The Walking Dead: Invasion (33 page)

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On the floor, dazed and breathless from the pain shooting down her spine, Barbara Stern can see only blurry impressions of the huge man who has lunged into the stationhouse after kicking the door open. Tall, middle-aged, dressed in an ashy black funereal suit coat, bald as a billiard ball, face all broken out, blotchy, and livid, eyes crazy, he slams the door shut, then registers the fact that his entrance has knocked a sixty-something woman dressed in a floral-print muumuu over onto her fulsome ass. He's still hyperventilating from the terror and fatigue of sprinting across 150 yards of walker-infested real estate as he scans the dusty, cluttered stationhouse. The thud of a dozen biters hitting the door outside vibrates the air.

“Whoa, Nelly!” He lets out a deep, husky exclamation when he sees Barbara crawling toward her gun. He leaps across the room and reaches her at the precise moment she gets her hand around the Bulldog. “Hold on there, sis!”

He kicks the gun out of her sweaty grasp, the Bulldog spinning in the other direction.

Barbara Stern tries to roll away. The Slocum twins squeal in horrified unison as the preacher kicks the woman hard in the kidney with his big Wellington. Barbara gasps and rolls across the floor and tries to see where her gun went. Her vision blurs. Her nose gushes from the impact of the door, and she may or may not have bit her tongue, her mouth filling with the coppery warmth of blood as she tries to crawl toward the Bulldog. She senses the huge presence of the intruder looming over her.

“Calm down!” his voice booms, a deep, smoky, stentorian instrument trained in the sacristies and revival tents of charismatic religions. His face shines with exertion. He slams a boot down on Barbara Stern's dress. “It ain't like I'm gonna eat ya!”

“Okay!” Barbara breathlessly surrenders, flopping onto her side, bleeding profusely down the front of her muumuu. Her chin drips, the bridge of her nose throbbing, an occasional sharp stab behind her eyes. She blinks and holds up her trembling hands. “Okay…”

“Here.” He digs in his breast pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. In the momentary lull, Barbara can hear the sound of the herd outside, an enormous, rusty, spinning turbine, surrounding the stationhouse; and she can hear something else, something in the distance, mingling with the din, vibrating the air, a low grinding noise that's as deep and raspy as the largest pipe on a church organ. Jeremiah throws the hankie and it lands on Barbara's legs. Then he goes over to the Bulldog, picks it up, checks the cylinder, and thrusts it down the back of his belt.

“Do whatever you need to do to me,” Barbara murmurs, picking up the cloth and pressing it down on her nose. Her voice muted now by the fabric of the cloth and her congested airways, she says thickly, “But I'm asking you, please, I'm begging you, as a man of God, as a Christian, don't mess with these children. Don't hurt them. They have nothing to do with this.”

He shoots a glance over at the cluster of kids hunkered and cowering behind the shelves. They look like scared animals in a cage. A soft continuous whimpering comes from the younger ones. The preacher smiles. He speaks without taking his eyes off the little ones. “Sorry to disagree with ya, sis, but they got
everything
to do with this.”

He ambles over to the shelving unit, shoves it aside as though it were made of balsa wood, and gives the kids the once-over with gleaming eyes. The whimpering intensifies. The preacher's simian gaze settles on Bethany Dupree.

She appears to be the only child who isn't either hiding behind a sibling, crying, or gazing meekly down at the floor. She stands her ground, her hands on her hips as though she disapproves of the whole
concept
of this man. She meets his gaze with a withering sort of contempt.

The preacher grins. His face twitches. “You're a pistol, ain't ya?”

“Leave us alone,” she says.

“You'll do nicely.” He grabs her by the arm and pulls her out of hiding.

By this point, Barbara has managed to crawl across the floor, and now she struggles to her feet. The dizziness makes her head spin. She still can't see very well. She wavers slightly as she stands there holding the blood-soaked hankie to her nose, watching the preacher pull the little girl across the room toward the boarded window. “Don't do this, Jeremiah,” Barbara says.

