At first, as they take their initial steps outside, nobody sees the pile of wet rubbish and moldy cardboard boxes across the loading dock, next to a garbage Dumpster, which is moving slightly, palpating with something underneath. They’re all too busy following Martinez out across the grimy deck with armfuls of supplies.
Gus has the truck revving, the tarp thrown open, the exhaust stack chugging and puffing in the spring winds. They start loading up the back.
In through the gap go the heavy duffel bags. In go the boxes. In go the contents of the pallet, the canned goods, the water jugs, the garden supplies, the tools, and the propane. Nobody even notices the moving cadaver across the loading dock, pushing its way out of the trash pile, then rising to its feet with the creaky, inebriated uncertainty of an overgrown baby. Lilly glimpses movement out of the corner of her eye, and turns toward the biter.
A wiry African American corpse in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, with short cornrows crowning his skull, shuffles clumsily toward them like a drunken mime walking against imaginary wind, clawing at the air. He wears a tattered orange jumpsuit that has a familiar look to Lilly, but she can’t place it.
“I got this,” Lilly says to no one in particular as she pulls one of her Rugers.
The others notice the commotion and pause in their efforts, drawing their weapons, watching Lilly stand stone-still, steady as a milepost, aiming her front sight at the approaching corpse. A moment passes. Lilly stands as still as a statue. The others stare as Lilly finally, calmly, almost languidly, decides to pull the trigger, again and again, emptying the remaining six rounds in the magazine.
The gun claps and flashes, and the young black corpse does a jitterbug on the dock for a moment, exit wounds spewing atomized blood. The rounds chew through the hard shell of its cranium, shredding its cornrows and sending chunks of its prefrontal lobe and gray cerebrospinal fluid skyward. Lilly finishes and stares emotionlessly.
The biter doubles over and collapses to the dock in a blood-sodden heap.
Standing in a blue haze of her own gun smoke and cordite, Lilly mumbles something to herself. Nobody hears what she says. The others stare at her for a long moment until Austin finally comes over and says, “Good job, Annie Oakley.”
Martinez breaks the spell. “Okay … let’s get a move on, people! Before we draw more of ’em!”
They pile into the back of the truck. Lilly is the last one to climb in and find a spot amid the overloaded cargo bay. She sits on one of the propane tanks, and holds on to a side rail in order to brace herself against the g-forces, as the cab doors slam, and the engine grinds, and the truck suddenly roars away from the loading dock.
Lilly remembers right then—for some reason, the realization popping into her head as the truck pulls away—where she’s seen an orange jumpsuit like the one Cornrow was wearing. It’s a prison suit.
They get all the way across the lot, out the exit, and halfway down the access road before Barbara Stern breaks the silence. “Not a bad day’s work for a bunch of emotional cripples.”
The giggling starts with David Stern, then spreads among every passenger, until finally even Lilly is giggling with crazy, giddy relief and satisfaction.
* * *
By the time they make it back to the highway, each and every occupant of that dark, malodorous enclosure is buzzing with excitement.
“Can you imagine the look on the DeVries kids’ faces when they see all that grape juice?” Barbara Stern looks positively ebullient in her faded denim and wild gray tresses. “I thought they were gonna storm the castle when we ran out of Kool-Aid last week.”
“What about that Starbucks instant Via?” David chimes in. “I can’t wait to retire those goddamn coffee grounds to the compost pile.”
“We got all the food groups, too, didn’t we?!” Austin enthuses from his perch on a crate across from Lilly. “Sugar, caffeine, nicotine, and Dolly Madison cupcakes. Kids are gonna be on a sugar buzz for a month.”
Lilly smiles at the young man for the first time since they met. Austin returns her gaze with a wink, his long curls tossing around his handsome face from the slipstream currents coming through the flapping tarp.
Lilly glances out through the rear hatch and sees the deserted country road passing in a blur, the afternoon sun strobing pleasantly through the trees receding into the distance behind them. For just an instant, she feels like Woodbury might have a chance after all. With enough people like these folks—people who care about each other—they just might have a shot at building a community.
