The Walking Dead Collection (51 page)

Josh goes over to the grimy front window and gazes out at the night. “I think all the activity at Camp Bingham’s been drawing ’em out of the woodwork for weeks now.”

“How far from base camp
are
we, ya think?”

“Not much more than a mile or so, as the crow flies.” Josh gazes out over the pinnacles of distant pines, their swaying ocean of boughs as dense as black lace. The sky has cleared, and now the heavens are spangled with a riot of icy-cold stars.

Across the needlework of constellations rise wisps of wood smoke from the tent city.

“Been thinking about something…” Josh turns and looks at his companions. “This place ain’t the Ritz but if we can do a little scavenging, maybe find some more ammunition for the guns … we might be better off staying put for a while.”

The notion hangs in the silent office for a moment, sinking in.

*   *   *

The next morning, after a long, restless night sleeping on the cold cement floor of the service bay—making do with threadbare blankets and taking shifts standing guard—they have a group meeting to decide what to do. Over cups of instant coffee prepared on Bob’s Coleman stove, Josh convinces them that the best thing to do is stay holed up there for the time being. Lilly can heal up, and if necessary, they can steal provisions from the nearby tent city.

By this point, nobody puts up much of a fight. Bob has discovered a stash of whiskey under a counter in the bait shop, and Megan and Scott alternate between getting high and “spending quality time” in the back room for hours on end. They work hard that first day to secure the place. Josh decides against running the generator indoors for fear of gassing them to death with the fumes, and worries about running it outdoors for fear of drawing unwanted attention. He finds a wood-burning stove in the storeroom and a pile of lumber scraps out behind one of the Dumpsters.

Their second night at Fortnoy’s Fuel and Bait, they get the temperature up to tolerable levels in the service area by keeping the stove going full blast, and Megan and Scott noisily keep each other warm in the back room under layers of blankets. Bob gets drunk enough not to notice the cold, but he seems disturbed by the muffled bumping sounds coming from the storeroom. Eventually, the older man gets so loaded he can barely move. Lilly helps him into his bedroll as though putting a child down for the night. She even sings a lullaby to him—a Joni Mitchell song, “The Circle Game”—as she tucks the mildewed blanket around his aging, wattled neck. Oddly, she feels responsible for Bob Stookey, even though
he’s
the one who’s supposed to be nursing
her
.

*   *   *

Over the next few days, they reinforce the doors and windows, and they wash themselves in the big galvanized sinks in the rear of the garage. They settle into a sort of grudging routine. Bob winterizes his truck, cannibalizing parts off some of the wrecks, and Josh supervises regular reconnaissance missions to the outer edges of the tent city a mile to the west. Under the campers’ noses, Josh and Scott are able to steal firewood, fresh water, a few discarded tent rolls, some canned vegetables, a box of shotgun shells, and a case of Sterno. Josh notices the fabric of civilized behavior straining at the seams in the tent city. He hears more and more arguments. He sees fistfights among some of the men, and heavy drinking going on. The stress is taking its toll on the settlers.

During the darkness of night, Josh keeps a tight lid on Fortnoy’s Fuel and Bait. He and the others stay inside, keeping as quiet as possible, burning a minimum number of emergency candles and lanterns, jumping at the intermittent noises caused by the increasing winds. Lilly Caul finds herself wondering which is the deadlier menace—the zombie hordes, her fellow human beings, or the encroaching winter. The nights are getting longer and the cold is setting in. It’s forming rimes of frost on the windows and getting into people’s joints, and although no one talks about it much, the cold is the silent menace that could actually destroy them far easier and more efficiently than any zombie attack.

In order to fight the boredom and constant undercurrents of fear, some of the inhabitants of Fortnoy’s develop hobbies. Josh begins rolling homemade cigars out of tobacco leaves that he harvests from neighboring fields. Lilly starts a diary, and Bob finds a treasure trove of old fishing lures in an unmarked trunk in the bait shop. He spends hours in the ransacked retail shop, perched at a workbench in back, compulsively winding fly-fishing lures for future use. Bob plans to bag some nice trout, redfish, or walleyes in the shallows of a nearby river. He keeps the bottle of Jack Daniel’s under the bench at all times, tippling from it day and night.

