By the time they get back to the apartment—both of them soaked to the bone, exhausted, and dazed—Philip is confident he can fix this.
Brian is in the office bedroom with Penny, putting her to sleep on her cot. Nick is in the living room, working on his map of safe zones. “Hey, how’d it go?” he asks, looking up from his papers. “You guys look like drowned rats; you find any Home Depots out there?”
“Not this time,” Philip replies, heading for the bedroom, not even pausing to take off his shoes.
April says nothing, doesn’t even meet Nick’s gaze as she heads toward the hallway.
“Look at you two,” Tara says, coming out of the kitchen with a surly expression and a lit cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth. “Just like I thought—a wild fucking goose chase!”
She stands there with her hands on her hips as her sister vanishes without a word into her room at the end of the hall. Tara gives Philip a look, and then storms away, following her sister.
“I’m going to bed,” Philip says flatly to Nick and then adjourns to his room.
* * *
The next morning, Philip stirs awake just before dawn. The rain still pounds the streets outside. He can hear it drumming off the window. The room is dark and cold and dank, and smells of mold. He sits on the edge of the bed for the longest time, looking at Penny, who slumbers across the room on her cot, her tiny body all balled up in a fetal position. The half-formed memories of a dream cling to Philip’s woozy brain, as well as the sickening sensation that he doesn’t know where the nightmares end and the episode with April the previous evening begins.
If only he had dreamed those events in the pedestrian walkway instead of actually acting them out. But the hard, sharp edge of reality comes back to him in that dark room in a series of flash frames in his mind, as though he’s watching someone else perpetrate the crime. Philip hangs his head, trying to push the feelings of dread and guilt from his mind.
Running fingers through his hair, he talks himself into being hopeful. He can work through this with April, figure out a way to move forward, put it behind them, apologize to her, make it up to her.
He watches Penny sleep.
In the two and a half weeks since Philip’s little cadre joined up with the Chalmers, Philip has noticed his daughter coming out of her shell. At first, he detected little things: the way Penny had begun to look forward to concocting their god-awful dinners, and the way she lit up every time April walked into a room. With each passing day, though, the child has become more and more talkative, remembering things from before the “turn,” commenting on the strange weather patterns, asking questions about the “sickness.” Can animals get the disease? Does it wear off? Is God mad at them?
Philip’s chest hitches with emotion as he gazes at the slumbering child. There has to be a way to make a life for his daughter, make a family, make a home—even in the midst of this waking nightmare—there has to be a way.
For a brief instant, Philip imagines a desert island and a little cottage nestled in a grove of coconut trees. The plague is a million light-years away. He imagines April and Penny on a swing set, playing together out by a vegetable garden. He imagines himself sitting on a back porch, healthy, brown from the sun, happily watching the two ladies in his life sharing contented moments. He imagines all this while he watches his daughter sleep.
He gets up and pads over to her, kneeling and lightly putting a hand on the downy softness of her hair. She needs to bathe. Her hair is matted and greasy, and she has a faint body odor. That smell somehow reaches out to Philip and pinches his gut. His eyes well up. He has never loved anyone other than this child. Even Sarah—whom he adored—came in second. His love for Sarah was—like that of all married people—complicated, conditional, and fluid. But when he first laid eyes on his baby girl as a blotchy little newborn, seven and half years ago, he learned what it means to love.
It means to be afraid, to be vulnerable for the rest of your life.
Something catches Philip’s attention across the room. The door is half ajar. He remembers shutting it before turning in. He remembers that very clearly. Now it’s cracked open about six inches.
At first, this doesn’t really make much of an impression or worry him all that much. Maybe he accidentally neglected to latch the door, and the thing drifted open on its own. Or maybe he got up to piss in the middle of the night and forgot to close it. Or maybe Penny had to pee and left it open. Hell, maybe he’s a sleepwalker and doesn’t even know it. But then, just as he’s turning back to continue gazing down at his daughter, he notices something else.
