Coming up fast behind the Kodiak is Burt Stankowski’s chopped and channeled van, his horses rearing up with alarm as they swerve to avoid the wreckage. The van goes into a wild spin. Burt tries to pull out of the skid through sheer brute strength, madly tugging on the reins, when the entire van suddenly tips, yanking the horses off their feet and slamming the modified vehicle down on its side. The contraption as well as the horses slide fifty yards on the wet turf, throwing Burt a hundred feet across the field, slamming him into a tangled deadfall, the impact killing him instantly.
Two other vehicles make futile attempts to swerve away from the overturned Kodiak and the ruined van. The first one, a small moving truck with a machine gun placed on its roof, sideswipes the Kodiak, then goes into a spin, the driver overcompensating, sending the entire truck into a roll that rips two of its wheels off, crushes the occupants, and deposits the battered remains in an adjacent dry creek bed. The second collision involves a huge Chevy Silverado occupied by three gunmen, the driver of which panics and locks up the brakes, sending the vehicle fishtailing out of control. The Chevy careens sideways across a flooded patch of soybeans, slams through a fence, and throws each of its passengers through the air to their doom. The truck finally comes to rest in a crumpled, smoking heap, upside down in a stand of tall weeds, its wheels still wobbling furiously.
Simultaneously, three other vehicles involved in the chase narrowly avoid disaster. On one flank, the Escalade, with Ash at the wheel and five children huddled in the backseats, manages to swerve wide enough to skim past the hurling, out-of-control trucks and vans. On the opposite flank, nearly three hundred yards to the east, the souped-up Airstream—pulled by the massive crew cab—swings wide enough to hurl across a dirt road and narrowly circumvent the disastrous chain reaction.
The third conveyance to survive the chain reaction is the huge horse-drawn flatcar commandeered by Eve Betts, with Boone on the running board, and four children cowering in the rear, shielded by boxes and holding on to each other. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Eve is able to veer to the east quickly enough to elude danger, the sudden lurching motion sends most of the Ikea treasures lashed to the trailer’s rear deck hurling off the ledge. Packaged foods, solar appliances, bedding, rakes, shovels, bags of potting soil, small generators, and various and sundry lamps and fixtures go tumbling across the sodden field, scattering the landscape with the remnants of Lilly’s hopes and dreams for a civilized future.
* * *
In the chaotic seconds that follow, Lilly pushes her way through the modified pickup’s hatch and takes her place on the bench seat next to Tommy, her pulse racing as she sees what they’re up against now. She has no time to experience the shock of losing another close friend, Burt Stankowski, in the blink of an eye. She can’t spend one second absorbing the trauma of seeing Burt’s van collapse, doubtlessly crushing and instantly killing the Stack women who were riding in the rear. Lilly doesn’t have the luxury of pausing for one moment to grieve or cry or scream in anger or express any emotion whatsoever. All she can do now is tamp down her panic and remain in that zone of hyperfocus as she gazes at the rapidly disintegrating path ahead of her.
The sight of the megaherd is almost spellbinding, a wave of dead from the east, and a wave from the west, converging in the open field like opposing tides of oily black ocean crashing up against each other. At this distance, the nuances of each walker are a blur, the figures as small as tin soldiers lumbering drunkenly into a reenactment of some forgotten, archaic battle. But the closer the pickup gets, the more Lilly can see the infinite variations. She can see the older ones with their peeling, mottled flesh, their sunken faces and tattered Sunday go-to-meeting suits. She can see the ones snatched from their youth, many of them missing a limb or a portion of their face, their iridescent eyes like reflectors in the sun. The air streaming past the pickup’s open cab reeks of death-stench and rot and ammonia. It smells like the end of the world, and Lilly tries to drive it from her senses.
She turns to Tommy and starts to give him his next order when she hears the tiny walkie-talkie crackling noisily. Through bursts of static, the voice of Ash can be heard, screaming something barely decipherable through the noise like, “Lilly!—you got—on the—look out—it’s going for—!!”
Meanwhile, Tommy Dupree is gripping the reins, steering the horses directly toward the multitudes with white-knuckle intensity, his eyes huge with terror. “Lilly, what’s the plan? What do we do now?!”
