“Yeah. But. There’s no blood. Right?” Ash glances over her shoulder at the kids, still reticent to utter aloud the graphic, grisly truth. “There would be blood. Wouldn’t there?”
Lilly shrugs nervously. “It’s a dark hood, and it’s a long way off.”
She looks up at the rearview. In the reflection, she sees the tightly packed seats, and the rapt faces staring as though caught in a dream from which they can’t awaken. Some of the kids finally look away, chewing their nails, looking as though they’re trying to wish the thing out of existence, as if ignoring it might actually make it go away.
Lilly draws her pistol and holds it at the ready, both hands cradling the grip, hammer back, finger on the trigger, safety off, one round in the chamber. In her peripheral vision, she catches glimpses of roamers on the edges of town, tattered silhouettes milling about the trees to the west and the east, coming across the access road. They’re heading this way, drawn to the noise of the engine and the smell of living flesh. Lilly grasps the door handle, pauses, turns to Ash, and says, “I’m going to shoot him down.”
“No, Lilly … wait. Don’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the noise of the—” Ash abruptly falls silent, her eyes widening as she gazes up at the dead body hanging in space.
Lilly looks up.
In the weakening light, the hanging man has started to twitch. The hooded head begins to loll and jerk. The man’s fingers curl and clench and claw at the air, the body outlined in a halo of golden, dusky radiance.
The time it takes for a person to turn from death to the ravenous state of the walking dead varies greatly from individual to individual, and Lilly Caul has seen more people turn than she cares to even admit. She has seen it take mere minutes, and has seen one man lie in state for nearly an hour before the spasms of the plague shivered through him. She has almost grown inured to the process, the strange electrical impulses that seem to flick in the joints and the muscles at the outset, that ragged breathing that follows, the moment the eyes pop open to reveal wormy cataracts. But this time, in this bizarre context, in the fading light of the sunset, the change that comes over the hanging man seems alien, macabre … and just plain grotesque.
Lilly reaches for the driver’s-side door and starts to say something else when the hooded shroud begins to slip off the hanging man’s head. Nudged off-kilter by the convulsive, awkward clawing of the fingers, as well as the jerking movements of the body, the hood falls away and reveals the face underneath.
Lilly stares. Even from this distance, she can see that the victim was formerly a twenty-something young man, fit, dark complexioned, maybe Hispanic. She can see that he’s slender and sinewy, his skin weathered and sunbaked. All of this gets very little in the way of a reaction, though, despite the fact that the gentleman was obviously executed against his will, very likely as some kind of statement.
The fact is, Lilly does not recognize this former prisoner of the Cuban government—this once brave, stalwart, loyal friend of David Stern. In his undead state, Rafael Machado has the same milky, lifeless, amphibious eyes as thousands and thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of walkers that have crossed Lilly’s path.
But none of that matters right now because Lilly hears a familiar baritone voice calling out behind her, rising over the white noise of crickets.
“Ashley Lynn Duart?” The voice is calm, authoritative, in fact almost bored, like a state trooper asking for someone’s license. “At this time, I would ask all of your people, as well as yourself, to kindly throw every last one of your weapons out the windows of your vehicle.”
EIGHTEEN
People in the armed services—as well as law enforcement officers, hostage negotiators, and first responders—all agree that the most difficult kind of subject to neutralize is the one with a mental illness. When dealing with a sane adversary, one can operate on a set of reliable expectations. Past performance does guarantee a sort of predictable series of outcomes. The enemy will fight to survive … up to a point. They will take as few chances as possible, listen to reason, and generally exhibit behavior based on human nature and logic. But the insane will act on their scrambled, magical thinking, which makes encounters exceedingly problematic. Does one treat the crazy as one would treat a rabid dog? Put them down as fast and hard as possible? Or should one keep them talking, keep them distracted?
All of this crosses Lilly’s mind in the flicker of an instant as she carefully looks out at the side mirror and registers the tableau reflecting back at her.