Things are missing from the room.
Philip’s heart starts thumping. He left his backpack—the one he was wearing when he arrived here over two weeks ago—leaning against the wall in the corner, but now it’s gone. His gun is missing as well. He left the .22 pistol on top of the dresser with the last magazine of bullets beside it. The ammo is gone, too.
Philip springs to his feet.
He looks around. The gloomy dawn is just beginning to lighten the room, the window shade projecting tears of rain, the ghostly reflections of water sluicing down the glass outside it. His boots are not where he left them. He left them on the floor by the window, but now they’re gone. Who the hell would take his boots? He tells himself to calm down. There has to be a simple explanation. No reason to get all jacked up. But the absence of the gun is what troubles him the most. He decides to take this one step at a time.
Silently, careful not to awaken Penny, he crosses the room and slips out the open door.
The apartment is silent and still. Brian dozes in the living room on the pull-out bed. Philip pads into the kitchen, lights up the propane stove, and makes himself a cup of instant coffee with some rainwater left in a bucket. He splashes some of the cold water on his face. He tells himself to stay calm, take some deep breaths.
When the coffee is hot, he takes the cup and walks down the hallway to April’s room.
Her door is also ajar.
He looks in and sees that the room is empty. His pulse quickens.
A voice says, “She ain’t here.”
He whirls and comes face-to-face with Tara Chalmers, who holds the Ruger pistol, the muzzle raised and aimed directly at Philip.
FIFTEEN
“All right … go easy, sis.” Philip makes no move. He just stands there, frozen in the hallway, with his free hand raised, and the coffee in his other hand, jutting out to the side like he’s interested in offering it to her. “Whatever it is, we can work it out.”
“Really…?” Tara Chalmers glowers at him with her painted eyes flaring. “Ya think?”
“Look … I don’t know what’s going on—”
“What’s going on,” she says without a trace of nerves or fear, “is that we’re changing the lineup around here.”
“Tara, whatever you’re thinking—”
“Let’s get something straight.” Her voice is steady and flatlined of emotion. “I need you to shut the fuck up and do what I say, or I will blow you the fuck away and don’t think I won’t.”
“This ain’t—”
“Put the cup down.”
Philip obliges, slowly setting the cup on the floor. “Okay, sis. Whatever you say.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now we’re gonna go get your brother, your friend, and your kid.”
Philip buzzes with adrenaline. He doesn’t think Tara has the balls to do any real harm, and he considers making a move for the weapon—a distance of six to eight feet lies between him and the barrel of the Ruger—but he resists the temptation. Better to comply at this point and try and get her talking.
“May I say somethin’?”
“MOVE!”
Her sudden cry shatters the stillness, loud enough to not only awaken Penny and Brian, but probably be heard up on the second floor where Nick—an early riser—is likely already up and about. Philip takes a step toward
her. “If you’d just give me a chance to—”
The Ruger barks.
The blast goes wide—maybe on purpose, maybe not—chewing a divot in the wall eighteen inches from Philip’s left shoulder. The roar of the gun is enormous in the enclosed space of the hallway, and Philip’s ears are ringing as he realizes a particle of the plaster wall has stuck to his cheek.
He can barely see Tara through the blue smoke of cordite. She is either grinning or grimacing, it’s hard to tell at this point.
“The next one goes in your face,” she tells him. “Now, you gonna be a good boy or what?”
* * *
Nick Parsons hears the gunfire just after opening his Concordance Bible for his morning read. Sitting in bed, with his back against the headboard, he jumps at the noise, the Bible flying out of his hands. It was open to the Revelation to John, Chapter 1 Verse 9, the part where John says to the church, “I am John your brother who shares with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and patient endurance.”
