The Walking Dead Collection (137 page)

His gaze lingers on one of the books. His head throbs. His eyes moisten and his stomach clenches with fever chills as he stares and stares at the book’s title. An idea strikes him right then, a way out of this place—Austin’s destiny written on the cracked gold-leaf spine of a dog-eared Little Golden Books classic—all of it coalescing in his mind in one great paroxysm of inspiration.

He looks at Lilly. “I promise you, we’re gonna get out of here,” he says in a low, measured, confident tone. “You’re gonna live a long life, have a lot of babies, be a terrific mom, and have a lot of parties with drinks with those little umbrellas in them.”

She manages to raise her head and look at him through wet, swollen eyes. She can barely talk. Her voice sounds drained of life. “What are you babbling about?”

“I got an idea.”

“Austin—”

“It’s a way out of this mess. C’mon. Let’s get the guys together, and I’ll lay it out for you.” He helps her to her feet.

She looks at him, and he returns her gaze, and for the first time since the war began, the love between them returns in earnest. “Don’t argue with me,” he says, giving her a wan smile and ushering her out of the cell.

But before heading back to the receiving room, Austin throws one last fleeting glance into that sad little child’s lair …

… and takes one final look at the threadbare, split, well-thumbed spine of
The Pied Piper from Hamelin
.

NINETEEN

Less than an hour later, before the sun has even cleared the tall pines to the east, Lilly stands with the others in the musty intake room, waiting for Austin’s signal. She can’t show any emotion. She can’t show her fear, her sorrow, or her anguish over letting Austin execute this insane plan. The five other surviving members of the Woodbury militia—by this point having taken their positions around the room—need to know this is going to work. They are coiled and ready to spring, and each of their frightened gazes rests on Lilly. They need her leadership now more than ever.

Matthew and Speed—the strongest of the six—stand near the giant metal credenza blocking the exit door. Gloria, Hap, and Ben—each clutching their weapons with sweat-slick hands—stand in the center of the room, facing the exit, prepared to move on Lilly’s cue. Lilly has a Ruger pistol in each hand, taking deep breaths on the other side of the credenza, a runner in the blocks, muscles taut with tension, as ready as she’ll ever be.

Nobody knows about the hushed argument that transpired only half an hour ago between Austin and Lilly behind the shattered glass of the intake desk. Nobody heard Lilly pleading with him not to do this. And no one else will ever know what happened when Austin finally broke down and admitted through runnels of snot and tears that he
has
to do this—he has no choice—because he has always been a coward and a liar, and these attributes only worsened when the plague broke out, and this is the only way he will ever be able to redeem himself, and do something good and right.

He told Lilly then the truest thing—the thing that will live in Lilly’s heart the rest of her life—that
she
is the only person that he has ever loved, and he will love her for eternity.

The first shot rings out on the far side of the yard, faint and muffled inside the foyer, dampened by walls of brick and mortar.

Everybody in the room bristles, spines stiffening at the noise. Lilly raises one of her guns at the ceiling, getting everyone’s attention. “Okay,” she says. “There’s the first signal. He needs two minutes, and then we head out. Get ready.”

Lacking a stopwatch, Lilly begins counting off the seconds in her head to occupy her thoughts.

One Mississippi … two Mississippi … three Mississippi
.

*   *   *

Austin gets halfway across the exercise yard on the north edge of the grounds—firing off large-caliber attention-grabbers every few seconds in order to draw the swarm away from the cellblocks—when the herd gets too thick.

Dizzy from the harsh sun pounding behind his eyes, in a weakened state from the fever, he manages to kick his way through a cluster of biters on the edge of the fences, but soon the monsters outnumber him three hundred to one. He reaches the mangled wreckage of chain link, taking a few down with headshots—Matthew equipped him with an AK, a full magazine, and a knife—but the moment he plunges into the wall of walkers milling about the tall grass, he gets pinned down.

He spins and strafes a group of ragged monsters coming up behind him, sending flesh and blood into the air in an arabesque of red spray, but when he whirls back toward the meadow, one of the larger males pounces on him and knocks him down. He drops his gun and tries to scuttle back to his feet but the male clamps down on his ankle, rotten bicuspids digging in, latching onto him with the force of grappling hooks. Austin cries out and kicks, to no avail.

