The Walking Dead: Invasion (37 page)

And when the older man is finally overcome, and he stumbles backward, tripping over his own feet and collapsing only inches away from the boy, the two living humans look away. They don't want to watch, they don't want to see the end come in its ghastly form of a feeding frenzy. They can sense the faces full of teeth looming over them, snarling, ravenous, teeth gnashing, lowering down toward them—and then
nothing
. No searing pain from the first bite, no convulsions of agony as more of them dig into the soft middle and the delicacies within.

David pops his eyes open. Dozens of dead hover motionless over him and the boy, as still as mannequins in a forgotten store window, each biter resembling a dog being summoned by an ultrasonic whistle. One by one, they twitch their empty gazes off to the south as though tracking the source of the silent whistle. David stares. The faintest clicking noise drifts on the wind; a flash of heat lightning flickers off the faces of the dead. The tableau is all very dreamlike at first, but with each passing second, it intensifies. An engine in the distance rises on the breeze.

Tommy starts to whisper something in a startled voice when the strangest thing happens: The monsters begin to retreat, backing slowly out of the enclosure, brushing against one another as they awkwardly withdraw and turn to seek out the source of that flashing light. They are wandering off en masse toward the sound of the engine, and the flickering silver light.

David sits up. He rubs his eyes as though awakening from a dream, and he looks at Tommy, who also levers himself up to a sitting position.

“What the
fuck,
” Tommy says almost rhetorically as he watches the mass exodus of the dead.

*   *   *

Lilly keeps a close watch on the cracked side mirror of the battered tow truck as she pulls slowly past the ruins of Ingles Market. She moves along at less than five miles per hour—walking speed—in order to allow the greatest number of supplicants to follow along. The town is surprisingly quiet considering the population of dead currently filling the streets and lumbering along in the wake of the truck. The air smells of brimstone and scorched electrical terminals as the breeze wafts through the cab's broken window vent.

Lilly downshifts and turns south, heading toward the train yard.

In the reflection of her side mirror, she can see the preacher lashed to the massive tow arm at the back of the truck. Still clad in his stained shirtsleeves, black trousers, and boots, his gunshot wounds oozing now from under his clothes, he looks like a living figurehead on the prow of a ship, his arms dangling limply, his bald head lolling as he wavers in and out of consciousness.

The strobe light continues to blink above him, a beacon drawing the herd.

Every few seconds, Jeremiah lets out a garbled cry—a mishmash of words and nonsense syllables in which Lilly has absolutely no interest. She merely appreciates the Pavlovian effect the sound of his voice is having on the mass congregation following the tow truck. More and more of the dead are gathering—they're already at least fifty rows deep behind the preacher, and their number is growing.

Lilly drives slowly past the stationhouse, where the children still huddle with Barbara in the shadows, waiting for the all-clear signal.

From the train yard, Lilly turns west and makes a large, slow circle around the far corner of town. Lured by the eldritch noises of Jeremiah's voice, as well as by the flashing signal flare, walkers skulk out of speedway cloisters, out from behind abandoned semitrailers, out of ditches and culverts and nooks and crannies. The mob grows. In her hairline-fractured mirror, Lilly sees an ocean of dead trailing after the mumbled ravings of the madman.

From the top of Whitehouse Parkway, she turns east and heads back the way she came.

By the time she reaches the east side of town, the preacher is near death, and practically the entire herd is following along behind the truck, a vast field of walking dead spanning one and a half city blocks and at least two hundred yards deep. She marvels at the breadth and width of the throngs, visible in the funhouse reflection of her side mirror. The herd is so enormous that the seething masses in the rear, at the farthest point, are just a hazy blur in the overcast afternoon.

Lilly slowly passes the wreckage of Tommy Dupree's combine. She gazes over her shoulder as two figures climb out of the battered, overturned cab. Tommy comes first, lowering himself down the jagged length of windshield, looking like an animal coming out of hibernation. David comes next. The older man struggles out and squints into the steel gray sky, taking a deep breath of life-affirming air.