“Stay on course until I tell you otherwise!” Lilly hears Ash’s voice garbled and drowned by static but can’t find the walkie-talkie. She can hear the squawking but doesn’t see it on the seat. She searches the floor. Her hand brushes a plastic device under the seat. The toy two-way must have fallen there during the tumult of the last few minutes, and now Lilly scoops it up and presses the button. “Ash, say again! I did not copy that!”
Static crackles. “Lilly, you got a walker on your pickup!”
“What?—What do you mean?!”
Through the static: “You! Have! A! Walker! On! The! Back! Of—!!”
There’s no need for her to finish. The cold, pale, palsied hand of a large male corpse has already thrust its way into the cab through Lilly’s open window. Lilly rears back but not before the blackened, greasy, untrimmed fingernails hook themselves onto her Georgia Tech T-shirt.
NINE
For generations, urban legends have maintained that human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death. Images of crone-like ghouls with dagger-sized nails have populated horror movies for years, but the truth is, the human body does not produce more hair or nails after expiring. Perhaps the myth began because pathologists have long studied the phenomenon of “apparent growth” through desiccation. In the hours following death, the skin loses moisture and recedes, exposing more hair and making nails seem longer.
The young male walker that has managed to latch on to the rear of the horse-drawn pickup—and now, somehow, has managed to inch along the ledge of the cargo bay in the wind and the shifting gravitational forces of the chase—is recently deceased. Maybe only days have passed since the thing turned. Its long hair is still fairly shiny, its flesh fairly smooth and intact, its beard still dark. From the looks of its denim vest and gang insignias, it was formerly a member of some biker gang. Its nails are so long—the edges as sharp as pruning shears—that Lilly accidentally tears half her T-shirt off in the process of jerking away.
She gets her hands on the Ruger just as the large male goes for her jugular. She kicks out at the thing, driving it back toward the open window. Yellow teeth snap at the air centimeters from her ankle. She raises the gun and squeezes off a shot.
The pistol just clicks impotently. Wrong gun! The words blaze in neon in Lilly’s brain as she strikes at the creature now with the empty pistol, using the steel barrel as a bludgeon, slamming it repeatedly into the thing’s skull. Her anger fuels the force of the blows. But this walker is fresh, its bones and membranes still sturdy enough to withstand the impacts of the blunt edge. It claws at her, engulfing her in its black stench.
“MOVE!”
Tommy’s voice gets her attention, and she ducks down just as the boy fires a single blast from the loaded Ruger. The thing’s head snaps back, the entry wound drilling a hole above the left brow, sending a bloom of pink mist out the exit wound in its scalp, the blood and fluids aerating in the wind.
The thing plummets into the slipstream, tumbling back into the wind and oblivion.
Once again, Tommy has taken his eyes off the path ahead at the most inopportune time, and now, just as he turns back to the team of horses, he sees the dark object looming to his immediate left and lets out a yelp that sounds more like an animal than a human vocalization. Lilly sees what he sees, and she grabs the gun from his grasp. She aims it at the horses, and she starts shooting. But unbeknown to her, the die has already been cast. It’s already too late to save the animals.
* * *
“Oh Jesus!�
�� Ashley Lynn Duart, behind the wheel of the careering Escalade, sees at least four moving cadavers latching on to Lilly’s flailing horse team. The creatures have almost accidentally fastened themselves onto the horse team, their dead limbs tangling up in the bridle and lead lines, each monster swept up by the inertia of the moving contraption. Now the creatures have begun to feed—even while the stalwart animals continue pulling the modified pickup—all of which deteriorates into a frenzy of blood and fur and screams melding into one horrible moving nightmare.
“Lilly, there’s a bridge up ahead! I know this area!” Ash howls into the walkie-talkie. “Try to make it before the horses are lost! Can you hear me?!”
Ash listens to the static, no reply. She sees Lilly up ahead in the passenger seat of the pickup, firing futilely at the attackers. “Lilly!” Ash tries again, yelling into the plastic device. “Can you hear me?” No response. “Lilly! Grab the radio!” Only static crackles out of the cheap piece of Japanese manufacturing. “Goddamn it!”