Across the street, on the roof of a rusty semitrailer, Spencer-Lee Dryden stands proudly in the waning blue glow of twilight, a 9-millimeter semiauto in each hand, his ruined face glistening grotesquely, his exposed rictus of teeth gleaming. He wears a Kevlar flak vest over his denim chambray shirt.
Two people kneel, gagged, hands tied behind their backs, in front of him—David Stern on the left, Norma Sutters on the right—the wind tossing their ragged, blood-soaked clothing. The sight of these battered hostages sends a momentary jolt of relief through Lilly. She had assumed that both of these people were dead. But her relief is instantly squelched by the 9-millimeter muzzle pressing against the back of each head. Their faces are bruised and lacerated, but their eyes—each pair glittering with tears—reveal their shame and rage in equal parts.
Every few seconds, David Stern shifts his gaze from the metal of the trailer’s roof to the poor soul hanging from the cable across the street.
The horrific grief in David Stern’s eyes is visible even from Lilly’s vantage point fifty yards away. She can see the trail of a tear on his gray, grizzled face, absorbed by the cloth of his gag. Lilly has no idea who the young dark-skinned hanging man is—or was—but from the look of David’s expression, the two of them had been friends.
This revelation is merely one in a series of synapses firing in Lilly’s brain right now, a string of instantaneous reactions bombarding her mind. She turns to Ash and calmly says, “We’re gonna do what he says.”
Ash swallows. “You sure?”
From the backseat, Bethany Dupree says, “Lilly, I don’t think we should—”
“No talking!” Lilly rolls down her window. “From this point on, do exactly what I say!” She slowly, carefully sticks her Ruger out the window, barrel pointed down. “Exactly what I say.” She drops the weapon to the ground. In the dusty silence, the gun lands with a metallic thunk. “Trust me, it’s the only way we’re gonna get out of this alive.” She speaks in a flat monotone. “Throw everything out … right now … everybody … knives, guns, everything.”
Dryden’s voice echoes like a pistol shot over the gantries: “That’s an excellent start! Now, if we could see the rest of it, that would be great!”
The others roll down their windows and toss their weapons out of the car. The older children mostly have crowbars, machetes, and knives. Ash throws out the AR-15, a Glock, and a .38-caliber short-barrel. She also pitches her machete, a twelve-inch Randall knife, and even her extra carton of high-caliber ammo. The box hits the ground and spills bullets like marbles across the weeds.
“That’s awesome!” the voice praises them from the roof of the semi. “Now, I’d like to ask you all to very slowly open all the doors, and I’d love it if you could all get out of the Caddy.”
Nobody in the Escalade moves. Lilly glances over her shoulder and gives the children a nod. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. I’ll get us out of this. Right now, though, let’s just do what he says.” Sweat trickles down from her scalp and into her eye, and it burns. She wipes her face. She sniffs back the pain, bracing herself. “Nobody give him a reason to do anything aggressive. Don’t make him mad, and we’ll be okay. I promise.”
Bethany looks at her. “What’s gonna happen to us, Lilly?”
Ash chimes in: “Bethany, just do what Lilly says. It’s going to be okay.”
The friendly baritone voice from outside echoes off the clouds. “Excuse me, kids
. I’m gonna need you all to do what I say. Now, let’s all very carefully get out of the vehicle, okay? C’mon, gang. Let’s all just calmly get out with our hands up.”
Lilly’s flesh crawls. She looks at the others. “I’m gonna figure it out.” She clicks her door open. “I won’t let him hurt you.” She looks at them. “Cross my heart. C’mon, let’s do what he says … everybody out.”
* * *
“The thing to remember here is, I ain’t fond of hurting people, and I never was, not even a little bit. That’s the Lord’s honest truth, folks. There’s been far too much tragedy already, way too much death. We are steeped in death. We’re soaking in it.”
The tall man with the burned face speaks in a soft monotone as he leads the group of eleven children and four adults down the middle of the street, past the ruined buildings of Woodbury’s long-abandoned business district, past the demolished George Washington elementary school and boarded storefronts of merchant row, toward some unknown destination. He walks behind the prisoners, a sawed-off shotgun in each hand. He has rigged the barrels to remain pointed at Norma and David—the muzzles pressed against the napes of their necks, held in place with rope and duct tape—to ensure that nobody does anything heroic.