Through sheer force of will, he rises back to his feet. With every last shred of strength he can muster, the searing pain spreading through every tendon, every capillary, he starts moving again, the huge male still clamped onto him. He knows, deep down, that this isn’t about destroying creatures—it’s about drawing them away—so he drags the male as far as he can across the leprous meadow.

It’s slow going at first, but he covers nearly twenty-five yards in this manner, hemorrhaging pints of blood, the knife now in his sweat-greasy fist, the pain a living thing inside him, devouring him. He flails and strikes out at more and more attackers coming at him from every direction, screaming as loud as he can, “COME AND GET ME, MOTHERFUCKERS—YOU BUNCH OF STINKING, ROTTEN PUSSIES!!—COME AND GET ME!!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the leading edge of the swarm shifting like a black tide rolling back out to sea, many of those who had been snuffling around the buildings now awkwardly turning, bumping into each other, starting to trundle back toward the meadow, drawn by the commotion of fresh meat in their midst.

Austin’s plan is working—at least for the moment. The trick is going to be getting them away from the vehicles. Austin’s body begins to shut down, the male clawing at the place in his legs where the femoral arteries live, ragged arms tangling with his feet, throwing him off stride. He knows he only has a few more minutes left in him, a few more feet, a few more strangled breaths.

“COME AND GET IT, SHITHEADS!! SOUP’S ON!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!!”

He can see the closest vehicle—a military transport truck—its doors still hanging open, the wind blowing through the empty cab. He manages to drag the monster off to the left of the abandoned caravan another few yards before the pain and the pressure of the creature’s teeth and the clawing fingers drag him to the ground.

He crawls another few feet before more rotting teeth close in, a fogbank of noxious black stench engulfing him, the hellish choir of growls contracting around him like a giant turbine turning and turning. The pain steals his breath, makes his vision grow dim and amorphous, makes the growing number of teeth sinking into his flesh lose all meaning. He hears a whisper in his mind, which drowns the horror, numbs the pain, and turns the black inkblots of a hundred cadaverous faces looming over him into a gauzy blur. The whisper carries him over—takes him across a beautiful pristine-white threshold—as the feeding opens him up:
I love you, Austin … and I always, always, always, always will … I will never stop loving you
. It is the last thing Lilly said to him this morning, and it is the last thing he hears in his mind as his arteries collapse and spill his life-force into the grass, the blood seeping down into the earth.…

*   *   *

The giant credenza shrieks across the floor suddenly as the two young men shove it away from the door. Lilly gives Gloria, Hap, and Ben a terse nod—they nod back at her—and Lilly turns to the door, jacks the knob, and throws it open.

The harsh light of a pale sun shines in her face as she steps outside.

Several things register to Lilly as she takes her first loping strides across the concrete deck of the exercise yard—the others following closely, their guns poised, their hot gazes everywhere at once—but she tries to focus solely on the task of getting the group to a vehicle in one piece rather than succumb to the chaotic flow of information now streaming into her brain.

The first thing that occurs to her is the absence of any sign of Austin. She scans the grounds, and then surveys the outer fences, and sees only walkers. Where the hell is he? Did he make it to the woods? She leads the group toward the outer fence.

The second thing that registers in Lilly’s churning mind is the dearth of walkers still wandering the grounds. Only a few stragglers still drag across the cement here and there, providing very little threat to a tightly packed group of humans racing across the exercise yard.

Matthew wields the largest knife—and he runs alongside Lilly—keeping an eye on the errant biters that might make note of them.

They cross the sparsely populated grounds in less than a minute, and Matthew has to drive his knife into the decaying craniums of a mere handful of walkers before they get to the pasture.

Which leads to the third thing that registers fully at that point in Lilly’s brain: The configuration of the herd has now spontaneously shifted to the north. Like a teeming mass of ants, they swarm around something dark and glistening on the ground fifty feet from the farthest vehicle.