Tommy gapes at the receding multitude, robotically following the blinking light. He stares, and stares, his mouth hanging open. David stands next to him. The older man just shakes his head in awe as he watches.

Lilly makes a slight turn at Riggins Ferry Road and heads toward the wide expanse of desolate lots and fallow fields along the Flint River Valley.

Her destination is eleven miles away—roughly two and a half hours, at this speed—so she settles back in her seat, and lets out a long sigh.

Her thoughts wander, the mythic drama going on at this very moment directly behind her the furthest thing from her mind.

*   *   *

The great and honorable Reverend Jeremiah Garlitz preaches his last sermon that day, lashed to a gantry twelve feet above the scabrous land that he thinks of as Zion. In his scrambled final thoughts, he speaks to his vast megachurch of lost souls, who shamble dutifully after him in the dust of the holy land. He speaks much of his homily in old Latin, floating in midair, surrounded by angels. He spreads his arms and smiles beatifically at the great assembly of the faithful following him—his Christian soldiers, his righteous disciples—their dark, dirty, impoverished faces full of noble savagery. God bless his congregants.

This goes on for hours, Jeremiah recalling all the great chapters and verses, all the best sermons he delivered over his life in sweaty tents and backwater churches. The flicker of the votive candle above him illuminates his altar as the ragged parishioners follow him for miles and miles, many of them barefoot, bleeding, crippled, leprous, sick, old and infirm. Toward the end of the journey, Jeremiah feels a loosening of his soul, a shade coming down on his field of vision, and he rejoices. He feels his chariot speeding up, his wings spreading, catching the wind, the angels lifting him up through the stratosphere to paradise.

His last act is a singing out of joyous testimony in an ancient language.

While the heavens embrace him.

*   *   *

It happens almost too quickly for Lilly to notice the sound. She opens the driver's-side door a hundred feet from the edge of the precipice, on the south side of Emory Hill—the place where she used to gaze longingly upon her walker-riddled town—and now she wedges the crowbar between the seat and the accelerator pedal.

The tow truck lurches as Lilly leaps out onto the rocky earth, the thunder of wind and the revving engine drowning out all other sounds, except for the voice.

Even as she's running for the trees of the adjacent forest, hurrying to avoid contact with the herd, and the tow truck is careening over the edge of the precipice, Lilly can hear the faint sound of the preacher's voice. As the truck soars over the ledge and plummets seventy-five feet to the boulder-strewn river's edge below, Lilly hears the bizarre vocalizations of someone speaking in tongues.

Then the sound is drowned out by the collective growls of hundreds of walking cadavers dragging themselves over the edge—lemminglike, faithful to the last—as the light flickers all the way down into oblivion. From behind a thick grove of trees, breathless after the sprint, Lilly watches the mass migration over the precipice, a magnificent cascade of the dead as row after row plunges off the ledge.

Just before turning away, Lilly realizes an excoriating irony: At last, Jeremiah gets to partake in the mass suicide he'd always dreamed of experiencing.

 

TWENTY-SIX

David Stern is about to give up on his watch for the night. Lowering the binoculars, he lets out a pained breath, shaking his head. He has no idea what time it is, or how long it's been since he's slept, or how many hours he's been perched on the roof of this godforsaken semitrailer, gazing over the top of the barricade, ceaselessly scanning the distant woods and hills of the neighboring tobacco country, hoping he might see a ghostly figure returning, beating the impossible odds of the previous day's climactic series of events. He stretches his sore, arthritic joints.

“And how long are you gonna keep waiting for her to magically appear?” a voice says from below.

David jumps with a start. “Jesus, Babs!” He looks down at his wife. “How long have you been standing down there?”

“About a year and half.”

“Very funny.” He starts climbing down a ladder that leans against the trailer. “Did the kids finally nod off?” he asks as he hops down to the street.

The safe zone, which encompasses four square blocks of Woodbury, includes several merchants whose shelves haven't been completely picked clean, as well as a small bed-and-breakfast formerly called The Green Veranda, whose rooms are currently occupied by the six children. Earlier that night, they set up a makeshift infirmary in the front room of the inn, where Norma Sutters, if she's still awake, is continuing to look after Harold.