The children trundle slowly along in a tight cluster, elbow to elbow, with Ash and Lilly on either side of the gaggle.
Lilly jerks at a noise to her left as a flock of bats takes flight from the gutters of the old cafe, the creatures spiraling up across the darkening sky like inkblots, then coursing out across the heavens in a billowing black carpet of specks. Night has begun to roll in, the sunset almost completely extinguished, the final glowing embers smoldering away to nothing behind the trees. The air smells of must and a cold front moving in, and the indigo light makes the rubble of the devastated buildings glow with an eerie luminous quality.
Lilly keeps limping along with her gaze forward, waiting for the right moment to strike, hyperalert and seeing everything all at once in her peripheral vision. The duct tape that was hastily wound around her sinewy wrists is starting to loosen from the pressure of her flexing. She pretends to obediently trudge along, but she is now working the tape down the length of her hand, flexing and relaxing, flexing and relaxing. She almost has it off, and she keeps trying to catch Ash’s eye.
“Hell, I never dreamed I would lose my dear, sweet Sally,” the burned man drones on behind her, the deep baritone breaking a little, the emotion choking him. “My Long Tall Sally … she meant the world to me, and now look. She’s gone. A crying shame is what it is. She only wanted to be a mother in this life, a good caring mom, and the Good Lord denied her even that simple and profound pleasure. That’s why she was such a good mother to all our kids, our babies, our big ol’ extended family. Sally was a good mother to all them babies … and now she’s gone … just … gone.” He notices something important up ahead and gestures with a nod. “Y’all keep moving, now—through this intersection—it’s not much farther. Almost there.”
Without making a big deal out of it, Lilly finally slips her hands out of the duct tape shackle. She keeps her wrists behind her back as she walks along, keeps her hands together so nobody can see what she’s done. She will go for the shotguns first. Her pulse quickens, her heart thumping painfully in her chest. She will spin around and nudge the barrel of the closest 12 gauge up away from David Stern and directly into the face of the tall man. A trickle of sweat runs down the right side of Lilly’s face. She’s drenched in perspiration and terrified that Dryden will notice. Her move will have to be quick and definitive—executed before the tall man can react—and it will all depend on Ash. If Lilly can catch Ash’s eye, and coordinate a combined counterattack, then maybe, just maybe, they can get out of this alive.
“The world has gone over to the realm of darkness, my friends,” Dryden is saying now, leading them along like a demented tour guide. “It is hell on earth. The thousand-year reign. Most folks, shoot, they just figure if you can’t beat the devil, join him. You know what I’m saying? Wallow in it. Kill, kill, kill. Before somebody kills you. And if that’s playing into Satan’s hand, then so be it. But I don’t believe that at all. Not at all. All I want to do is protect the children. Protect them at all costs. If that means locking them up, then, well … that’s just what I’m gonna do … because you children are the only hope for us. You are the only future we got. And that’s why I’m going to protect you young’uns by any means necessary.”
Lilly notices a dull gleam of concertina wire in the darkness ahead of them, just past Dromedary Street, a ring of barbed wire about twenty-five feet in diameter in the middle of the street.
“Now, if that puts somebody diametrically opposed to that objective in the middle of my path,” Dryden is saying, “I’m going to deal with them in a decisive manner. But the fact is, I never want anybody to get hurt. Even that young Mexican gentleman. Rafael was his name, I believe? I never wanted to do him any harm. Especially after what he did. Damn heroic of him, if I say so myself.”
A few inches away from Dryden, yoked to the muzzle of a shotgun, David Stern looks down, his expression crumbling with sadness.
“This day and age,” Dryden continues jabbering, “it’s the hardest thing to do … to die well. But the Mexican did it. He did. No one can take that away from him. You understand? Consider what he did, folks, that’s all I’m saying.”