The preacher turns and faces the older woman in the blood-spattered muumuu. He draws his Glock and casually presses the barrel against the side of Bethany Dupree's head. All the fight goes out of the little girl's face. Her eyes moisten, and she swallows a big gulp of air, and her lips curl downward as she tries her hardest not to cry. The preacher's voice is flat and cold. “The wheels are already in motion, sis, there's nothing any of us can do. This here's the Rapture. We all been left behind, and now we're all just playing what ya might call a big old board game.” The girl wriggles in his grasp, and Jeremiah tightens his grip on her collar, pressing the muzzle harder against her little pigtail. “The rivers are running red, sis.” Jeremiah burns his gaze into Barbara. “Birds falling out of the sky, and the living wants me dead. This here tot, she's my little insurance policy.”

Without any warning, a small child darts out from behind the shelf. Barbara whirls to see Lucas Dupree, his little five-year-old face furrowed with rage, his tiny fists clenched white-knuckle tight, racing toward the preacher screaming, “LET HER BE!”

Barbara drops the bloody cloth and deftly lunges toward the boy, snatching him up before he can cross the room, lifting him off his feet. The boy's feet continue to run in place in the air in a cartoonish pantomime. He's already beginning to sob as Barbara hugs him to her bosom and strokes the back of his hair. “Okay, bruiser, that's far enough, she's gonna be fine. It's okay. Easy now.” Barbara caresses the boy's head and speaks softly but never takes her eyes off the preacher. “This man is
not
going to hurt your sister, he's just going to
borrow
her for a second.” Barbara's eyes narrow almost to slits, fixing themselves on the preacher. “And if anything happens to her, even if a single hair on her head is mussed, the people who survive here today, whoever they may be, they're going to dedicate the remainder of their lives, however long
that
might be, to finding this man, this minister, this man of God, and making him sorry that he was ever born. Do you understand?”

Two individuals have listened closely to this soliloquy: the boy with his head buried in Barbara's chest, nodding slightly, and the preacher, who has gone very still through all this, regarding the woman with a strange mixture of malice and admiration. At last, with the gun still pressed to the little girl's head, he gives the woman a respectful nod. “Message received, sis. I think we could have very well done business together in another life.” He drags the little girl to the door. She keeps her tears tamped down. The preacher gives Barbara one last glimpse over his shoulder. “Keep your powder dry, sis.”

Then he turns, grasps the doorknob, and opens the door a few centimeters.

He peers out and sees an opening. The biters have drifted away from the door.

He pulls Bethany out into the pale light of day and makes an awkward run for it.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Jeremiah doesn't get more than twenty paces from the doorway of the derelict stationhouse when he staggers to an abrupt halt. The girl nearly falls over, the stop is so sudden, and for a moment, in that hideous ashen sunlight washing the switchyard, Jeremiah thinks he's seeing a ghost. He stands there, still clutching the little girl's collar, thunderstruck by what stands before him. The deep, sepulchral rumble of a giant combine—incongruously harvesting some unidentified crop where there are no crops—echoes from the northwest corner of town, accompanying Jeremiah's confusion with a contramelody of gnawing, grating, shredding noises. But the preacher barely notices the surreal, nonsensical sounds, nor does he register the unrelenting drone of the swarm, close enough to see through the neighboring trees and the wreckage-strewn gaps between buildings.

The figure that stands directly in front of Jeremiah doesn't move, and doesn't say anything at first, just stands there with her shoulders squared off and her gaze fixed on the preacher and the little girl. The breeze tosses the woman's dishwater auburn hair, which is pulled back in a tight French braid, though many tendrils had come loose over the past few hours of exertion, struggle, and trauma underground. Her fashionably ripped jeans and camo-jacket are now in shreds, her face and arms scourged with grit, cuts, and bruises. The look in her eyes penetrates Jeremiah's soul, reaching down into a dark place inside him and strumming some dissonant, unexpected chord of fear. Then, Jeremiah notices the enormous revolver with the four-inch barrel gripped in her right hand, which at the moment hangs at rest at her side, the muzzle pointed down at the ground.

“Look at you,” the preacher finally says to her. “All pleased with yourself.”

“Let her go.” Lilly Caul's voice is so brittle with rage, so cold, it sounds almost like a recording of a voice played a scintilla too slow.

Jeremiah presses the barrel harder against Bethany Dupree's head. “I don't know how you did it but it don't matter one whit no more. Nothin' does.”

“I don't think you heard me.”

