“But what about—”
“I said let her go!”
The wild-eyed black kid shoves Megan toward her comrades, and Megan stumbles for a moment, nearly falling, but then manages to stay upright and stagger over to Bob. “What a bunch of fucking dicks!” she grumbles.
“You okay, sweetie?” Bob asks, putting his free arm around her, but not taking his eyes (or the barrel of the magnum) off the intruders.
“Assholes snuck up on me,” she says, rubbing her wrists, glowering back at them.
Bandanna Man lowers his gun and addresses Josh. “Look, we can’t take any chances these days, we didn’t know you from Adam … we’re just looking after our own.”
Unconvinced, Josh keeps the .38 beaded directly on Bandanna Man’s chest. “What does that have to do with snatching that girl outta the truck?”
“Like I said … we didn’t know how many of you we were dealing with … who she was gonna warn … we didn’t know anything.”
“You own this place?”
“No … whaddaya mean? No.”
Josh gives him a cold smile. “Then lemme make a suggestion … as to where we go from here.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s plenty of stuff left in here … why don’t y’all let us pass and you can have the rest.”
Bandanna Man turns to his gang. “Guns down, guys. Come on. Step it on back. Come on.”
Almost reluctantly the rest of the intruders comply and lower their weapons.
Bandanna Man turns back to Josh. “Name’s Martinez … I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Name’s Hamilton and it’s nice to meet you and I’d appreciate it if you’d let us pass.”
“No problema, mi amigo … but can I just make a suggestion to you before we conclude our business together?”
“I’m listening.”
“First off, is there any way you could stop pointing those guns at us?”
Josh keeps his eyes on Martinez as he lowers his gun. “Scott, Bob … go ahead … it’s okay.”
Scott puts the shotgun on his shoulder and leans against a checkout belt to listen. Bob reluctantly lowers the muzzle of the Desert Eagle, shoves it behind his belt, and keeps his arm around Megan.
Lilly sets her axe—head down—on the floor, leaning it against the pharmacy counter.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” Martinez takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh. “What I’m wondering is this. You seem like you got your head screwed on straight. You got the right to take all that merchandise outta here … but can I ask where you’re taking it?”
“Truth is, we ain’t taking it anywhere,” Josh says. “We’re getting it to go.”
“You folks living on the road?”
“What difference does it make?”
Martinez shrugs. “Look, I know you got no reason to trust me, but the way things are, folks like us … we can be mutually beneficial to each other. You know what I’m saying?”
“To be honest, no … I don’t have a fuckin’ clue as to what you’re saying.”
Martinez sighs. “Let me lay my cards on the table. We could part ways right here and now, no harm no foul, wish each other the best…”
“Sounds good to me,” Josh says.
“We got a better option, though,” the man says.
“Which is?”
“A walled-in place, just up the road, people just like you and me, trying to make a place to live.”
“Go on.”
“No more running, is what I’m saying. We secured part of a town. It ain’t much … yet. We got some walls up. Place to grow food. Generators. Heat. We definitely got room for five more.”
Josh doesn’t say anything. He looks at Lilly. He can’t read her face. She looks exhausted, scared, confused. He looks at the others. He sees Bob’s wheels turning. Scott looks at the floor. Megan stares balefully out at the intruders through tendrils of curly hair.
“Think about it, man,” Martinez goes on. “We could split up what’s left in this place and call it a day or we could join forces. We need good strong backs. If I wanted to rob you, fuck with you, mess you up … wouldn’t I have done it already? I got no reason to make trouble. Come with us, Hamilton. Whaddaya say? There’s nothing out there on the road but more shit and winter rolling in. Whaddaya say, man?”
Josh looks at Martinez for a long moment, until finally Josh says, “Give us a second.”
* * *
They gather over by the checkout counters.
“Dude, you gotta be fucking kidding me,” Megan says to Josh in a low, tense whisper. The others huddle around the big man in a semicircle. “You’re thinking about going somewhere with these scumbags?”
