“That’s a load of crap,” Bob Stookey counters after taking another pull off the tarnished flask. Maybe the liquor has begun to loosen Bob’s lips, because he feels a twinge of bitterness. “My guess is, knowin’ that Chad character, he’d been asking for this for a while now.”
“Bob, that’s not—”
Lilly stops herself when she hears the crunch of footsteps outside the tent. The shadow of a leviathan falls across the canvas. The familiar silhouette pauses for a moment, lurking awkwardly outside the zippered front flap of Bob’s tent. Lilly recognizes the figure but says nothing.
A huge hand gently folds back the tent flap and a large, deeply lined brown face peers in. “They said I could—they gave me three minutes,” Josh Lee Hamilton says in a choked, sheepish baritone.
“What are you talking about?” Lilly sits up and stares at her friend. “Three minutes for what?”
Josh kneels in front of the tent flap, looking at the ground, struggling to tamp down his emotions. “Three minutes to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean, ‘good-bye’? What happened?”
Josh lets out a pained sigh. “They took a vote … decided the best way to deal with what happened was to send me packing, kick me outta the group.”
“What!”
“I suppose it’s better than gettin’ hung from the highest tree.”
“You didn’t—I mean—it was completely accidental.”
“Yeah, sure,” Josh says, staring at the ground. “Poor fella accidentally bumped into my fist a whole bunch of times.”
“Under the circumstances, though, these people know what kind of man—”
“Lilly—”
“No, this is wrong. This is just … wrong.”
“It’s over, Lilly.”
She looks at him. “Are they letting you take any supplies? One of the vehicles maybe?”
“I got my bike. It’ll be okay, I’ll be awright…”
“No … no … this is just … ridiculous.”
“Lilly, listen to me.” The big man pushes his way partially into the tent. Bob glances away out of respect. Josh crouches down, reaches out and gently touches Lilly’s wounded face. From the way Josh’s lips are pressed together, the way his eyes are shimmering, the lines deepening around his mouth, it’s clear he’s holding in a tidal wave of emotion. “This is how it’s gotta play out. It’s for the best. I’ll be fine. You and Bob hold the fort down.”
Lilly’s eyes well up. “I’ll go with you, then.”
“Lilly—”
“There’s nothing for me here.”
Josh shakes his head. “Sorry, babydoll … it’s a single ticket.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Lilly, I’m real sorry but that ain’t in the cards. It’s safer here. With the group.”
“Yeah, it’s real stable here,” she says icily. “It’s a regular love fest.”
“Better here than out there.”
Lilly looks at him through ravaged eyes, tears beginning to track down her battered face. “You can’t stop me, Josh. It’s my decision. I’m coming along and that’s all there is to it. And if you try and stop me, I will hunt you down, I will stalk you, I will find you. I’m coming with you and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t stop me. Okay? So just … deal with it.”
She buttons up her coat, slips her feet into her boots, and starts gathering up her things. Josh watches in dismay. Lilly’s movements are tentative, interrupted by intermittent flinches of pain.
Bob exchanges a glance with Josh, something unspoken yet powerful passing between the two men, as Lilly gets all her stray items of clothing stuffed into a duffel bag and pushes her way out of the tent.
Josh lingers in the mouth of the tent for a moment, looking back in at Bob.
Bob finally shrugs and says with a weary smile: “Women.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Josh has the saddlebags of his onyx Suzuki street bike brimming with tins of Spam and tuna fish, road flares, blankets, waterproof matches, rope, a rolled-up pup tent, a flashlight, a small camp stove, a collapsible fishing rod, a small .38 caliber Saturday night special, and some paper plates and spices cribbed from the common area. The day has turned blustery, the sky casting over with ashy dark clouds.
The threatening weather adds another layer of anxiety to the proceedings as Josh secures the luggage bags and glances over his shoulder at Lilly, who stands ten feet away on the edge of the road, shrugging on an overstuffed backpack. She cringes at a sharp pain in her ribs as she tightens the straps on the pack.