Jeremiah lets out a dry chuckle. “Acts of heroism, sacrifice, things done for the better good … none of it means high holy hell anymore.”

“Excuse me. You're gonna die today.” Lilly augers her gaze into his. “You might as well do something good beforehand to shore things up a little.”

Jeremiah feels the hate rise up and fill his mouth with the bitter taste of odium. “Get out of my way, missy.”

Lilly calmly raises the gun, aims it at him, and holds up a watch in her free hand. It looks cheap, shopworn, like an old Timex on a faded leather strap. “You know what this is?”

“No more games.” Jeremiah presses the barrel so hard against the head of the little girl, her whimpers intensify to outright sobbing, her head bending over with the pressure of the muzzle. Jeremiah practically growls the words: “The death of this precious little girl will be on your eternal soul.”

“It's a watch,” Lilly casually informs him, ignoring his threats, indicating with a nod the importance of the used timepiece. “Belonged to Bob Stookey, a man whose death is on
your
worthless fucking soul.” She glances at the second hand. “And if my calculations are correct, we should have about ten sec—”

The muffled explosion from below cuts off her words with the abruptness of a jump cut in a film.

Lilly's estimate was ten seconds off.

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The ground seems to shudder slightly as the heat wave rams into the back of Lilly's neck. The noise is enormous and ear-shattering, cracking open the humid air and breaking windows as far as Canyon Road. Deafened by the boom, Lilly staggers forward and then sprawls to the ground in the aftershock. The sky behind her cleaves apart in a fountain of dirt, the particles of orange Georgia clay spewing upward in a vast smoke cloud that scrapes the clouds before dissipating.

The preacher stumbles backward, trips over his feet, and falls on his ass. The little girl staggers and goes down as well. Granules of dirt, litter, and unidentified shards of the underground rain down on them. The aftershocks tremble across the switchyard as the tunnels give way below and bury human and undead alike for eternity.

Lilly tries to rise to her feet but can only lift herself up to her hands and knees. Her head spins. She can't hear a thing, and she can barely see. Blinking frantically, she tries to focus on where her gun went. She sees it lying about five feet away. She lunges toward it, grabs it, and swings it up as she springs to her feet. She quickly assumes an offensive stance, but everything has gone all hazy and slow in the aftermath of the explosion.

Ears ringing, Lilly sees the preacher running away, his lanky arms pumping, his tattered waistcoat flapping in the wind as he charges as fast as he can toward the vacant lot to the east. With her gun still gripped in both hands, Lilly shuffles toward the girl. Little Bethany slowly rises, holding her ears, looking up at the sky.

“You okay, sweetie?” Lilly kneels by her, quickly giving her a once-over, looking for wounds. Lilly can barely hear, the ringing in her ears like a drill buzzing in her skull. She sees no injuries. “Talk to me.”

“I can't hear anything!” The little girl holds her ears, opening her mouth as though trying to make them pop back into service.

“It's okay, sweetie. It's temporary. It's the noise of the explosion.”

“How did you do that?”

Lilly glances over her shoulder. “We'll talk about it later, honey. Right now we gotta get you back inside and I gotta get to the safe zone.”

In that single feverish moment, Lilly sees several things that quicken her pulse.

About a hundred yards away, the preacher is weaving through a cluster of walkers, slashing at them left and right with his Buck knife, apparently trying to work his way back to the vacant lot east of the switchyard—the same vacant lot across which all the gunfire had been exchanged. Adrenaline trickles through Lilly. She realizes the son of bitch is heading toward the enormous tow truck rig that sits about fifty yards south of the lot, still idling, sending intermittent puffs of inky black smoke out of its exhaust stack.

The second thing that Lilly sees triggers an even
bigger
spurt of panic: Three sides of the switchyard are now cut off by dense groups of dead shambling this way, drawn to all the tumult and yelling, their arms like divining rods, stiffly reaching, seeking fresh human meat. Lilly spins in a 360-degree pivot, searching for a way out, but seeing none. Even the stationhouse building is engulfed with the things now. Countless decomposing faces close in, pressing inward from all directions, face after face after face, each one featuring the same empty frosted-glass eyes, the same slimy lips curling away from blackened teeth. The noise and the odor of them rises to unbearable levels, and Lilly finds herself going blank again, as though her brain has just crashed.