The Walking Dead: Invasion (32 page)

Lilly reaches down to Bob's holster and pulls his .357. She snaps open the center and sees only two rounds remaining in the cylinder. She feels along the underside of his belt and finds the tiny leather pouch with the speed loader. She pulls it free and sticks it in her pocket. She digs some more and finds his lighter and a roll of safety fuse. She removes his watch and pockets it. The anger fuels her now, courses through her veins, galvanizes her, gets her up and moving. She rises to her feet, and walks across the tunnel to the chain-link barrier, and she stands there for a moment.

Her close proximity stirs the creatures into frenzies. The growls rise into gravelly ululations, like the howls of hyenas, the cold eyes widening, teeth gnashing frantically to get a piece of her. Some of them push harder, warping the chain-link fencing inward to its absolute limit. The odor is incredibly horrible.

Lilly stares impassively at them. She comes to within inches of their moldering mouths. She stares into their empty eyes. The rage-storm inside Lilly has begun to unleash torrents of adrenaline, lightning and thunder rumbling, squalls of emotion erupting in her veins.

The bundle of dynamite sits on the floor near the chain-link barrier.

Lilly pulls the detonator cord and the roll of safety fuse from her pocket, never once taking her eyes off the creatures trying to squeeze through the screen of fencing and get to her tender flesh. She goes over to the explosives, picks them up, and pushes the detcord into the spongy end-cap—her gaze still riveted on the walkers. She sits the bundle of dynamite on the floor in front of them as though setting down a food dish for a family pet.

“There ya go,” she murmurs, her voice sounding foreign to her ears. It sounds thick and coarse with fury, the voice of a gladiator about to enter the ring. “Chew on that for a while.”

She turns and starts on her way eastward, carefully unfurling the fifty feet or so of safety fuse as she goes along, hastening toward the sewer manhole under Riggins Ferry Road.

*   *   *

Soaked in sweat, heart racing, Jeremiah breathes in and out through his mouth, the stench so thick it threatens to strangle him. He lies prone on the cold ground beneath the greasy chassis of the RV, still holding his 9mm pistol. Chaos surrounds the vehicle. All his followers are gone. Bodies are strewn across the lot like driftwood. But the Good Lord is still with Jeremiah. Fate always wins out, and it will prevail today if the preacher can just manage to get out of this mess.

He looks to his immediate left and sees through the reeds of wild grass and stiff-legged walkers brushing against the camper a small swarm still hovering over Chester Gleason's body, sucking the marrow from what's left of him.

Jeremiah lets out a pained sigh, his breath blowing dust off the ground next to his lips. He looks to his right and sees countless ragged legs, some of them sticking out of dresses, looking spindly and cadaverous as they trundle aimlessly back and forth. Intermittently, the preacher catches glimpses of his other disciples—half of Reese Lee Hawthorn over here, his remains spilling its purple, glistening delicacies for the swarm; Stephen Pembry over there, reduced to a pile of partially clothed guts—and the sight of such carnage makes Jeremiah twitch with cognitive dissonance. Is this what God wants? Is this what awaits
Jeremiah
himself in this everlasting darkness of the Rapture?

He manages to twist around and gaze down the length of the Winnebago's undercarriage toward its tail end.

He blinks. Is he hallucinating? He starts crawling toward the daylight at the rear of the RV, his gaze locked on a gap in the throng. He reaches the rear phalanx of exhaust pipes and trailer hitch and looks out beyond the adjacent switchyard of petrified train tracks and ancient directional signage. He sees a clear opening—an empty corridor of space between two halves of the multitude—where the mob of walkers has randomly separated.

On the far side of this opening sits a small building that looks relatively secure, its windows boarded or barred. If Jeremiah can slip unnoticed through the momentary break in the herd, he might be able to get to that building and gain entrance before he too is reduced to bloody fodder. His heart speeds up. He sucks in a searing hot breath.

Then he crawls out from under the RV, springs to his feet, and charges as fast as he can toward the stationhouse, where the children secretly huddle in the shadows, trying so desperately to be quiet.