From across the property, a handful of self-proclaimed community leaders look on. Three men and a middle-aged woman stand stoically watching. Josh wants to holler something sarcastic and withering to them but holds his tongue. Instead, he turns to Lilly and says, “You ready?”
Before Lilly can answer a voice rings out from the east edge of the property.
“Hold on, folks!”
Bob Stookey comes trundling along the fence with a large canvas duffel slung over his back. The clanking rattle of bottles can be heard—Bob’s private stock of “medicine,” no doubt—and there’s a strange look on the old medic’s face, a mixture of anticipation and embarrassment. He approaches cautiously. “Before y’all ride off into the sunset, I got a question for ya.”
Josh gives the man a look. “What’s going on, Bob?”
“Just answer me one thing,” he says. “You got any medical training?”
Lilly comes over, her brow furrowed with confusion. “Bob, what do you need?”
“It’s a simple question. Do either of you yahoos got any legitimate medical credentials?”
Josh and Lilly share a glance. Josh sighs. “Not that I know of, Bob.”
“Then let me ask you something else. Who in the flying fuck’s gonna watch that eye for infection?” He gestures toward Lilly’s hemorrhaged eye. “Or keep tabs on them fractured ribs for that matter?”
Josh looks at the medic. “What are you trying to say, Bob?”
The older man shoots a thumb at the row of vehicles parked along the gravel access road behind him. “As long as y’all are gallivanting off into the wild blue yonder, wouldn’t it make more sense to do it with a certified U.S. Marine Medical Corpsman?”
* * *
They put their stuff in Bob’s king cab. The old Dodge Ram pickup is a monster—pocked with rust scars and dents—with a retrofitted camper top on the extended cargo bay. The camper’s windows are long and narrow and as opaque as soap glass. Lilly’s backpack and Josh’s saddlebags go in through the rear hatch, and get wedged between piles of dirty clothes and half-empty bottles of cheap whiskey. There’s a pair of rickety cots back there, a large cooler, three battered first-aid kits, a tattered suitcase, a pair of fuel tanks, an old leather doctor’s bag that looks like it came from a pawnshop, and a phalanx of garden implements shoved against the firewall in front—shovels, a hoe, a few axes, and a nasty-looking pitchfork. The vaulted ceiling rises high enough to accommodate a slouching adult.
As he stows his bags, Josh sees scattered pieces of a disassembled 12-gauge shotgun, but no sign of any shells. Bob carries a .38 snub-nose, which probably couldn’t hit a stationary target at ten paces with no wind—and that’s if and only if Bob is sober, which is rarely the case. Josh knows they will need firearms and ammunition if they want a fighting chance of survival.
Josh slams the hatch and feels somebody else watching them from across the property.
“Hey, Lil!”
The voice sounds familiar, and when Josh turns around, he sees Megan Lafferty, the girl with the ruddy brown curls and unhinged libido, standing a couple of car lengths away, next to the gravel shoulder. She holds hands with the stoner kid—what’s his name?—with the stringy blond hair in his face and the ratty sweater. Steve? Shawn? Josh can’t remember. All Josh remembers is putting up with the girl’s bed-hopping all the way f
rom Peachtree City.
Now the two slacker kids stand there, watching with buzzardlike intensity.
“Hey, Meg,” Lilly says softly, somewhat skeptically, as she comes around the back of the truck and stands next to Josh. The sound of Bob banging around under the truck’s hood can be heard in the awkward silence.
Megan and the stoner kid approach cautiously. Megan measures her words as she addresses Lilly: “Dude, I heard you were like taking off for higher ground.”
Next to Megan the stoner giggles softly. “Always up for getting higher.”
Josh shoots the kid a look. “What can we do for you fine young people?”
Megan doesn’t take her eyes off Lilly. “Lil, I just wanted to say … like … I hope you’re not like pissed at me or anything.”
“Why would I be pissed at you?”
Megan looks down. “I said some things the other day, I wasn’t really thinking straight … I just wanted to … I don’t know. Just wanted to say I was sorry.”
