She unclasps the door handle and with one fluid motion pulls open the plastic hatch.
The walker inside the Port-o-Let convulses at the smell of humans, reaching blindly, making mucusy snarling noises. Not long ago, Clint Sturbridge was a jovial former electrician from Macon, Georgia, who had lost his ex-wife and teenage daughter to the riots that gripped the cities in the weeks right after the Turn. A big, pear-shaped man with pork chop sideburns, he had proven himself a major asset in Woodbury’s recent renaissance of rebuilding and reinvention. Now he lurches toward Jinx just as the tip of her bowie slams down into the hard shell of bone above his frontal lobe, blood and fluids effervescing around the hilt.
The thing that was once a decent, hardworking man sags and collapses.
Jinx wipes the blade on the thing’s pant leg, then rises. “Poor son of a bitch.”
Lilly takes a closer look at the profusion of blood coating the inside of the plastic enclosure. “Looks like he got shot in the attack and bled out in here.” She searches for a weapon. “The man was fucking unarmed.”
Jinx gives a disgusted grunting noise and a nod. “At the risk of stating the obvious, I would say these are not your ordinary home invaders.”
Silently, Lilly stares at the carnage, completely and hopelessly vexed.
* * *
“What if they’re just bughouse crazy?” Norma Sutters muses, sitting by the side rail of David Stern’s gurney in the dank, dimly lit infirmary, dabbing a cold rag on the man’s forehead. Lying in a tangle of sweat-damp blankets, David wavers in and out of consciousness. An hour earlier, Norma and Tommy had managed to patch up the shoulder wounds and dig one bullet out of his left pectoral. They gave him the last of the morphine powder, and now David drifts on a cushion of narcotic haze, every few minutes mumbling some witty retort just to let everybody know that he’s not only still alive but is also his old irascible self and would appreciate it if people would stop staring at the top of his skull as though it were a target.
Across the infirmary, Lilly chews the inside of her cheek as she thinks about it. “I don’t know … I get the feeling there’s a purpose here … even if it makes no sense to us.”
“So we’re thinking they come from Atlanta?” Norma Sutters has moved from David’s bedside to the sink, and is now rinsing the wet rag.
“From the looks of the tracks, they’re heading back that way.” Lilly glances at Jinx. “Why don’t you give Ash or Bell another try on the radio—I’m worried this isn’t a one-stop deal—especially if these bastards are heading north.”
Jinx goes over to a shelf and furiously winds the crank on a small wood-grain radio. She thumbs the Send button in the mic and says, “Ash, it’s Woodbury calling, do you read?” Pause. Static crackles through the speaker. No reply. “Ash, it’s Jinx in Woodbury. Do you copy?” Pause. Static. “Bell? Anybody out there? Over?”
Nothing.
“Goddamn it!” Lilly angrily shoves two spare ammo mags down into the back pocket of her jeans. “We can’t just wait around for somebody to—”
She stops abruptly at the faint sound of a voice coming from across the room. David Stern, semiconscious, his head lolling on the pillow, has muttered a single word that Lilly hasn’t quite registered. Norma stands up, gazing down at him. Lilly takes a few steps toward the gurney and pauses. “David, did you say something?”
“Bryce.…”
She takes a step closer. “Excuse me?”
David takes a deep breath, grimaces at the pain, and manages to sit up. Norma adjusts the pillow behind his back. David exhales a pained breath and says, “Bryce was a name I heard them call this guy, seemed like the honcho … maybe a military man.”
Lilly stares. “Can you describe him?” The others have moved closer, leaning in to better hear the injured man’s feeble voice. “David?” Lilly reaches down and puts a hand on David Stern’s shoulder. “Did you see what he looked like?”
He nods. “Big guy … jarhead type … had a flak vest on … but was older … gray at the temples, you know? He looked like … a drill instructor.”
Lilly processes this. She looks at David. “Did you see how many people he had with him?”
“Not sure … I think about a dozen, maybe less … younger men, military types, grunts, tightly wired.”