 

TWENTY-ONE

Barbara Stern sits on the floor behind the dusty shelving units at the northeast corner of the litter-strewn stationhouse, bracing herself on the shelf legs as though waiting out a tornado. The kids sit on each of her flanks, trying to concentrate on their coloring books and sketch pads and Little Golden Books like
The Poky Little Puppy
and
The Little Red Hen
while the world is turned upside down outside their boarded windows.

Every time a burst of gunfire crackles in the distance, or a sonic boom from a shotgun lights up the sky, or a cluster of walkers brushes up against the wood-frame outer walls, the older kids twitch and flinch, while the younger ones whimper under their breaths as though they've been kicked in the gut. Barbara keeps whispering for them to relax, it's going to be okay, they have a good plan and Lilly and Bob know what they're doing, but her nerves are as raw and exposed as those of the children. She grips those shelf legs with white-knuckle pressure at the boom of each salvo, holding on so tightly that the molded steel has begun to make bloody indentations on her palms.

She keeps thinking she can identify the make and model of each gun as she hears its blast, and that she doesn't hear the blat of David's Tec-9, and this is driving her crazy. The machine pistol that they found a few weeks ago in the storage rooms of the Meriwether County National Guard Depot has a distinctive sound: a sort of shrill metallic rattle, like a baby howitzer. She hasn't heard that noise for many minutes, and her brain keeps going to the worst-case scenario, flashing on images of David lying bullet-riddled and torn apart by walkers, and this makes her grip the shelf legs even tighter.

In fact, she's trying to drive these very images from her brain when she hears a noise coming from across the room that sets her teeth on edge and makes her flesh rash with goose bumps.

“Don't move!” she hisses at the children, pulling herself up and switching off the safety on her .44 Bulldog. The gun is extremely heavy for a snub-nosed revolver, and it seems to have gotten heavier over the last few hours. In addition, the trigger action is stiff, hard to pull. But at the moment, Barbara feels as though she could crack the grip in half with her bare hand.

The noise of someone trying to force the knob on the side door rattles again across the room, and Barbara assumes the shooting position as she approaches, gun in both hands, finger on the trigger pad, shoulders squared while she blows a long tendril of gray hair from her face. She makes sure to hold her zaftig body at an angle to the door so her right shoulder will absorb much of the recoil from the massive handgun.

She reaches the door, and puts her ear against the wooden frame, holding the Bulldog's muzzle up at the ceiling. She hears a frantic shuffling, someone huffing and puffing.

She's about to call out when the door suddenly explodes inward, bursting open with the force of a battering ram. The jamb smacks Barbara straight on, knocking her senseless, driving her backward, and sending her to floor. She lands on her ass, the Bulldog spinning off across the parquet tile. Her vision wavers, her ears ringing as she tries to crawl toward the gun.

*   *   *

At the corner of Dogwood and Jones Mill, in a curtain of cordite, smoke, dust, and death-stench as thick as gauze, Miles Littleton goes through an entire ten-round magazine, momentarily keeping the leading edge of the walker horde at bay while David and Norma attempt to drag Harold Staubach out of harm's way. Harold is having none of it.

“Forget it!” Lying on his side, sucking in raspy breaths, he pushes them away, kicking feebly, his shoulder in shreds, the front of his tunic a deep crimson red, drenched in arterial blood, which soaks the pavement. “Just go—GO!” He flinches as another walker drops to the cobblestones mere inches away from his right foot, half its head blown asunder by the dumdums from David's Glock.

“Shut up!—Shut the fuck up!—We're not leaving you and that's all there is to it!” David barks his words at him, refusing to let go, dragging the older man another ten feet or so toward the barricade. Norma tries to take Harold's feet and lift him up, but Harold kicks her off with his last drops of energy.

“Y'all are gonna get yourselves killed!” Harold screams at them, his voice breaking, his strength draining away. He tries to push David Stern off him. David's hands are slimy with blood, and Harold slips from his grasp. Collapsing back to the pavement, Harold lets out a gasp, his beautiful singing voice finally starting to crumble. “I'm done for—I'm gone—You've gotta get yourselves
inside
!”