Josh glances over at Lilly, and in that brief moment of silence before she responds, he sees the essence of Lilly Caul in a single instant. Her bruised face softens. Her eyes fill with forgiveness. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything, Meg,” Lilly tells her friend. “We’re all just trying to keep our shit together.”
“He really fucked you up bad,” Megan says, pondering the ravages of Lilly’s face.
“Lilly, we gotta get going,” Josh chimes in. “Gonna be dark soon.”
The stoner kid whispers to Megan, “You gonna ask them or what?”
“Ask us what, Meg?” Lilly says.
Megan licks her lips. She looks up at Josh. “It’s totally fucked up, the way they’re treating you.”
Josh gives her a terse nod. “Appreciate it, Megan, but we really have to be taking off.”
“Take us with you.”
Josh looks at Lilly, and Lilly stares at her friend. Finally Lilly says, “Um, see, the thing is…”
“Safety in fucking numbers, man,” the stoner kid enthuses with his dry little nervous pot giggle. “We’re like totally in warrior mode—”
Megan shoots her hand up. “Scott, would you put a cork in it for two minutes.” She looks up at Josh. “We can’t stay here with these fascist assholes. Not after what happened. It’s a fucking mess here, people don’t trust each other anymore.”
Josh crosses his big arms across his barrel chest, looking at Megan. “You’ve done your share to stir things up.”
“Josh—” Lilly starts to intercede.
Megan suddenly looks down with a crestfallen expression. “No, it’s okay. I deserve that. I guess I just … I just forgot what the rules are.”
In the ensuing silence—the only sounds the wind in the trees and the squeaking noises of Bob futzing under the hood—Josh rolls his eyes. He can’t believe what he’s about to agree to. “Get your stuff,” he says finally, “and be quick about it.”
* * *
Megan and Scott ride in back. Bob drives, with Josh on the passenger side and Lilly in the narrow enclosure in the rear of the cab. The truck has a modified sleeping berth behind the front seat with smaller side doors and a flip-down upholstered bench that doubles as a bed. Lilly sits on the tattered bench seat and braces herself on the handrail, every bump and swerve coaxing a stabbing pain in her ribs.
She can see the tree line on either side of the road darkening as they drive down the winding access road that leads out of the orchards, the shadows of late afternoon lengthening, the temperature plummeting. The truck’s noisy heater fights a losing battle against the chill. The air in the cab smells of stale liquor, smoke, and body odors. Through the vents, the scent of tobacco fields and rotting fruit—the musk of a Georgia autumn—is faintly discernible, a warning to Lilly, a harbinger of cutting loose from civilization.
She starts looking for walkers in the trees—every shadow, every dark place a potential menace. The sky is void of planes or birds of any species, the heavens as cold, dead, and silent as a vast gray glacier.
They make their way onto Spur 362—the main conduit that cuts through Meriwether County—as the sun sinks lower on the horizon. Due to the proliferation of wrecks and abandoned cars, Bob takes it nice and easy, keeping the truck down around thirty-five miles an hour. The two-lane turns blue-gray in the encroaching dusk, the twilight spreading across the rolling hills of white pine and soybeans.
“What’s the plan, captain?” Bob asks Josh after they’ve put a mile and a half behind them.
“Plan?” Josh lights a cigar and rolls down the window. “You must be mistaking me for one of them battlefield commanders you used to sew up in Iraq.”
“I was never in Iraq,” Bob says. He has a flask between his legs. He sneaks a sip. “Did a nickel’s worth in Afghanistan, and to be honest with ya, that place is looking better and better to me.”
“All I can tell ya is, they told me to get outta town, and that’s what I’m doin’.”
They pass a crossroads, a sign that says FILBURN ROAD, a dusty, desolate farm path lined with ditches, running between two tobacco fields. Josh makes note of it and starts thinking about the wisdom of being on the open road after dark. He starts to say, “I’m startin’ to think, though, maybe we shouldn’t stray too far from—”
“Josh!” Lilly’s voice pierces the rattling drone of the cab. “Walkers—look!”
