommy was reading to Luke and Luke fell asleep and had a nightmare.”
“He’s in here, Dad.”
The voice draws Calvin’s attention over his shoulder to the door leading into the inner office, which is currently being used as the children’s bedroom. Tommy Dupree stands in the doorway in his Falcons T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet, looking sheepish and exhausted. He, too, holds a book of fairy tales. “He fell asleep and started screaming.”
Calvin springs to his feet and rushes into the inner room, Lilly right on his heels.
She feels as though she’s intruding all of a sudden as she plunges into the cluttered world of the Dupree children—the dog-eared picture books strewn across the floor, the clothes piled in one corner, the candy wrappers, the smell of bubble gum, liniment, and baby powder. Bob had brought back a carton of comic books from the You-Save-It Pharmacy the other day for Tommy Dupree, and now Lilly’s feverish gaze lands on the curiously neat and orderly stack of comics on the far windowsill, right next to a coffee can filled with paintbrushes, a drawing tablet, an immaculate eraser, and a perfectly symmetrical row of a wallet, a pocketknife, and keys.
Tommy’s little obsessive-compulsive domain—the defense mechanism of a sensitive boy in chaotic times—now seems doubly poignant to Lilly.
“Baby boy … baby boy!” Calvin kneels by his youngest child’s bedside—a broken-down little futon that Lilly found while digging through the town’s warehouse. He gathers the little boy up in muscular, wiry arms, strokes the kid’s sweaty, matted brow with gnarled workman’s hands. “It’s okay … Daddy’s here.”
“I saw Mama!”
The voice that comes out of little Lucas Dupree is barely a squeak—the mewl of an injured kitten—as the child clings to his father with simian force. The child looks deeply and thoroughly spooked. His cherubic face glistens with night sweat, his Thomas the Tank Engine jammies soaked through. “I saw Mama again, Daddy.”
Calvin glances across the room at Lilly, who stands next to Tommy. The twelve-year-old keeps staring at the floor, chewing the inside of his cheek. Calvin clears his throat nervously. All at once Lilly gets the idea that this is not the first time this has happened since Meredith Dupree passed, and it’s not something the family wants to share with outsiders, and maybe it would be best if Lilly excused herself. “Calvin, I’m going to leave y’all to this and head on down to—”
“No.” Calvin meets her gaze. “Please. It’s okay. You can stay. Luke likes you.” He turns to his little boy. “Right, Luke?”
The boy tentatively nods.
Calvin gently brushes a strand of ginger-colored hair from the child’s eye. “You can tell us about the dream, Luke. It’s okay.”
The boy sits back against the futon’s armrest and stares into his lap. He mumbles something. Lilly has to strain to hear it.
“Was it like the other one you had?” Calvin asks his son.
Luke nods. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Was she in the backyard?”
“Yes.” Another nods. “This time it was at Grammy and Papa’s house.”
Calvin strokes the boy’s hair. “You remember what I told you about nightmares and visions?”
Luke nods again slowly, staring at his hands in his lap. “We’re supposed to talk about ’em because talking about ’em makes ’em less scary.”
“That’s right.”
“Mama was there by them rosebushes … only she was dead … but she was there anyway. She wasn’t no walker or anything. She was just all white and dead and stuff. It made me sad.”
The boy lets out a little cough, distorted by a moan, and for a moment Lilly thinks he is about to cry again. Instead, he looks up into his father’s eyes with a gaze as sharp and hot as an arc welder. “You know how Mama always said the end of the world is comin’?”
“Yes, sir, I remember.” Calvin shoots an awkward glance at Lilly, then looks back at his son. “Was Mama telling you that in the dream?”
The boy nods. “She was crying. I didn’t see the Aunty-Christ yet. He was behind the bushes but I didn’t see him yet. Mama was on the swing set and she was swinging and crying and singing.”
“What was she singing, Luke? Do you remember?”
The boy presses his lips together and thinks hard before softly singing in a little off-key voice, “‘Hush, little baby, don’t you cry … Mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby.’”
Calvin nods sadly. “Yeah, she always sang that song when she was puttin’ you to bed, didn’t she? Sang it real pretty, too.”
“That’s not what was happenin’ in the dream, Daddy. She wasn’t puttin’ me to sleep.”
“Okay,” Calvin says with a cock of his head, a little reluctant to go farther. Lilly can feel the tension in the room ratchet up. Calvin says, “You want to tell me about it, buddy?”