“Do you remember what time it was when they attacked?”
David takes deep breaths as he gathers his thoughts. “It was like late morning, maybe noon?”
“Do you remember how long they were here? How long the attack lasted?”
He thinks it over. His voice gets almost dreamy as he remembers the events of the day. “They came at us hard and fast … like it was a strategy … a surprise attack … whatever. We held them off for a few minutes … I don’t know how long … but they out-gunned us. We thought they were after the diesel in the tanks and our food supply, stuff like that … so Barb decided we should give it all up … just give it up … and we should all hide in the sublevels of the speedway while they helped themselves … she thought the kids would be safe down there. We tried to close ourselves in. Harold had to be the hero.” David Stern pauses, closes his eyes, furrows his brow as a single tear leaks out of one eye and tracks down his cheek. “That little guy held them off single-handedly with a .30-30 rifle and one box of ammo from the courthouse window … tough little son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that.” David wipes his eyes. “Little did we know they just wanted the kids … God only knows why. I think the whole thing, from beginning to end, maybe lasted an hour, two hours at the most.”
Lilly wipes her mouth. “What the fuck? None of it makes any kind of sense.” She turns and paces some more. “So they got a five-hour head start on us.” She looks back at David. “You said they were armed to the teeth?”
David gives her a nod.
Lilly strides back over to the bed. “Did you get a look at their resources, their ammo, their weapons—were they well equipped?”
David shrugs, swallowing back another pang of agony. “I couldn’t tell how much ammo they had … but they were geared up like Navy SEALs, and I got the sense they were hopped up on something.”
“Hopped up? Like drugs? They were on drugs?”
Another nod. “Yeah … it’s hard to explain … I didn’t see anything specific … but they were acting strange the whole time they were taking us down … eyes bugging out, some of them howling like goddamn rabid dogs.” He pauses again to swallow a twinge of pain and measure his words. His weathered, deeply lined face tightens. “I even saw one of them get shot in the leg … and it didn’t even faze this guy, didn’t even slow him down.” Another pause. David swallows hard again and looks at Lilly. “Did you find anybody?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any survivors?”
Lilly looks down and doesn’t say anything at first.
David lets out an anguished breath. “Mama May Carter … did she…?”
Lilly shakes her head.
David bites his lip. “Clint? Jack? Anybody?”
Lilly looks at the floor and says softly, “You’re it, David. You’re the only one.”
The older man sniffs back the sorrow and looks up at the ceiling. “Not true, Lilly. I’m not the only one.” He looks at Lilly then, his eyes glittering with emotion and maybe even a trace of defiance. “The kids and Barbara are gonna survive this thing as well … because you’re gonna go and you’re gonna get them back from these motherfuckers. Right?”
Lilly stares, holding his gaze, the invisible clock deep within the folds of her brain ticking.
FOUR
In the dead of night, the switchyard on the north side of Woodbury drones with crickets and sparkles with fireflies drifting through the hazy, humid mist like snow on a blank TV screen. In the dark, the dull gleam of old rails embedded in the sandy topsoil, crisscrossing the yard, resembles bones petrifying through the ages. The boarded station house where navy-blue-uniform-clad engineers and brakemen once took their coffee and received t
heir itineraries from thriving railroad companies now sits dark except for the flicker of propane lanterns behind one of the shrouded windows.
Inside that building, Lilly and her rescue team—Jinx, Miles, and Norma—pack without speaking, loading packs and satchels with cartons of ammunition, a nylon tent, a camp stove, water bottles, flares, matches, propane lanterns, freeze-dried soup, protein powder, and practically every last weapon in Woodbury. The only firearm they choose to leave behind is the cut-down pistol-grip 12 gauge with which Lilly spent the last twelve months teaching Tommy Dupree to shoot. She considered leaving Norma to hold down the fort along with Tommy and David, but she realized immediately that she needed as many skilled adult hands on the journey as she could get. And Norma Sutters is one of those people who can easily be underestimated. Despite her zaftig figure, matronly air, and angelic singing voice, the woman is badass to the core, and Lilly needs all the help she can get.