Josh licks his lips. “I don’t know … the more I look at these dudes, the more they look just as scared and freaked out as we are.”
Lilly chimes in. “Maybe we could just check the place out, see what it’s like.”
Bob looks at Josh. “Compared with livin’ in tents on the ground with a bunch of hotheads? How bad could it be?”
Megan groans. “Is it just me, or have you people lost your fucking minds?”
“Megan, I don’t know,” Scott says. “I’m like thinking what do we have to lose?”
“Shut up, Scott.”
“Okay, look,” Josh says, holding up a huge hand and cutting off the debate. “I don’t see any harm in following them, checking the place out. We’ll keep our guns, keep our eyes open, and we’ll decide when we see the place.” He looks at Bob, then looks at Lilly. “Cool?”
Lilly takes a deep breath. Then gives him a nod. “Yeah … cool.”
“Terrific,” Megan grumbles, following the others back toward the entrance.
* * *
It takes another hour and the combined efforts of the two groups to go through the rest of the store for heavy items required by the town. They raid the lawn and garden center and home repair for lumber, fertilizer, potting soil, seeds, hammers, and nails. Lilly senses an edgy quality to the uneasy truce between the two contingents. She keeps tabs on Martinez out of the corner of her eye, and she notices an unspoken hierarchy to the ragtag raiding party. Martinez is definitely the honcho, ruling the others with simple gestures and nods.
By the time they get Bob’s Ram and the two vehicles from the walled-in town—a panel van and flatbed truck—loaded to the gills, twilight is closing in. Martinez gets behind the wheel of the van, and tells Bob to follow along behind the flatbed … and the convoy starts out for the town.
As they wend their way out of the dusty Walmart lot and start up the access road toward the highway, Lilly sits in the back sleeper compartment, gazing through the bug-streaked windshield, as Bob concentrates on keeping up with the exhaust-belching flatbed. They pass tangles of wreckage and dense forests on either side of the farm road, behind which shadows are deepening. A fine mist of sleet rolls in on the north wind.
In the steel-gray twilight, Lilly can barely see the lead vehicle—several car lengths ahead of them—a glimpse of Martinez in the side mirror, his tattooed arm resting on the outer edge of the open window as he drives.
It could be Lilly’s imagination, but she is almost positive she sees the bandanna-clad head of Martinez turning toward his passengers, saying something, sharing some intimate tidbit, and then getting a huge reaction from his comrades.
The men are laughing hysterically.
PART 2
This Is How the World Ends
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is often interred with their bones.
—William Shakespeare
EIGHT
The convoy makes two stops on their way to the walled-in town—the first at the junction of Highways 18 and 109, where an armed sentry consults with Martinez for a moment before waving the vehicles on. A heap of human remains lies in a nearby ditch, still smoldering from a makeshift funeral pyre. They make the second stop at a roadblock near the town sign. By this point the sleet has turned to a wet sn
ow, spitting across the macadam on angular gusts, a very rare phenomenon for Georgia this early in December.
“Looks like they got some serious firepower,” Josh comments from the driver’s seat, as he waits for the two men in olive-drab camo suits and M1 rifles to finish chatting with Martinez three car lengths ahead of the Ram. Shadows thrown by the headlights obscure the distant faces as they talk, the snow swirling, the Ram’s windshield wipers beating out a sullen rhythm. Lilly and Bob remain silent and fidgety as they watch the exchange.
Full darkness has fallen, and the lack of a power grid and the bad weather give the outer rings of the town a medieval quality. Flames burn here and there in oil drums, and the signs of a recent skirmish mar the wooded vales and pine groves circling the town. In the distance the scorched rooftops, bullet-riddled trailers, and torn power lines reflect a series of past upheavals.
Josh notices Lilly studying the rust-pocked green sign up ahead, visible in the wash of headlamp beams, the signpost planted in the white, sandy earth.
WELCOME TO
WOODBURY
POPULATION 1,102
Lilly turns to Josh and says, “How are you feeling about all this?”
“Jury’s still out. But it looks like we’re about to get further orders.”