She throws the walkie on the seat next to her. In her rearview she can see her five passengers in back like little nesting dolls squeezed into the cavities between the boxes—Bobby, Chelsea, and Trudy Quinn, and the two Nesbit kids, Cindy and Teddy—all crouched down in defensive postures, a few of them in the jump-seat area way in back, a few on the floor of the second row. Most of them appear petrified, bug-eyed by the turmoil of the chase. In a weird compartment of Ashley Duart’s memory, they remind her of the “duck and cover” training films of the Cold War era. She remembers those cheesy movies in which the futility of guarding against a nuclear attack is ignored in favor of ridiculous safeguards such as children quickly scurrying under their school desks.
“Kids, listen to me,” Ash says to them. The Escalade has gained ground, pulling up to within a car length of Lilly’s pickup, which is now faltering, slowing down at an alarming rate. “I’m going to need your help, all of you, do you understand?”
The children all nod, and then look at each other, and then look back at Ash.
Ash sees that Lilly’s pickup has gotten bogged down even further in the soggy earth, her horses faltering, the walkers like giant leeches on the animals’ backs, the blood spurting and swirling up into the wind from the feeding frenzy. The horses toss their heads and emit horrible noises in their death throes, somehow continuing to drag the pickup along, albeit slower and slower.
Ash hollers back at the kids, “I’m going to need all of you to start throwing boxes out through the back window! Go ahead! Throw it all out! All the boxes! Quickly, kids, DO IT NOW!!”
Nine-year-old Bobby Quinn, his little freckled face furrowed with intensity and emotion, starts heaving crates out the Escalade’s open tailgate window, the other children taking his cue and starting to form a sort of bucket brigade, handing the older boy box after box after box. In her side mirror, Ash can see the payload tumbling out now, scattering across the earth behind the moving SUV in clouds of dust and soggy debris.
Ash turns back to the windshield and sees Lilly, off to the left, firing wildly at the creatures swarming her team, taking one of them down. The remaining three keep burrowing into the horse flesh like gigantic ticks, bringing about an ignominious end to the faithful, steadfast team of draft horses.
In her side mirror, Ash sees the madman in the Airstream’s front crew cab coming up fast behind Eve Betts, the blunt barrel of what looks like an Uzi protruding out the crew cab’s passenger window. Boone, riding on the flatbed with the other children, rises up every few seconds behind the cover of cargo pallets and intermittently squeezes off volleys of high-caliber rounds from his AR-15, some of the bullets ricocheting in great florettes of sparks off the top corners of the Airstream, making the silver beast swerve wildly.
For just an instant, Ash notices the massive interconnected chain of trailers about a quarter mile behind the Airstream. Something’s wrong with the driver of the massive Kenworth cab pulling the trailers—even from this distance, it’s fairly obvious there’s a problem—the entire train of vehicles weaving wildly now for no apparent reason, the Kenworth’s exhaust stack issuing huge plumes of black fumes into the air.
Ash scoops up the walkie-talkie and presses the button. “Lilly, can you hear me?”
Through the hissing noise of static a series of garbled words and phrases: “Fuck!—Tommy!—Close the hatch!—Go ahead, Ash!”
“Lilly, I’m going try to get close enough for you to transfer the kids over to the Escalade!”
Through the speaker, Lilly’s voice says, “Okay, fine, whatever, but you better fucking hurry, because we’re gonna be hip-deep in walkers in about ten seconds.”
“Stand by!”
Ash swerves toward the hobbling pickup, the feeding frenzy on the horses now attracting more walkers, the megaherd pressing in from all sides. The scent of the kill, the dwindling shrieks of the animals as they expire, the river of blood now flowing in immense sheets across the soggy turf around the gruesome orgy—all of it sends out a beacon to the throngs of undead. The entire megaherd seems to be shifting toward the stalled pickup like a storm front moving in.
The Escalade roars up to the powerless truck, slamming into the mob of walkers swarming the remains of dead horses. The impact catapults half a dozen walkers, torsos and limbs and decapitated heads hurling through the air, careening into the oncoming horde, knocking over dozens more like dominoes.