“You did good today, pretty boy,” Lilly says at last to Austin. She looks at the others. “You all did good. In fact, if we can just—”
A faint noise from outside stops her short. At first it sounds merely like the wind buffeting the tarp. But the more Lilly listens to it, the more it sounds like an almost alien noise from another time, another place, a noise that she hasn’t heard—a noise nobody has heard—since the plague broke out years earlier.
“You hear that?” Lilly looks at the others, all of whom now seem to be listening in awe. The noise rises and falls on the wind. It seems to be coming from the sky, maybe a mile away, vibrating the air like a drum roll. “It sounds like—No. It can’t be.”
“What the fuck?” Austin pushes his way toward the rear of the chamber and sticks his head out, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the sky. “You’re kidding me!”
Lilly moves next to him, holding on to the rear hatch and leaning out.
The wind whips her hair and stings her eyes as she peers upward, and sure enough, she catches a fleeting glimpse of it in the western sky.
Just the tail of the craft is visible above the tree line, the rotor spinning wildly, the body of the chopper listing downward. The thing is in trouble. A thin contrail of black smoke flags behind the helicopter like a dark comet as it plunges out of sight.
The cargo truck slows. Martinez and Gus have obviously seen the thing as well.
“Do you think it’s—?” Lilly starts to pose the question on everybody’s mind when her words are cut off.
The impact of the crash—over half a mile away—rattles the earth.
A mushroom cloud of fire lights up the woods and scrapes the sky.
FIVE
“Here! Right here! Pull off!”
Gus pumps the brakes, the cargo truck groaning as it cobbles off the two-lane. It bumps across a narrow patch of muddy grass along the shoulder, and then rattles to a stop in a cloud of carbon monoxide and dust.
“This is as close as we’re gonna get in the truck,” Martinez says, leaning forward in the shotgun seat. He cranes his neck to see through the grimy windshield, getting a fleeting glimpse of the column of smoke rising over the trees on the western horizon. It looks to be about a quarter mile away. He reaches for his .357. “Gonna have to hoof it the rest of the way.”
“It’s a long way off, boss.” Gus gazes out his side window, scratching his grizzled cheek. “Looks like it went down in the deep woods.”
Martinez thinks about it, chewing the inside of his cheek. In this part of Georgia, many of the roadways cut through shallow, wooded valleys known as hollows. Formed by rivers and surrounded by densely forested hills, these thickets of brushwood, weeds, and muck can be rife with sinkholes, colonies of mosquitoes, and plenty of nooks and crannies in which mud-bound biters frequently lurk.
Gus looks at Martinez. “Whaddaya say we try and drive it?”
“Negative.” Martinez bites down hard on the word, checking the cylinder on his Magnum. He can hear the truck’s rear gate banging down, the others climbing out, their tense voices carrying on the afternoon breeze. “We’ll get stuck in this pea soup, sure as shit.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Gus rams the shift lever into neutral and cuts the engine. The silence fills with the rush of nature—the jet-engine drone of crickets, the wind in the trees.
“Leave the 12-gauge, take one of the AR-15s, in case it gets hairy, and grab the machete u
nder the seat.” Martinez has a black marine raider bowie knife with a fifteen-inch blade strapped to his leg, and now checks it. He does this compulsively, jaw clenched, all business, as he hears the others coming around the side of the truck. He climbs out of the cab.
They all gather at the front of the cab, in the weeds and buzzing clouds of gnats, their faces drawn and pale with tension. The air smells of rot and burning metal. Austin stands there wringing his hands, gazing off at the crash site. The Sterns huddle together, both their brows furrowed with worry. Lilly has her hands on her hips, her Rugers holstered high on her waist. “What are you thinking?” she says to Martinez.
“Dave and Barb, I want you two to stay with the truck, keep watch.” Martinez shoves his Magnum behind his belt. “If you get swarmed, just drive ’em off … lead ’em away … and then circle back and get us. You got that?”