Miles fires another burst into the column of biters pressing toward them. More and more of the creatures—drawn to the noise and commotion—surround them, closing in like a fist. In a few seconds it will be too late—their ammunition is dwindling to nothing. A few more bursts from the AK and that will be it.

The young car thief fires a short salvo, hitting the three closest walkers.

One of the putrid heads explodes in a cloud of black fluids, and another snaps back so far it almost rips free. The owner of the third head keeps coming, the blast only grazing its temple. “TOO MANY OF 'EM!” Miles screams. He is trying to fire another controlled burst, but now the gun only clicks impotently. “FUCK!—SHIT!—
SHIT!!”

The walkers engulf them. Miles pulls a machete from a sheath on his leg, Norma grabs a garden spade strapped to her pack, and David is grunting and huffing as he drags Harold farther and farther away from the throngs. Harold wavers in and out of consciousness as more of the creatures press in from the west, cutting off their escape route. The persistent din of guttural growling rises up all around them now, as loud as a jet engine, the stench unbearable, the hooked fingers of outstretched arms clawing at the air. Harold finally passes out, and David shakes him, feeling for a pulse.

Miles and Norma put up a valiant last-ditch effort to fight the creatures off, flailing madly at them, lashing out at one dead pasty face after another, striking some in the eye socket, others in the forehead, still others up through the mandible, but it's futile. There are far too many of them now—so many that David's view of the barricade is cut off, blocked by the mob. He lets out a howl of rage. Harold is dead weight now. David collapses next to the older man, heaving pained breaths.

Norma trips over them and falls to the paving stones. Miles flails and flails, until he stumbles over his own feet and sprawls to the pavers next to the others. And in that horrible moment of anguish—that single frozen instant before they are engulfed and devoured—David shares a feverish glance with the others. It's as though they all realize the same thing at precisely the same moment: They are all going to die, and worse than that, they are going to die at the ravenous hands of the dead, torn apart, eviscerated, though they're a stone's throw of safety.

Only so much can be communicated in a single look—especially in a moment of suspended time such as this—but somehow, David Stern manages to gaze so deeply into Norma Sutters' sweaty, maternal, old-soul face right at that moment that he sees his last fleeting thought returned from her in a wordless response:
At least we'll go down together, as one—here in this desolate situation; we'll perish in each other's arms
. Norma nods at David, and then puts her plump arms around him.

David looks away from the fish-belly faces and shoe-button eyes as the creatures descend en masse upon them, and he has just closed his eyes and clasped onto the matronly Norma Sutters when he suddenly hears a noise that rises above the jet-engine rasp of the dead. And the noise is such a welcome surprise, David Stern silently begins to cry.

*   *   *

At first it sounds like a teakettle on the boil, a thin, shrill whistle. But when it swells into a shriek. David realizes the whistle is the sound of a young boy screaming. This is followed by the roar of a diesel engine, which farts a plume of black, acrid smoke into the air behind the adjacent barricade. David's heart leaps, his breath seizing up in the back of his throat.

A thunderous explosion shatters the morning air, piercing the droning chorus of growls, and David Stern recoils with a start as the makeshift barrier of wooden siding and drywall fifty feet away suddenly collapses, the boards slamming down to the ground with a resounding series of thuds, and in a storm cloud of dust a gargantuan contraption emerges from behind the fallen barricade.

David recognizes the massive front blades of the International Harvester combine.

The kid is early—God bless his little snot-nosed soul—the kid never could keep track of time—that beautiful, perfect little man!

Like a tidal wave of gleaming metal, the thirty-foot-wide mouth—filled with rows of razor-sharp blades—churns toward the swarm, kicking up waves of debris and particles of prairie grass. A stream of detritus pours out the top of the vent stack as the enormous machine chugs and whirs toward the closest moving corpses.

Up in the high cab, encased in glass like a tiny emperor, Tommy Dupree sits at the controls. The kid learned to operate the showroom-new harvester by reading the owner's manual, and the jerky way he's steering the thing reveals how green his skills are. But the livid, furrowed face behind the tinted glass of the pilot cubicle also shows his determination, which triggers another thought in the back of David Stern's traumatized mind.

Thank God for plan B
.