Up ahead, in luminous motes of snow passing through the headlight beams, Martinez turns away from the confab, lifts his collar, and starts trudging back toward the Ram. He walks with a purpose, but still has that congenial smile plastered over his dark features. He lifts his collar against the cold as he approaches Josh’s window.
Josh rolls down the window. “What’s the deal?”
Martinez smiles. “Gonna need you to hand over your firearms for the time being.”
Josh stares at him. “Sorry, brother, but that ain’t gonna happen.”
The convivial smile lingers. “Town rules … you know how it is.”
Josh slowly shakes his head. “Ain’t gonna happen.”
Martinez purses his lips thoughtfully, then smiles some more. “Can’t say I blame you, walking into something like this. Tell you what. Can you leave the rabbit gun in the truck for now?”
Josh lets out a sigh. “I guess we could do that.”
“And you mind keeping the sidearms tucked away? Out of sight?”
“We could do that.”
“Okay … if you want the nickel tour I could ride along with you folks. You got room for one more?”
Josh turns and gives Bob a nod. With a shrug the older man unsnaps his safety belt and gets out, then turns and squeezes into the rear enclosure next to Lilly.
Martinez comes around the passenger side and climbs into the cab. He smells of smoke and machine oil. “Take it nice and slow, cousin,” he says, wiping the moisture from his face, gesturing toward the panel van ahead of them. “Just follow the dude in the van.”
Josh gives the Ram some gas and they follow the van through the roadblock.
* * *
They bump over a series of railroad tracks and enter the town from the southeast. Lilly and Bob remain silent in the rear enclosure, as Josh scans the immediate area. To his right a busted sign reading PIGGLY IGGLY stands over a parking lot littered with dead bodies and broken glass. The grocery store is caved in on one side as though blasted by dynamite. Tall cyclone fencing, gouged and punched out in places, runs along the road known alternately as Woodbury Highway or Main Street. Grisly lumps of human carnage and twisted, scorched metal litter patches of exposed ground—the white, sandy earth practically glowing in the snowy darkness—an eerie sight reminiscent of a desert war zone smack-dab in the middle of Georgia.
“Had a pretty big dustup a few weeks ago with a flock of biters.” Martinez lights a Viceroy and opens his window a few inches. The smoke curls out into the wind-lashed snow, vanishing like ghosts. “Things got outta hand for a while, but luckily cooler heads prevailed. Gonna be taking a hard left up here in a second.”
Josh follows the van around a hairpin and down a narrower section of road.
In the dark middle distance, behind a veil of windswept sleet, the heart of Woodbury comes into view. Four square blocks of turn-of-the-century brick buildings and power lines crowd a central intersection of merchants, wood-frame homes, and apartment buildings. Much of it is laced with cyclone fences and idle construction sites that appear to be recent additions. Josh remembers when they used to call these places “wide spots in the road.”
Woodbury’s width seems to extend about half a dozen blocks in all directions, with larger public areas carved out of the wooded wetlands to the west and north. Some of the rooftop chimneys and vent stacks sprout columns of thick black smoke, either from generator exhaust or woodstoves and fireplaces. Most of the street lamps are dark, but some glow in the darkness, apparently running on emergency juice.
As the convoy approaches the center of town, Josh notices the van pulling up to the edge of a construction site. “Been working on the wall for months,” Martinez explains. “Pretty near got two square blocks completely protected, and we plan on expanding it—moving the wall back farther and farther as we go.”
“Not a bad idea,” Josh mutters, almost under his breath, as he ponders the massive high wall of wooden timbers and planks, cannibalized pieces of cabin logs, siding, and two-by-fours, at least fifteen feet tall, extending along the edge of Jones Mill Road. Portions of the barricade still bare the scars of the recent walker attacks, and even in the snow-swept dark the claw marks and patched areas and ricochet holes and bloodstains, as black as tar, call out to Josh.
The place vibrates with latent violence, like some throwback to the Wild West.