They spend less than ten minutes inside that building, preparing to embark on what each of them knows down in their hearts is a suicide mission. Nobody says it specifically, but Lilly can see it in their eyes—the way they silently stuff the last of their supplies into their packs with somber expressions, knitting their faces as though they’re about to take a final walk down a death-row corridor to the gas chamber. Norma keeps throwing nervous glances at Miles as she wraps duct tape around her plump ankles above her Reeboks—a last-ditch preventive measure to protect the extremities from the teeth of biters—while Miles compulsively clears his throat as he quickly zips his rucksack and straps his 9mm into the holster on his skinny hip.
“What the hell is eating you two?” Jinx finally asks them, standing with her arsenal of edged weapons sheathed, strapped, tucked, dangling, and tied to various parts of her S and M Goth garb.
Lilly looks up from her last-minute packing to see what’s on their minds, although, deep down, she knows. She knows what they’re thinking. She’s thinking it herself, and she keeps pushing it from her mind.
“All right, I’ll be the one to say it.” Norma sets her heavy pack down on the floor, jutting out her chin with righteous indignation. She looks at Lilly. Norma’s eyes soften suddenly, the sadness creeping into her expression. “Are you going after these people because you want to save them kids … or because you just want cold, hard vengeance?”
Lilly doesn’t answer, just angrily stuffs her extra magazine into her ruck.
Norma bites her lip, choosing her words. “Lilly, listen. Nobody loves them little ones more than me, I would die for them kids. But this … what we’re doing … I ain’t sure it’s the smart play here.”
Lilly pushes back the anger stewing inside her. The clock ticks. She looks up. “What are you saying? Just spit it out, Norma.”
Norma sighs. She glances at Miles, who looks down as though the heat of her gaze is too much to bear. She turns back to Lilly. “What I mean to say is, once upon a time you had some kinda law and order. Somebody did something awful—they kidnapped children, murdered people like this—you called the cops.”
Lilly takes a step closer to the woman. “There are no cops anymore, Norma.”
“I understand that.”
“We’re the cops.”
“Lilly, I ain’t saying we shouldn’t search for Barb and them kids.”
“Then what are you saying exactly?” Lilly has her fists clenched and isn’t even aware of it. She inches closer to the heavyset woman. “Do you want to opt out? You’re welcome to stay with David and Tommy, hold down the fort. We’re wasting time talking about this.”
Norma wrings her hands. “All I’m asking—and it’s real simple—is do you just want to get them kids back? Or do you just want to waste these kidnappers in the harshest way possible?”
Lilly’s eyes flare. “Maybe a little of both—so what? That’s the way it goes.”
Jinx steps into the fray and puts a hand on Lilly’s shoulder. “Okay, let’s all take a deep breath. We’re just talking here.”
Norma sighs, continuing to parse her words. “Lookit … I’m just sayin’ we’re heading off on this mission in the dark of night, not one whit of an idea how we’re gonna get them little ones back.”
Lilly tamps down her rage, and she says very softly, “I’ve got a plan, Norma. Trust me. We’re going to find Barbara and the kids, but only if we—”
A muffled sound from across the room interrupts, taking everybody by surprise. Miles goes for his 9mm. Lilly stands stone-still, cocking her head, trying to figure out if she heard what she thought she just heard.
Somebody knocking?
Jinx goes over to the door, slides the bolt, and opens it wide enough to reveal Tommy Dupree standing outside in the dark, fists clenched, face all twisted with anger. He wears a tattered leather jacket he found in the Goodwill box in the courthouse basement, along with a gun belt around his waist that’s two sizes too big for him. The night shadows shift and dance behind him along the tree line of the west woods, the moonlit forest alive with movement, the breeze smelling of dead flesh long decayed into offal.
He steps into the station house and Jinx clicks the door shut behind him.
“Tommy, this is not the time.” Lilly takes a step toward him.