Leaping out of bed, he goes to the closet where his Marlin shotgun is supposed to be resting against the wall in the corner, except it’s not there. Panic vibrates down through Nick’s spine, and he spins, and he looks around his room at all the missing gear. His knapsack—gone. His boxes of shotgun shells—gone. His tools, his pickaxe, his boots, his maps—all gone.
At least his jeans are still there, neatly folded over the back of a chair. He yanks them on and charges out of the room. Through the studio apartment. Out the door. Down the corridor. Down a flight of steps and out onto the first floor. He thinks he hears the sound of a voice raised in anger but he’s not sure. He rushes toward the Chalmers’s apartment. The door is unlocked and he pushes his way inside.
“What’s going on? What’s going on?” Nick keeps repeating as he slams to a stop in the living room. He sees something that doesn’t make any sense. He sees Tara Chalmers with the Ruger pointed at Philip, and Philip with this weird look on his face, and Brian standing a few feet away with Penny drawn close to him, his arms around the little girl in a protective posture. And weirder still: Nick sees their belongings piled on the floor in front of the sofa.
“Move over there,” Tara says, brandishing the gun, and directing Nick toward Philip, Brian, and Penny.
“What’s wrong?”
“Never mind, just do what I say.”
Nick slowly complies but his mind is swimming with confusion. What in God’s name happened here? Almost involuntarily, Nick looks at Philip, looks into the big man’s eyes for answers, but for the first time since Nick has known Philip Blake, the big guy looks almost sheepish, almost blank with indecision and frustration. Nick looks at Tara. “Where’s April? What happened?”
“Never mind.”
“What are you doing? What’s the idea putting of all our stuff in a—”
“Nicky,” Philip chimes in. “Let it go. Tara’s gonna tell us what she wants us to do. And we’re gonna do it, and everything’s gonna be okay.”
Philip says this to Nick but as he’s saying it, he’s looking at Tara.
“Listen to your pal here, Nick,” Tara says, and she too says this to Nick but doesn’t take her gaze off Philip. Her eyes practically glow with contempt and anger and vengeance and something else—something incomprehensible to Nick, something that feels disturbingly intimate.
Now it’s Brian’s turn to pipe in: “What is it you want us to do exactly?”
Tara still doesn’t take her eyes off Philip as she says, “Get out.”
At first, this simple imperative sentence sounds to Nick Parsons like a rhetorical statement. To his stunned ears, it sounds as though she’s not exactly telling them to do something as much as she’s making some kind of a point. But this initial reaction—and maybe hopeful thinking—is immediately short-circuited by the look on Tara Chalmers’s face.
“Hit the road.”
Philip keeps staring at her. “Where I come from, that’s called murder.”
“Call it whatever you want. Just take your shit and go.”
“You’re gonna send us out there without weapons.”
“I’m gonna do more than that,” she says. “I’m gonna climb up on that roof with one of them high-powered pigeon guns and I’m gonna make sure you leave.”
After a long, horrible moment of silence, Nick looks at Philip.
And finally, Philip tears his gaze away from the stout, buxom girl with the pistol. “Get your stuff,” he says to Nick, and then to Brian he says, “There’s a rain poncho in my pack, put it on Penny.”
* * *
The amount of time it takes them to get dressed and ready to leave is nominal—mere minutes, with Tara Chalmers standing guard like a stone sentry—but it gives Brian Blake plenty of time to wildly ruminate to himself about what could have happened. Tying his boots, and putting the slicker on Penny, he realizes that all indications point to some kind of sick triangle going on. April’s absence speaks volumes. As does Tara’s unmitigated, righteous anger. But what caused it? It couldn’t be something Philip said or did. What could offend the girls this deeply?
For a crazy instant, Brian’s mind casts back to his insane ex-wife. Compulsive, volatile, flaky Jocelyn had done stuff like this. She would vanish without a trace for weeks. One time, while Brian was at night school, she actually put all his shit out on the stairs of their tenement building, as though she were removing a stain from her life. But this. This is different. The Chalmers girls have shown no previous signs of being irrational or nuts.