The others notice the rate at which Bob is going through the hooch, but who can blame him? Who can blame anybody for drowning his nerves in this cruel purgatory? Bob is not proud of his drinking. In fact, he’s downright ashamed of it. But that’s why he needs the medicine—to stave off the shame, and the loneliness, and the fear, and the horrible night terrors of blood-spattered bunkers in Kandahar.

On Friday of that week, in the wee hours of the night—Bob notes in his paper calendar that the date is November 9—he finds himself back at the workbench in the rear of the shop, winding flies, getting shit-faced as usual, when he hears the shuffling noises coming from the storeroom. He hadn’t noticed Megan and Scott slipping away earlier that evening, nor had he detected the telltale odors of marijuana residue cooking in a pipe, nor had he heard the muffled giggling coming through the thin walls. But now he notices something else that had eluded his attention that day.

He stops fiddling with the lures and glances across the rear corner of the room. Behind a large, battered propane tank, a gaping hole in the wall is clearly visible in the flickering light of Bob’s lantern. He pushes himself away from the bench and goes over to the tank. He shoves it aside and kneels down in front of a six-inch patch of missing wallboard. The hole looks like it was formed by water damage, or perhaps the buckling of plaster during the humid Georgia summers. Bob glances over his shoulder, making sure he’s alone. The others are fast asleep in the service area.

The groans and gasps of wild sex draw Bob’s attention back to the damaged wall.

He peers through the six-inch gap and into the storeroom, where the dim light of a battery-operated lantern throws moving shadows up and across the low ceiling. The shadows pump and thrust in the darkness. Bob licks his lips. He leans in closer to the hole, nearly falling over in his drunken state, bracing himself against the propane tank. He can see a small portion of Scott Moon’s pimpled ass rising and falling in the yellow light, Megan beneath the young man, legs spread, her toes curling with ecstasy.

Bob Stookey feels his heart pinch in his chest, his breath sticking in his craw.

The thing that mesmerizes him the most is not the naked abandon with which the two lovers are going at each other, nor is it the animalistic grunts and mewls filling the air. The thing that holds Bob Stookey rapt is the sight of Megan Lafferty’s olive skin in the lamplight, her russet curls splayed across the blanket beneath her head, her hair as lustrous and shiny as honey. Bob can’t stop gaping at her, the longing welling up inside him.

He can’t tear his gaze from her, even when a floorboard creaks behind him.

“Oh—Bob—I’m sorry—I didn’t…”

The voice comes from the shadows of the doorway across the retail shop, from the passageway into the front office, and when Bob jerks away from the hole in the wall, whirling around to face his inquisitor, he nearly falls over. He has to hold on to the propane tank. “I wasn’t trying to—this ain’t—I—I ain’t—”

“It’s okay—I was just—I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Lilly stands in the doorway dressed in her sweatshirt, knit scarf, and sweatpants—her sleeping attire—averting her bandaged face, looking away, her eyes filled with an awkward combination of pity and disgust. The bruising around her eyes has gone down quite a bit. She’s moving around a lot better, her ribs healing.

“Lilly, I wasn’t—” Bob staggers toward her, holding his big hands up in a gesture of contrition, when he trips on a loose floorboard. He tumbles, sprawling to the floor and letting out a gasp. Amazingly, the carnal noises continue unabated in the adjacent room—an arrhythmic cadence of huffing and slapping flesh.

“Bob, are you okay?” Lilly rushes over to him, kneels, and tries to help him up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” He gently pushes her away. He rises drunkenly to his feet. He can’t look her in the eye. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He glances across the room. “I thought I heard something suspicious coming from outside.”

“Suspicious?” Lilly gazes at the floor, at the wall—anywhere but at Bob. “Oh … okay.”

“Yeah, it was nothing.”

“Oh … that’s good.” Lilly slowly backs away. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m good, I’m good. It’s getting late, I’m thinking I’ll turn in.”

“Good, Bob. You do that.”

Lilly turns and makes a hasty exit, leaving Bob Stookey alone in the lantern light. He stands there for a moment, staring at the floor. Then he moves slowly across the room to the bench. He finds the bottle of Jack, thumbs off the cap, and raises it to his lips.

He downs the remaining fingers of booze in three breathless gulps.