Josh realizes that she’s pointing at the distant highway ahead of them, at a point maybe five hundred yards away. Bob slams on the brakes. The truck skids, throwing Lilly against the seat. Sharp pain like a jagged piece of glass slices through her ribs. The muffled thump of Megan and Scott slamming into the firewall in back penetrates the cab.
“Son of a buck!” Bob grips the steering wheel with weathered, wrinkled hands, his knuckles turning white with pressure as the truck idles noisily. “Son of a five-pointed buck!”
Josh sees the cluster of zombies in the distance, at least forty or fifty of them—maybe more, the twilight can play tricks—swarming around an overturned school bus. From this distance, it looks as though the bus has spilled clumps of wet clothing, through which the dead are sorting busily. But it quickly becomes clear the lumps are human remains. And the walkers are feeding.
And the victims are children.
“We could just ram our way through ’em,” Bob ventures.
“No … no,” Lilly says. “You serious?”
“We could go around ’em.”
“I don’t know.” Josh tosses the cigar through the vent, his pulse quickening. “Them ditches on either side are steep, could roll us over.”
“What do you suggest?”
“What do you have in the way of shells for that squirrel gun you got back there?”
Bob lets out a tense breath. “Got one box of pigeon shot, 25-grain, about a million years old. What about that peashooter?”
“Just what’s in the cylinder, I think there’s five rounds left and that’s it.”
Bob glances in the rearview mirror. Lilly sees his deeply lined eyes sparking with panic. Bob is looking at Lilly when he says, “Thoughts?”
Lilly says, “Okay, so even if we take out most of them, the noise is gonna draw a swarm. You ask me, I say we avoid them altogether.”
Right then, a muffled thudding noise makes Lilly jump. Her ribs twinge as she twists around. In the narrow little window on the back wall of the cab, Megan’s pale, anxious face hovers. She pounds her palm on the glass and mouths the words What the fuck?
“Hold on! It’s okay! Just hold on!” Lilly yells through the glass, then turns to Josh. “Whaddaya think?”
Josh looks out his window at the long, rust-dimpled mirror. In the oblong reflection, he sees the lonely crossroads about three hundred yards back, barely visible in the dying light. “Back up,” he says.
Bob looks at him. “Say what?”
“Back up … hurry. We’re gonna take that side road back there.”
Bob jacks the lever into reverse and ste
ps on it. The truck lurches.
The engine whines, the gravitational tug pulling everybody forward.
Bob bites his lower lip as he wrestles the steering wheel, using the side mirror to guide him, the truck careening backward, the front end fishtailing, the gears screaming. The rear end approaches the crossroads.
Bob locks up the brakes and Josh slams into his seat as the truck’s rear end skids off the far shoulder of the two-lane, tangling with a knot of wild dogwood, cattails, and mayapple, sending up a cloud of leaves and debris. No one hears the shuffling sounds of something dead stirring behind the scrub brush.
No one hears the faint scrape of the dead thing lumbering out of the foliage and clamping its dead fingers around the king cab’s rear bumper until it’s too late.
* * *
Inside the rear camper compartment, each of them tumbling to the floor in the violent pitching motions of the truck, each of them giggling hysterically, Megan and Scott are oblivious to the zombie now attached to the running board in the rear. As the Dodge Ram slams into drive and blasts down the perpendicular dirt road, they each climb back onto their makeshift seats fashioned out of peach crates, each still giggling furiously.
The air inside the cramped camper is blue from the haze of an entire bowl of sativa weed, which Scott fired up ten minutes ago. He’s been conserving his stash, nursing it, dreading the inevitable day he would run out and would have to figure out how to grow it in the sandy clay.
“You just farted when you fell,” Scott chortles at Megan, his eyes already dreamy and blistered with a major buzz humming behind his eyes.
“I most certainly did not,” she counters in her uncontrollable giggle, trying to balance herself on the crate. “That was my fucking shoe scraping the fucking floor.”
The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury Page 7