“Don’t even say it!” He breathes hard through his nose as he burns his gaze into her. “The more I think about it, the madder I get.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That you would go after them without me!” He spits on the plank floor. “No fucking way!”
“Okay, first, watch your language. Second, we already talked about this.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Tommy, c’mon—”
“I get that David needs somebody to look after him, but seriously? You’re gonna make me be the one, stay behind while you guys go on the rescue mission?! No way! You need me!”
“Tommy—”
“I’m coming with you!” His gaze shimmers with emotion. “That’s all there is to it!”
“Really?” Lilly walks over to him, crosses her arms against her chest. “Okay … since when do you give the orders around here?”
He gazes up at her, his eyes welling up. His voice trembles and quavers but remains steadfast. “We’re talking about my sister and brother here. You taught me how to use that shotgun yourself, you taught me how to survive in the wilderness and stuff. I’m going with you.”
Lilly exhales a long sigh, the clock in her head ticking away the seconds, the minutes, the hours. At last she puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, then strokes his thatch of unruly hair. “Point taken.” Lilly thinks about it for a moment. She turns and gives Norma Sutters a look. “Can you stay with David?”
Norma puts her hands on her ample hips and tilts her head with a flourish. “Honey child, you need me more than he does.”
Lilly shakes her head. “Now you’re gonna give me shit about this?”
Norma sighs. “I realize you’re just trying to do the right thing. But I talked it over with David. I offered to stay with him, but he wants everybody who can draw a breath out there trying to find Barbara and the kids. He’s doing fine, Lilly. He’s safe behind the barricade, he’s got food, water, medical supplies. It’s a done deal, we’re all going along. So we might as well saddle up and ride before them kidnappers get too far down the line.”
* * *
They gather five of the best horses—three of them from the makeshift stables under the speedway, two from the regular team that had been working on the rails that day—and they bring them out across the switchyard under a clear night sky. The clouds from earlier in the day have evaporated, and now the heavens glitter down on the dark yard with eerie calm, a deep black canopy spangled by countless stars and a full moon as brutal and impassive as a prison searchlight. They work quickly in the trough between the main rails, leading the horses up a ramp onto a flatcar in a single-file line. All at once, without much warning, three stray walkers appear on the edge of the adjacent woods, drawn to
the noise of the team. Miles takes one of them down with a shovel to the head, which makes a ghastly ringing noise before the creature collapses in a fountain of its own brain fluids. Tommy takes the other two down with a machete—a half-dozen inelegant blows to the cranium of each—sending bone flak and plumes of blood into the night air until the last of them falls.
Jinx quickly leads her massive, sturdy thoroughbred to the front of the flatcar. The horse has a head as sculpted and tapered as that of Roman statuary, a coat as shiny and chocolate brown as sealskin. Nicknamed Arrow, the animal snorts and nods as Jinx leads it into position. Arrow’s bridle is linked to the horse behind it, and that one is linked to the one behind it, and so on, down the line, five deep, until Tommy and Miles hook the last animal in line to the tail of the flatcar.
Meanwhile, Lilly and Norma have climbed aboard the renovated engine, which sits fifty feet ahead of the flatcar and rises fifteen feet above the ground, a real beast with an exterior as chipped and aged as a shipwreck pulled off the bottom of the ocean. The old Genesis turbine locomotive still has the ghost of its Amtrak paint job, its front bumper retrofitted with a skid from a combine, sharpened to a razor’s edge and wrapped in barbed wire—Bob Stookey’s makeshift countermeasure designed to repel walkers. The rear door is missing, replaced by chain link. Before his death, Bob had been monkeying with the engine, getting it to run fairly well on biodiesel made from the fry oil of dozens of greasy spoons up and down the Highway 24 corridor. Now Lilly and Norma squeeze into the greasy, malodorous pilothouse—which is no bigger than a large restroom—and take their positions in front of the filthy control panel.
The Walking Dead: Search and Destroy Page 4