The thing that bothers Brian the most is the way his brother is behaving. Beneath the surface of his simmering anger and frustration, Philip Blake almost seems resolved, maybe even hopeless. This is a clue. This is important. But the problem is, there’s no time to figure it out.
“Come on, let’s roll,” Philip says, his backpack slung over his shoulder. He has his denim jacket on now—the black, oily grime and gore from their earlier journey still visible all over it—and he’s heading toward the door.
“Wait!” Brian says. He turns to Tara. “At least let us take some food. For Penny’s sake.”
She just levels her gaze at him and says, “I’m letting you walk outta here alive.”
“Come on, Brian.” Philip pauses in the doorway. “It’s over.”
Brian looks at his brother. Something about that deeply lined, weathered face is galvanizing to Brian. Philip is family, he’s blood. And they’ve come a long way. They’ve survived too many jams to die now like homeless pets abandoned on the side of the road. Brian feels a strange sensation building in the base of his spine, filling him with an unexpected strength. “Fine,” he says. “If this is the way it has to be…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence—there is nothing more to say—he simply puts an arm around Penny and ushers her out behind her father.
* * *
The rain is both a blessing and a curse. It bullwhips across their faces as they emerge from the building’s front entrance, but as they crouch under spindly trees along the parkway to get their bearings, they see that the storm has apparently driven the Biters off the streets. The sewers are flooding, the roads streaming with overflow, and the gray sky hangs low.
Nick squints into the distance to the south, the streets relatively clear. “That way’s best! Most of the safe zones are down there!”
“Okay, we’ll head south,” Philip says and turns to Brian. “Can you piggyback her again? I’m countin’ on you, sport. Watch her back.”
Brian wipes moisture from his face and gives his brother a thumbs-up.
Turning to the child, Brian starts to go about the business of gently lifting her onto his back, but he abruptly stops. For the briefest instant, he just stares in amazement at the little girl. She is also giving a thumbs-up sign. Brian glances at his brother, and the two men acknowledge something beyond words.
Penny Blake just stands there, waiting, chin jutting defiantly. Her soft little eyes are blinking away the rain, and the look on
her face is reminiscent of the expression her late mother would often display when impatient with male nonsense. Finally, the child says, “I’m not a baby … can we go now?”
* * *
They make their way to the corner, staying low, slipping on the slimy walk, the rain a constant drag on their progress. It gets in their faces and in their clothes and into their joints almost immediately. It’s an icy, needling autumn rain with no signs of slowing down.
Up ahead, a few shabby, cadaverous zombies cluster near an abandoned bus stop, their greasy heads of hair like moss matted across their dead faces. They look like they’re waiting for a bus that will never come.
Philip leads his group across the corner and under an awning. Nick points the way to the first safe zone—the city bus sitting in mothballs half a block south of the pedestrian bridge. A quick hand gesture from Philip, and now they hurry along the storefronts toward the bus.
* * *
“I say we go back,” Nick Parsons is grumbling as he crouches down on the floor of the bus and fishes through his backpack. The rain makes a muffled tommy-gun noise on the bus’s roof. Nick finds a T-shirt, pulls it out, and wipes the moisture from his face. “We’re talking about a single girl here—we can take the place back from her—I say we go back and kick her the hell out.”
“Think we can take it from her, huh?” Philip is up in the pilot area, searching the compartments for things left behind by the driver. “You got a bulletproof vest in that backpack of yours?”
The bus—a thirty-foot fuselage of molded seats facing inward along either side—reeks with the ghostly secretions of former passengers, a sort of wet dog-fur smell. In the rear of the bus, resting on the second-to-last seat, with Penny in the seat next to him, Brian shivers in his wet sweatshirt and jeans. He has a bad feeling, and it’s not only because of their exposure to the stormy, urban wilderness of Atlanta.
The Walking Dead Collection Page 20