David just nods and nods, looking like a nervous bobblehead doll. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Keep the walkie with you, keep the frequency open while we’re gone.”
Gus hands the two-way to David, who is still nodding and muttering. “Got it, got it.”
“There’s a box of road flares in the back,” Martinez says to Gus. “Go grab a handful. And get the first-aid kit, too, will ya?”
Gus hurries around the back of the truck while Martinez looks at his watch. “We got a good four hours of daylight left. I want to get out there and back before dark, no fucking around.”
Lilly has one high-capacity magazine left. She slams it into her Ruger, snapping the slide. “The thing is, what if we find survivors?”
“That’s the point,” Martinez says, unsnapping the sheath on his leg, positioning the knife hilt for quick access. “Plus the helo might still be in one piece.”
Lilly looks at him. “We got no stretcher, no medic, no way to get them back.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Martinez says, adjusting his bandanna, already soaked in sweat, across his forehead.
Gus comes back with an armful of flares, which look like sticks of dynamite.
Martinez gives everybody a flare. “I want everybody to stay together, in tight formation … but if for some reason you get separated, light off one of these and we’ll find you.” He looks at the Sterns. “You run into any trouble back here, you light one off.” He glances at the bald man. “Gus, I want you on the right flank with the machete. Keep the noise down. Use the AR-15 as a last resort. I’ll take the left flank.” He looks at Lilly. “You and Junior take the middle.”
Austin gazes up at the sky. The midafternoon clouds have rolled in. The day has turned gray and ashy. The wetland ahead of them crawls with swaying shadows. It’s been a wet year and now the ground looks impassable, mired in washouts, deadfalls, and dense groves of white pines standing between them and the crash site.
“There’s a creek, runs through the middle of the woods,” Martinez is saying, taking a deep breath and drawing his Magnum. “We’ll follow it as far as we can, and then navigate by the smoke. Everybody got that?”
They all nod, saying nothing, swallowing back the mounting apprehension that passes between them like a virus.
Martinez nods. “Let’s boogie.”
* * *
It’s tough going for a while, the unforgiving mud sucking at the soles of their boots, making wet smacking noises in the primeval silence of the woods. They follow the serpentine bends of the brackish stream, and the deeper they venture into the hollow, the more the trees swallow the daylight.
“You okay, Huckleberry?” Lilly whispers to Austin, who walks alongside her, his Glock gripped tightly in both of his sweaty hands.
“I’m fantastic,” he lies. His long curls are pulled back from his glistening face with a leather tie. He chews on his lip nervously as he churns through the mud.
“You don’t have to hold your gun like that,” she says with a smirk.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re some kind of Delta Force commando. Just keep it handy.”
“Will do.”
“If you get one in the cross hairs, just take your time. They’re slow, so make your shots count. You don’t have to do the gunslinger routine.”
Austin shoots her a glance. “Just want to be ready … in case I need to come to your rescue.”
Lilly gives him an eye roll. “Yeah, great, I feel totally safe now.”
She peers into the trees ahead of them and sees the faint haze of smoke building in the woods. The air, hectic with bugs, smells of burned circuitry and scorched metal. The wreckage is still a few hundred yards off in the distant pines. The faint crackle of fire can be heard, barely audible above the wind rustling in the treetops.
Off to the right, maybe twenty yards ahead of Lilly, Martinez has taken the lead, weaving through the undergrowth, slicing through foliage with his bowie knife. On a parallel path to the left, Gus trudges along, his hound-dog eyes surveying the shadows for biters, his machete on his shoulder. The sky is barely visible above him, blocked by skeins of tree limbs and vines.
Lilly starts to say something else when a figure appears in front of Gus.
Lilly halts, her gun coming up fast, her breath seizing up in her throat. She sees Gus raise the machete. The large male walker, clad in tattered overalls, has its back turned to him, teetering on dead legs, its head cocked toward the crash site like a dog hearing an ultrasonic whistle. Gus sneaks up behind it.