The boy presses his lips together, and offers no response.
“That’s okay, Luke. We don’t have to talk about this no more.”
The boy looks down, a tear dropping from one eye. His lips move now, but no words come out. He looks like a toy doll that has slipped its spindle.
“Luke?”
In the beat of silence before the child replies, an invisible Rubicon is crossed. Luke looks up at his father through wet eyes, and he musters up the words. “She said I could never ever go to sleep again … none of us could or we would end up like her.”
* * *
In the coming days, long after Lilly has forgotten the exact details of that night with the Dupree children, a vague, undefined, inchoate feeling of dread lingers in the back of her mind like a shark swimming just beneath the surface of her thoughts. Lurking there, just out of sight, a dark impenetrable presence, the feeling of doom weaving through every moment, every task, every meeting and conversation and encounter, it buzzes in the back of her mind as she helps Bob and David gather maps, survey charts, tools, supplies, and weapons for the trip underground. It reverberates in her nebulous, fragmented dreams as she struggles through restless nights alone in the airless, musty apartment at the end of Main Street. It thrums in her bloodstream as she counts down the hours until the moment of their departure.
By the time Friday rolls around, Reese has fully recovered, and all the preparations have been made for the journey through the tunnels. Lilly tries her hardest to put the feeling of trepidation out of her mind. She decides to leave the town in the capable hands of Barbara Stern, Gloria Pyne, and Calvin Dupree. These three seem able to handle any emergency that might come up, and more important, Calvin’s kids are best served having their father stick around rather than go gallivanting off on some dangerous, Quixotic mission. Resources have gotten dangerously low in Woodbury—for the town as a whole, as well as the provisions for the rescue team—so everybody feels things are being stretched as thin as they can be stretched without breaking. The battle with the herd has chewed up much of their ammunition—most of the weapons that are being taken down into the tunnels are handguns with speed loaders or eight- and ten-round magazines—and most of the nonperishable food items that are being taken along on the trip are of the canned variety. Just before dawn on Friday morning, the team assembles in the town square loaded down with rucksacks that feel as though they weigh a ton.
“What the hell did you put in these things, fucking boulders?” Speed grumbles to Bob in the gloomy half-light of the square as the older man helps the younger man shoulder the enormous backpack. The air snaps with tension and the chill of predawn, the horizon just beginning to bruise with orange daylight.
“Stop your bellyaching,” Bob scolds as he hefts his own pack onto his shoulders. “You’re supposed to be the big football stud, what are you complaining for?”
“Come see me after eight or ten miles under there, Pops, see how you like it.” Speed snorts distastefully, his close-cropped sandy hair wrapped in a bandanna, his U2 T-shirt already sp
otted with perspiration. He adjusts the straps around his broad shoulders with a grunt and shoots a glance across the square at Matthew Hennesey, who sits on a nearby bench, loading an ammo magazine with fresh rounds.
Matthew looks up at Speed with a grin. “Don’t be a pussy, Speed-O.”
Lilly watches all this nonsense from the other side of the square as she secures her own knapsack, trying to ignore the hollow, anxious feeling in her bones that has been plaguing her all week. She has both her .22-caliber Rugers with her, one holstered on each hip, gunslinger-style, and a miner’s hat over her ponytailed hair, secured with a makeshift chinstrap. She feels like a paratrooper about to be plunged into endless free fall. Just this morning, in fact, she awoke in the darkness of her apartment with a realization as sudden and unexpected as a firecracker going off behind her eyes: the reason for her vague sense of doom.
Now she feels it pressing down on her heavier than the straps of her overstuffed backpack, which are already digging into her shoulders. In addition to the canned goods, they have packed every last spare battery in the town, medical supplies, digging and mining implements, extra flashlights, signal flares, coils of rope, duct tape, walkie-talkies, and various and sundry gadgets that may or may not be useful in the unknown territory of the underground.
“Are we ready?” David asks somewhat rhetorically, standing behind Matthew’s bench, the single streetlight shining down on the square putting a sodium-vapor halo around David’s flyaway gray mane. In addition to his heavy pack, assault rifle, and bandolier of bullets, the gray-bearded man wears a motorcycle helmet rigged with a halogen light. He looks like an aging spelunker preparing to descend into the chasms of hell. “Bob, we all set?”
“As set as we’ll ever be,” Bob mutters, tightening his belt. “Let’s do it.”
The Walking Dead: Descent Page 13