The big man pauses, as though for dramatic effect, and Lilly tries to ignore the tingling in the base of her spine, the tightness in her chest, the tension in her neck in the moments before she makes her play.
* * *
The superficial facts of how Rafael Rodrigo Machado died—his final thoughts, his willingness to sacrifice himself—would forever be lost to postplague history. But even in her heightened state, Lilly could read between the lines of Dryden’s account. She had never met Rafael Machado, but she just knew intuitively by the forlorn expression on David’s face that the two men had been friends, and perhaps that is why the Brazilian died the way he did.
Dryden tells the tale with clinical detachment. When he launched his surprise attack on the town, and the bullets started flying, Rafael and David accidentally got separated. Dryden went after the older man, chasing David through the narrow side streets and across the ruins of Woodbury’s town square. With superior firepower and drug-fueled stamina, Dryden managed to corner the older man in the parking lot behind the courthouse. David was trapped, blocked off on three sides by the scorched wreckage of overturned trucks. Out of ammo, out of energy, and stubborn to the last, David fell to his knees and launched a salvo of obscenities at the invader. He knew his time was up. He knew he was about to die. But he refused to lie down.
Dryden took aim, when all at once, a loud crash and a scream surprised him off his left flank, and he spun around just in time to see a dark figure burst out of a boarded window in the rear of the courthouse. At first, Dryden thought it was a walker. He instinctively fired at the creature, the bullet barely missing its right leg, when he realized it was the Brazilian.
In a blur, Rafael hurtled across the lot to where David lay. Dryden emptied half his ammo magazine into the air around the two men as Rafael threw his body in front of David, shielding the older man, taking the brunt of the fusillade in his back. Half a dozen direct hits pierced his kidney and the lower part of his spine but he remained crouched in front of his friend, eyes locked, a strange sort of resolve crossing over his face.
Something was whispered between the two men that Dryden would never know.
“Pretty impressive way to go out, you ask me,” Dryden is saying now as he leads the group toward the fencing of barbed wire in the middle of Dromedary Street. “I decided the old man should live in honor of his young buddy’s final act. It was the least I could do.”
In the deep blue twilight, Lilly gets a better view of the crater as they slowly approach.
A fence of razor wire has been haphazardly installed around the massive hole in the street like a barr
ier in a public garden. A lone chair—a battered old piece of lawn furniture—sits at one end of the fence. The mysterious crater plunges down into darkness as though a hydrogen bomb has been dropped on the town and this huge pit is what remains of ground zero.
“Truth is,” the big man continues, “even before this whole mess started, I never wanted anybody in my district to suffer. Even the ones we had to deal with harshly, I didn’t want them to be in pain for any longer than was necessary. And believe me, some of them boys deserved to be severely punished. I remember this one gentleman, member of the Chicago Outfit, came down to Atlanta to run the slots at the Riverboat Casino, open some new houses of ill repute, grab some vending machine action and such. I made it known that I would stay out of his way as long as his crimes were of a victimless nature. But then I caught wind he was snatchin’ little girls off the street and putting them to work in the bawdy houses down on Piedmont Road. We’re talking children no older than twelve or thirteen years old. What I wanted to do to that fella … well, there are children present here … so just suffice it to say, I went easy on him. I made sure it was quick and painless.” He sees that the children are approaching the edge of the crater, and he signals to them with a little whistle. “Okay, kids, that’s far enough. Hold up for a second.”
The group comes to an awkward stop at the edge of the pit, the gathering darkness drawing down on the town like a funeral shroud.
From this proximity, Lilly can see down into the pit. She can see the crater walls plunging at least forty feet down to the soggy earthen floor, and a stepladder jury-rigged to one side by bungee cords. Apparently formed by an immense cave-in following some great explosion, the walls are made up of huge stone fragments of pavement and slimy mortar chunks of sewer tunnel. The base of the pit spans a diameter of at least thirty feet, and somebody—Lilly’s assuming it’s Dryden—has unfurled an old rug across its floor and positioned a couple mattresses along one side.
The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury Page 23