* * *
Eve Betts—behind the reins of her massive flatcar trailer—approaches the pickup and the Escalade far too quickly to stop.
The flatbed goes into a skid on the grease of the blood-soaked, flooded Georgia clay.
Everything starts happening all at once, too fast for Eve to delineate or react in her frantic state. She hears the rumbling engine of the Ford F250 pulling the Airstream trailer coming up fast behind her, the collective din of the dead rising like a lunatic chorus from every direction. She sees the vast soybean fields ahead of her darkening with so many walkers of so many shapes and sizes and degrees of mortification that the very landscape itself looks as though it’s sick with the plague.
Overreacting, Eve Betts yanks the reins a little too sharply in the opposite direction of the skid, and the horses lunge suddenly, making a virtual ninety-degree turn. The abrupt shift in gravity sends the entire flatbed hurling onto its side.
Eve is lifted out of her seat and slammed against the ground so hard she instantly loses consciousness. The remaining stacks of crates and boxes lashed to the deck have also broken free and now spill across ten square acres of untilled land.
At the same time, Martin Haywood Boone, Eve’s faithful tail gunner and de facto boyfriend, is also thrown clear of the wreck. He soars thirty feet through the air, his gun flying out of his grasp, his arms pinwheeling wildly, his body arcing out over the hordes.
He lands hard on a leprous patch of bare ground, hard enough to crack his skull open on a mossy stone. The closest walkers descend on him immediately, digging into him with the fervor of gigantic army ants. The man’s last conscious thought—a fact that will soon come into play on this tumultuous afternoon—is a strange kind of gratitude, a thankfulness for a life well lived, and relief that his final act before his death may very possibly save the lives of the children huddled still on the rear deck of that overturned flatbed. Boone’s eyes close for the last time as the monsters feast on his midsection.
The man dies at peace with the fact that he had enough foresight to make sure that each and every one of those kids was strapped securely to U-bolts embedded in that deck.
* * *
Sally Dryden has lost most of her eyesight, can’t hear much with her left ear, and finds her thoughts jumbled up into a knot of regrets and inarticulate rage, but somehow she manages to stay semiupright, slumped behind the steering wheel of the massive Kenworth power plant pulling the chain of campers. The hollow-point bullet that plinked through her windshield almost by mistake fifteen minutes ago—a shot meant for the marauding truck in fron
t of her—had stung her just above her sternum.
She had gasped as though slapped, and then had glanced down at the tiny coin of blood, a scarlet tear tracking down her cleavage and soaking the prototype patches on each pocket, as if she were outside of her own body. There was very little pain considering the fact that the bullet had lodged itself in her chest cavity not far from her heart. It merely felt as though she had to cough and couldn’t muster one, her breathing a little labored, her ribs panging a bit as she sucked in air. She had reached for the two-way immediately, at first meaning to contact Spencer-Lee and tell him the bad news, but something had stopped her.
She loathes delivering bad news to Spencer-Lee. He is so busy now, trying to retrieve his extended family from the clutches of these mongrels. How could she bother him with something so trivial in the grand scheme of things? It’s a minor injury. She’ll most likely be fine. Most likely. No need to mention it.
So she goes on driving, roaring along behind the Airstream, pulling the remaining families still in protective custody, all of them adults, no children left, the Weimann couple in the second trailer, their elderly grandparents in the third, the Fordhams in the last trailer. Even after her vision has started to blur. She goes on. Even after the dizziness has coursed over her, and her arms have gone numb, and her ears have started to ring … she keeps the pedal floored, keeps the big Kenworth cab booming along.
Now she realizes she probably should have said something because the throbbing pain in her chest is enormous, like a sledgehammer slamming into her ribs with the regularity of a metronome. She reaches for the two-way radio but it’s not on the seat next to her. The seat next to her is soaked with her blood.
With clumsy fingers, Sally Dryden searches the sticky upholstery, her vision going in and out of focus. She can’t find the damn radio. What did she do with it? She must contact Spencer-Lee immediately. She can’t breathe anymore. Her lungs have caught fire. She coughs and heaves and coughs some more, her bloody spittle stippling the dashboard. She tries to see through the windshield, and everything slows down in her failing vision.
The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury Page 13