The noise of the feeding frenzy reaches her ears as she leads the group toward her truck—the massive vehicle still sitting with its cab doors open exactly as she left them the day before—and she calls out to the others as they crane their necks to see the gruesome scene along the north edge of the pasture: “DON’T LOOK!”

Lilly’s voice sounds almost robotic in her own ears—all emotion blanched out of her now by the scalding rush of adrenaline—as she comes around the driver’s side of the cab. She jerks to a stop when she sees the ragged female in a soiled sundress inside the cab, wedged behind the steering wheel, her threadbare dress tangled on the stick shift. Lilly quickly raises her .22 and puts the female out of her misery, sending the back of the girl’s skull across the glass of the passenger door.

Dark blood washes the inside of the windshield as the female sags to the cab floor. Lilly kicks the body toward the door, ripping the dress free. Gloria Pyne reaches in from the passenger side and yanks the body out of the cab, dumping it in the grass.

The others rush around to the rear hatch and start climbing onto the truck. First, Hap Abernathy … then Speed, then Matthew, and finally Ben. Lilly throws a glance out the driver’s-side window and sees—in the cracked reflection of the shattered mirror—that Ben Buchholz has to struggle to heave his way on board. The contents of the truck—crates of ordnance and supplies—have shifted and spilled, and now the four men have to huddle dangerously close to the rear gate in order to fit into the cluttered cargo bay.

The sound of a muffled knock on the rear wall signals they are all safely on board.

The keys still dangle from the ignition, and Lilly kicks the engine to life. Gloria takes her place on the passenger side, shutting the door behind her as quietly as possible. She gazes out her open window. On the edges of the herd, some of the stray biters have noticed them, turning languidly in their direction, starting to drag toward them.

Gloria sticks the barrel of her Glock 19 out the open window, preparing to fire a few suppressing shots as Lilly slams the gearbox into reverse, but Gloria freezes when she catches a glimpse of just exactly what lies on the ground in the heart of the swarm.

Already torn apart and eviscerated beyond recognition, the human remains feature familiar clumps of long curly hair, shredded leather, and an ammo vest now torn to pieces. Two biters fight over a single motorcycle boot, the visible white fibula bone and part of a bloody ankle still lodged inside it. Gloria sucks in a breath. “Oh dear Jesus God … what have we done?”

“Don’t look,” Lilly utters under her breath as she kicks the accelerator.

The gears shriek, and the truck lurches into reverse. The gravitational forces shove Lilly and Gloria forward, nearly slamming them into the dash as the vehicle’s undercarriage shudders and threatens to break into pieces. The massive tires cobble and bump over dead bodies—both walkers and humans alike—which still lie strewn across the battlefield. Lilly keeps the foot-feed pinned. A few errant biters get bowled over by the rear bumper in a succession of watery, arrhythmic thuds as the truck careens.

“DON’T LOOK!”

She cries it out in a strangled voice—addressing herself more than Gloria or the others—as the vehicle screams backward, skirting the edges of the swarm. The stench engulfs the rattling truck, the air black with smoke and carbon and gouts of exhaust enveloping the open windows, as the countless creatures flock like carrion crows fifty yards to the north around the pathetic human remains, which are now scattered across an entire square acre of scabrous, blood-sodden, sacrificial ground.

Don’t look,
Lilly tells herself as she slams on the brakes thirty feet from the edge of the wooded slope, smashing Gloria into the folds of the passenger seat. Lilly wrestles the shift lever into second gear and guns it.

The engine booms and the rear wheels dig into the muddy turf for a moment, spinning in place, and Lilly realizes—for one terrible split second—that she now has a fleeting opportunity to get a good view of the feeding frenzy that saved their lives transpiring right this instant through the blood-slimy windshield.
Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,
she keeps repeating to herself in her mind as the rear wheels finally find purchase, and the truck plunges forward in a huge wake of dirt and detritus.

She manages not to look for the entire span of time it takes them to circle around the slope to the access road and start to weave headlong up the side of the hill, the engine bellowing.

But just as the vehicle crests the hill, Lilly shoots an involuntary glance out at the hairline fractured reflection of the side mirror.