Josh brings the truck to a stop, as the van’s rear doors jack open and one of the Young Turks hops out the back and then goes over to a seam in the fortification. He pulls open a hinged section, swinging the gate wide enough for the two vehicles to pass through. The van rumbles through the gap, and Josh follows.
“Got about fifty people and change,” Martinez continues, taking a deep drag off the Viceroy and blowing it out the window. “Place over there, on the right, that’s kind of a food center. Got all our supplies, bottled water, medicine stashed in that place.”
As they pass, Josh sees the faded old sign—DEFOREST’S FEED AND SEED—its storefront fortified and reinforced with burglar bars and planking, two armed guards standing out front smoking cigarettes. The gate closes behind them as they roll slowly along, venturing deeper into the secure zone. Other denizens stand around, watching them pass—people bundled up on boardwalks, standing in vestibules—shell-shocked expressions behind scarves and mufflers. Nobody looks particularly friendly or happy to see them.
“Got a doctor on board, working medical center and whatnot.” Martinez tosses his cigarette butt out the window. “Hope to expand the walls at least another block by the end of the week.”
“Not a bad setup,” Bob comments from the backseat, his watery eyes taking it all in. “If ya don’t mind my asking, what the hell is that?”
Josh sees the top of the massive edifice a few blocks beyond the walled-in area, toward which Bob is now pointing a greasy finger. In the hazy darkness it looks like a flying saucer has landed in the middle of a field beyond the town square. Dirt roads circle the thing, and dim lights twinkle in the snow above its circular rim.
“Used to be a dirt racetrack.” Martinez grins. In the green glow of the dashboard lights the smirk looks almost lupine, devilish. “Hillbillies love their races.”
“‘Used’ to be?” Josh asks.
“Boss laid down the law last week, no more races, too much noise. Racket was drawing biters.”
“There’s a boss here?”
The smirk on Martinez’s face curdles into something unreadable. “Don’t worry, cousin. You’ll be meeting him soon enough.”
Josh sneaks a glance at Lilly, who is busily gnawing on her fingernails. “Not sure we’re gonna be sticking around very long.”
“It’s up to you.” Martinez giv
es a noncommittal shrug. He slips on a pair of fingerless, leather Carnaby gloves. “Keep in mind, though, those mutual benefits I was talking about.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Our apartments are all filled up but we still got places you can stay in the center of town.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m telling you, once we get that wall expanded, you’ll have your pick of places to live.”
Josh says nothing.
Martinez stops smirking and all at once, in the dim green light, he looks as though he’s remembering better days, maybe a family, maybe something painful. “I’m talking about places with soft beds, privacy … picket fences and trees.”
A long pause of awkward silence.
“Lemme ask you something, Martinez.”
“Shoot.”
“How did you end up here?”
Martinez lets out a sigh. “God’s honest truth, I don’t really remember.”
“How’s that?”
He gives another shrug. “I was alone, ex-wife got bit, my kid up and disappeared. I guess I didn’t give a shit about much of anything anymore but killing biters. Went on kind of a rampage. Put down a whole slew of those ugly motherfuckers. Some locals found me passed out in a ditch. Took me here. Swear to God that’s about all I remember.” He cocks his head as though reconsidering. “I’m glad they did, though, especially now.”
“What do you mean?”
Martinez looks at him. “This place ain’t perfect but it’s safe, and it’s only gonna get safer. Thanks in no small part to the guy we got in charge now.”
Josh looks at him. “This is the ‘boss’ guy I assume you’re talking about?”
“That’s right.”
“And you say we’re gonna get a chance to meet this guy?”
Martinez holds up a gloved hand as if to say, Just wait. He pulls a small two-way radio from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He thumbs the switch and speaks into the mouthpiece. “Haynes, take us to the courthouse … they’re waiting for us over there.”
Another loaded glance passes between Josh and Lilly as the lead vehicle pulls off the main road and heads across the town square, a statue of Robert E. Lee guarding a kudzu-covered gazebo. They approach a flagstone government building on the far edge of the park, its stone steps and portico ghostly pale in the snow-veiled darkness.
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