On the whole, though, compared with the hardships of living underground, the place is an oasis of luxury.

“All except Tommy,” Barbara says with a weary shrug. Her face is bandaged, and her voice has gone a little nasal due to the swollen bridge of her nose. But to David, in the moonless dark, illuminated only by a torch burning in front of the inn, she is the most beautiful woman on earth. “The boy insists on staying on at his sister's bedside with a shotgun across his knees.”

“Good for him,” David says, and looks around the zone. “I'm still trying to get used to the quiet.” He jerks a thumb at the wall. “There's a few stragglers out there.”

“Yeah, there's a few creepers around—must be either atheists or Jews.”

David looks askance at her. “Huh?”

“They didn't follow the preacher. Weren't interested. Can't say I blame them, either, even though, according to your mom, I'll always be a shiksa.”

Too tired to laugh, David just grins and shakes his head and touches her cheek. “Whaddaya say we go and try to get some of that sleep people have been talking about?”

She's about to answer when they hear an incongruous noise outside the wall on the wind.

They look at each other.

Barbara finally says, “They may be Jews, but since when do they drive?”

David turns and hurries back up the ladder, grabbing the binoculars, peering through the lenses at the darkness beyond the outskirts. He sees the headlights first, and then recognizes the car.

“I'll be a son of a bitch!” he mutters, and hastens back down the ladder. “C'mon!” He trots over to the truck cab blocking a ten-foot-wide gap between barricades. Barbara follows.

David hands her his pistol, then climbs up into the cab, fires up the engine, and backs away from the entrance. Barbara holds the gun on the opening. She thumbs the hammer back when she hears the rumble of a big engine closing in.

David sits in the truck cab, poised to roll it back across the gap.

Miles Littleton's purple Dodge Challenger, now as battered as a demolition derby car, booms through the opening and skids to a stop. David revs the semicab's engine, then pulls back across the opening. He hurriedly climbs down the sideboard with a smile on his face.

“Thank God!” Barbara says, lowering the gun, putting a hand to her mouth. Her eyes moisten. When the Challenger's dented driver's door squeaks open, she says, “Miles, we thought for sure we lost you out there!”

A battered and bruised Miles Littleton climbs out of the muscle car. “Nope! Still kickin'.” He gives her a sideways smirk. Barbara hugs the young man, and David furiously shakes his hand, and Miles says, “And look who I found.” He indicates the backseat. “Wandering alone out there, dehydrated as fuck, totally messed up.”

David and Barbara lean in and see the figure curled up on the backseat, unmoving and silent. Barbara can barely breathe. “Is she—?”

“Sawing logs, y'all,” Miles informs them, “snoring like a motherfucking bull moose.” He pauses. “I guess she was pretty worn out.”

“Thank God she's okay,” Barbara mutters, wiping tears from her black-rimmed, bruised eyes.

David carefully opens the rear door, reaches down to Lilly's dusty hair, and strokes it gently. She has a furrowed brow, a strange expression on her face. David wonders if she's having a nightmare. “Maybe we should let her sleep a while,” he says, backing away from her, gently closing the door. He looks at Barbara. “I think she's earned it.”

“I don't know.” Miles leans against the front quarter panel. “After she drifted off, I kept noticing her in the rearview, tossing and turning and shit. I think she might be having a major fucking dream.”

David thinks about it for a moment, and finally says, “Let's let her sleep.” He shares another glance with Barbara, and then turns to Miles. “Everybody deserves a chance to dream.”

The three of them gather at the front end of car, leaning against the hood, idly chatting. David and Barbara give Miles some water, and check his wounds. Miles waxes poetically about the benefits of an old-school roll bar and shoulder harness in a 1972 production-line car made in America. They talk some more about the events of the past few days, and they wait patiently for their friend to navigate her nightmare.

And they will wait patiently, and they will guard that car with their lives, and they will continue to wait in the flickering darkness that night for as long as it takes for Lilly to work through the thickets and problems of her epic dream.