*   *   *

“I’m just wondering what’s gonna happen when he runs out of booze.”

Bundled in her ski jacket and knit beret, Lilly follows Josh down a narrow path winding between columns of pines. Josh makes his way through the foliage, the 12-gauge cradled in his huge arms, moving toward a dry creek bed strewn with boulders and deadfall. He wears his ratty lumberjack coat and stocking cap, his breath showing as he talks. “He’ll find some more … don’t worry about old Bob … juicers always manage to find more juice. To be honest, I’m more worried about us running out of food.”

The woods are as silent as a chapel as they approach the banks of the creek. The first snow of the season filters down through the high boughs above them, swirling on the wind, sticking to their faces.

They’ve been at Fortnoy’s for almost two weeks now, and have gone through over half the supply of drinking water and nearly all the canned goods. Josh has decided it’s probably best to use up their single box of shotgun shells on killing a deer or a rabbit rather than defending themselves against a zombie attack. Besides, the campfires, noise, and activity at the tent city have drawn most of the walker activity away from the gas station in recent days. Josh is now calling upon his childhood memories of hunting with his uncle Vernon up on Briar Mountain in order to get the scent back, get the old skills back. Once upon a time, Josh was an eagle-eyed hunter. But now, with this broken-down squirrel gun and frozen fingers … who knows?

“I worry about him, Josh,” Lilly says. “He’s a good man but he’s got issues.”

“Don’t we all.” Josh glances over his shoulder at Lilly coming down the hill, carefully stepping over a fallen log. She looks strong for the first time since the incident with Chad Bingham. Her face has healed nicely, barely showing any discoloration. The swelling has gone down around her eye, and she’s no longer limping or favoring her right side. “He sure fixed you up nice.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling a lot better.”

Josh pauses on the edge of the creek and waits for her. She joins him. He sees tracks in the hard-packed mud at the bottom of the creek bed. “Looks like we got a deer crossing here. I’m thinkin’ we follow the creek, ought to meet up with a critter or two.”

“Can we take a quick rest first?”

“You bet,” Josh says, motioning for her to have a seat on a log. She sits. He joins her, holding the shotgun across his lap. He lets out a sigh. He feels a tremendous urge to put his arm around her. What is
wrong
with him? Stricken with puppy love like some stupid teenager in the midst of all these horrors?

Josh looks down. “I like the way you take care of each other, you and old Bob.”

“Yeah, and you take care of all of us.”

Josh lets out a sigh. “Wish I could have taken better care of my mama.”

Lilly looks at him. “You never told me what happened.”

Josh takes a deep breath. “Like I told you, she was pretty sick for quite a few years … thought I was gonna lose her a few times … but she lived long enough to—” He stops, the sorrow ratcheting his insides, swelling up in him, surprising him with its suddenness.

Lilly sees the pain in his eyes. “It’s okay, Josh, if you don’t want to—”

He makes a feeble gesture, a wave of his big brown hand. “I don’t mind telling you what happened. I was still trying to get into work each morning at that point, still trying to get a paycheck in the early days of the Turn, just a few biter sightings back then. I ever tell you what I do? My profession?”

“You told me you were a cook.”

He gives her a nod. “Pretty serious one, if I do say so myself.” He looks at her, his voice softening. “Always wanted to fix you a proper dinner.” His eyes moisten. “My mama taught me the basics, rest her soul, taught me how to make a bread pudding that would bring tears to your eyes and joy to your belly.”

Lilly smiles at him, then her smile fades. “What happened to your mom, Josh?”

He stares at the dusting of snow on the matted leaves for quite some time, marshaling the energy to tell the story. “Muhammad Ali’s got nothing on my mama … she was a fighter, she fought that sickness like a champ, for years. But
sweet
? She was sweet as the day is long. Shaggy dogs and misfits—she would take anybody in, the raggiest-ass individuals, hardened panhandlers, homeless, it didn’t matter. She would take ’em in and call ’em ‘honey child’ and make them corn bread and sweet tea until they stole from her or got in a fight in her front parlor.”

“Sounds like she was a saint, Josh.”

Another shrug. “Wasn’t the best living conditions for me and my sisters, I’ll be honest with ya. We moved around a lot, different schools, and every day we would come home and find our place filled with strangers, but I loved the old gal.”