The machete comes down fast, the blade making a crunching noise as it embeds itself in the gristly dura of the walker’s cranium. Fluids gush, making watery sluicing noises in the silence of the woods, as the walker collapses. Lilly hardly has a chance to breathe again when another noise draws her attention to the right.
Fifteen feet away, Martinez lashes out at another stray walker—a spindly female with gray hair matted like spider webs—probably a former farmer’s wife skulking around the brush. His knife impales the back of her head above the neck cords, putting her down with the speed of a silent embolism. She never saw it coming.
Letting out an involuntary sigh of relief, lowering her pistol, Lilly realizes that the walkers are currently mesmerized by the sights and sounds of the crash.
Martinez pauses to glance over his shoulder at the others. “Everybody good?” he says in a low voice, almost a stage whisper.
Nods from everyone. And then they’re moving again, slowly but steadily forward, into the denser trees and fog-bound shadows. Martinez motions for them to hurry up. The ground is spongy and soggy beneath their feet, slowing them down. The shadows close in, the odors of scorched metal and burning fuel engulfing them, the crackling noises rising.
Lilly feels nauseous, her skin prickling with nerves. She senses Austin’s eyes on her. “Do you think maybe you could stop staring at me?”
“It’s not my fault you’re so hot,” he says with that same nervous smirk.
She shakes her head in dismay. “Can you just try and focus?”
“I am totally focused, believe me,” he says, still gripping his gun with that fake cop-show grip as they continue on.
* * *
Less than a hundred yards from the crash site, they come to a washout—a bug-infested, swampy clearing blocking their path—the bog crisscrossed by enormous deadfall logs. With silent hand motions, Martinez directs them to use the logs as bridges. Gus goes first, crabbing across the largest deadfall. Martinez follows. Lilly goes next, and Austin brings up the rear. As he reaches the other side, Austin feels a tugging sensation on his jeans. The others have already crossed, and are now trudging toward the clearing. Austin pauses. At first he thinks he’s caught on a piece of bark, but then he looks down.
Decomposing hands rise out of the marsh, clawing at his pants leg.
He lets out a cry and fumbles with his gun as dead fingers clutch at him, pulling him downward. Rising out of the mire, the slimy top half of a moldering creature goes for his legs. Filmed in black gunk, its hairless skull unidentifiable as man or woman,
its eyes as white and opaque as light bulbs, it snaps its black turtlelike mouth on the creaky hinges of a ruined jaw.
Austin gets off a single muffled gunshot—the silencer spitting sparks—but the bullet misses its mark. The blast grazes the top of the swamp biter’s head, and then plunks harmlessly into the swamp.
Fifty feet away, Lilly hears the blast. She spins around, reaching for her guns. But her legs tangle and she slips on the mud. She sprawls to the weeds, the guns flying out of her hands.
Austin tries to get a second shot off but the swamp biter is going for his leg. It rises out of the mire like a slimy black whale, its jaws unhinging and emitting a noxious growl. Austin jerks back involuntarily—a high-pitched cry blurting out of him—and the gun slips out of his hand. He kicks at the creature’s mouth, the toe of his boot getting caught in the mouthful of rotting black teeth and putrid drool. The swamp biter clamps down.
Lilly crawls toward her guns. Martinez and Gus, by this point, have both whirled toward the commotion, but it’s too late to intercede. The giant dripping biter is about to chew through Austin’s Timberland hiking boot, and Austin is fumbling madly for something in his pocket. Finally Austin gets his hand around the road flare.
At the last possible instant—before the swamp biter is able to break the skin of Austin’s foot—the young man sparks the flare and rams it into the biter’s left eye. The creature rears back suddenly, releasing its hold and tossing its ragged head back in a fountain of sparks.
Austin stares for a moment, mesmerized by the sight of flames inside the rotten cavity of the biter’s skull. The left eye glows for one horrible instant, shining with the intensity of a caution light. The biter stiffens in the muck. The back of its head suddenly bursts, spewing flames like the nozzle of a welding torch.
The left eye pops like a bulb overloading, spitting hot tissue on Austin … and then the creature sinks into the black void.
The Walking Dead Page 6
